Epson EcoTank ET-2850

Ink tankBottles

Two things separate this from the ET-2800 sitting next to it on the shelf: it turns the paper over by itself, and it drinks a different, longer-lasting ink. The 502 set is rated 7,500 black ISO pages a bottle against the 522's 4,500, which pulls the black page down to about a third of a cent even though the bottle costs more. Automatic duplex is the other half of the upgrade and the one people notice — a two-sided school report stops being a manual chore. Everything else is the same small chassis: a 100-sheet rear feed, a flatbed scanner with no document feeder, no Ethernet, and a 1.44-inch colour screen that is an improvement on the ET-2800's monochrome strip without becoming a touchscreen. The speed is unchanged at 10.5 ISO pages a minute, and duplex halves it. It is the model to buy if the extra fifty dollars buys something you will use every week.

Approx. price: ~$299
Cost per mono page: 0.33¢
Cost per colour page: 1.2¢
Cost to own, 5,000 pages: ~$324
Print speed, mono: 10.5 ISO ppm

Best for

The household that would buy the ET-2800 but prints enough two-sided paperwork to resent flipping it.

marks an estimate. Computed from the consumable's ISO page yield and its list price. An estimate. Purchase price plus ink or toner over the pages shown, assuming four mono pages for every colour page. Price is an approximate snapshot from our last catalogue update.

What it costs to own

Black consumable: Epson 502 black bottle · 7,500 ISO pages · ~$24.99
Colour consumable: Epson 502 colour bottles · 6,000 ISO pages · ~$16.99 each
Cost per mono page: 0.33¢
Cost per colour page: 1.2¢
Cost to own, 5,000 pages: ~$324
Cost to own, 200 pages/month for 3 years: ~$335 (7,200 pages)

Computed from the consumable's ISO page yield and its list price. An estimate. How this is worked out

Cost to own · 5,000 pages

Epson EcoTank ET-2850~$324
~$299 printer + ~$25 supplies
Epson EcoTank ET-4800~$326
~$299 printer + ~$27 supplies
Epson EcoTank ET-2800~$276
~$249 printer + ~$27 supplies

purchase priceink or toner. An estimate: purchase price plus 5,000 pages at each printer’s computed cost per page, assuming 4 mono pages for every colour page. Printers whose consumable price we could not source are left out.

Specifications

Manufacturer-published figures. Cost lines are computed from the consumable figures above and are estimates.

Approx. price: ~$299
Cost per mono page: 0.33¢
Cost per colour page: 1.2¢
Cost to own, 5,000 pages: ~$324
Cost to own, 3 years: ~$335
Technology: Piezo inkjet
Ink system: Bottles
Inks: 4
Black consumable: Epson 502 black bottle · 7,500 pages
Colour consumable: Epson 502 colour bottles · 6,000 pages
Ink in the box: 7,500 pages
Third-party ink lock: No
Ink subscription: None offered
Print speed, mono: 10.5 ISO ppm
Print speed, colour: 5 ISO ppm
Functions: Print · Copy · Scan
Two-sided printing: Auto
Document feeder: None
Paper capacity: 100 sheets
Max paper size: Legal
Borderless photo: Yes
Resolution: 5760 × 1440 dpi
Connectivity: Wi-Fi
Mobile printing: AirPrint · Mopria
Display: 1.44" colour LCD
Dimensions: 14.8 × 13.7 × 7.0 in
Weight: 11.7 lb
Released: 2021

Features

Automatic two-sided printing
Four refillable tanks using the higher-yield Epson 502 bottles
1.44-inch colour LCD for standalone copying
Borderless photo printing up to 8×10
Flatbed scanner at 1200 dpi optical
No chip or firmware block on non-Epson ink

Auto duplex No ink lock Borderless photo

In its favour

The 502 ink set drops the mono page to roughly a third of a cent, the lowest in this catalogue
Automatic duplex at a price where it is usually missing
Refilling from bottles takes a minute and costs less than one cartridge on most printers
Colour LCD makes walk-up copying workable without a phone
Third-party bottles work, and plenty of owners use them

Against it

Still no document feeder — multi-page scans are one sheet at a time
Duplex printing roughly halves an already modest speed
Rear-feed-only paper path, so the stack sits out in the open collecting dust
No Ethernet, and the 2.4 GHz-only radio is fussy in crowded flats

What owners say

Distilled from owner discussions and long-term published reviews

When someone on a printer forum asks for the cheapest tank printer that prints on both sides, this is the answer that comes back, and owners generally agree it was the right call. The extra fifty dollars over the ET-2800 buys a duplexer and a longer-lasting ink set, and both get used.

Two owner reports recur often enough to plan around. The first is the line-wide one: an EcoTank left alone for a month may need cleaning cycles before it prints properly, and those cycles use ink. The second is stranger — several owners printing the same artwork file from a Mac and a Windows machine report visibly different colour, which points at colour management rather than the printer, but catches people out when they are selling what they print.

What owners like

The model most often recommended to people asking for a cheap tank printer with two-sided printing — the duplexer is what owners point at
The 502 ink set lasts noticeably longer than the ET-2800's 522 bottles, and owners report going well over a year on the in-box fill
Owners printing stickers and small art prints report good results once paper settings are worked out
Colour LCD makes standalone copying possible without reaching for a phone
Cheap third-party bottles are readily available and owners use them

Common complaints

Same clogging behaviour as the rest of the entry EcoTank line if it sits unused for several weeks
Owners report prints coming out visibly different between macOS and Windows from the same file, which appears to be a driver and colour-management difference rather than a hardware fault
No document feeder, which owners scanning multi-page documents regret
The rear-feed paper path leaves the stack exposed and is a recurring source of misfeeds

Questions that keep coming up

What does the ET-2850 add over the ET-2800?

Automatic two-sided printing, a colour LCD instead of a monochrome one, and the higher-yield Epson 502 ink set in place of the 522. The 502 black bottle is rated 7,500 ISO pages against the 522's 4,500, so the cost per page drops as well. Owners who bought the cheaper model and then wanted duplex consistently say the upgrade was worth it.

Why do my prints look different from a Mac and a PC?

Owners report this fairly often with the same file and the same paper setting. It is a colour-management difference between the two operating systems and their printer drivers rather than a fault in the machine. Matching the colour profile and the paper-type setting on both sides is what people report fixing it.

Is it good enough for selling art prints or stickers?

Owners do sell stickers and small prints from it, but they describe a period of trial and error with paper settings, profiles and drying time first. It has four dye inks and no grey, so it cannot match a six-ink photo printer on tonal range — and heavy ink coverage on glossy stock stays tacky longer than people expect.

Computed from the consumable's ISO page yield and its list price. An estimate. Owner notes are a summary of what people who own the machine report, not a test result — there is no lab behind this site.