Epson EcoTank ET-3850 Printer Review

This printer feels relatively well-built. The body feels sturdy, but the automatic document feeder on top feels a bit thin and flimsy, and it squeaks when moved. The main complaint is that the scanner's lid doesn't have a dampener, only a notched support to hold it open, as seen here. As such, it'll slam shut if you don't raise it slowly and make sure it's in the locked position. Getting the lid to lock in that open position is also difficult.

Like most inkjet printers, the Epson's printheads can clog if you don't print for a long time. There are a few built-in maintenance functions to resolve any clogging or print quality issues, like printhead cleaning, power cleaning, printhead alignment, and nozzle check. There's also a paper guide cleaning, which helps remove the build-up of dust that could smear prints as they pass through the paper feeders. The printhead cleaning task usually resolves clogging issues, although you may have to do it repeatedly to get good results. There's a maintenance box that collects ink flushed during printhead cleanings, which you need to clean periodically. There's a feature in the menu that lets you see when the maintenance box is full.

You won't need to refill the ink tank often, as it yields a large number of prints at max capacity. You just need to keep an eye on the ink levels and not let them get too low because doing so can introduce air bubbles into the tubes and damage the printer. Refilling the tank is easy; you only need to lift the scanner to access the ink tank's cover. You can access the sheet rollers to clear paper jams through a panel on the back of the printer, seen here, or by lifting the automatic feeder's cover. The input tray holds 250 sheets of paper, so you likely won't need to refill the tray all that often.

You can see the user manual here.

The Epson ET-3850 has an okay display. It's easy to see whether you're sitting or standing, and you can also tilt the front panel to improve visibility. However, it's hard to see from the side. It isn't touch-sensitive, and there's no numeric keypad, so entering passwords to connect the printer to Wi-Fi can be tedious as you must use the arrow keys to navigate the keyboard and punch in each letter individually.

The Epson ET-3850 has four refillable ink tanks that yield a large number of prints, making it a great choice for high-volume printing. You can easily see the ink levels from the front of the printer, which is good because this printer doesn't have an ink level sensor. It only monitors ink usage internally to provide an estimate, which means you'll have to monitor your ink levels and manually reset them in the printer settings when you refill the tanks. As noted in the maintenance section, letting the ink levels run too low or emptying the tank can introduce air bubbles into the print tubes and damage the printer.

As for specific color yields, the cyan ink yields significantly more pages than either magenta or yellow.

This printer has a decent range of scanning features. Its scanner has an automatic feeder for processing multi-page documents. While it's on the slower side and doesn't support duplex scanning, it's still more convenient than scanning each page manually on the flatbed scanner. Its optical character recognition feature allows you to save your scans as PDFs for quick keyword searches. It works well but misspells words at times. If you need a printer with automatic duplex scanning, check out the HP OfficeJet Pro 9135e.

The scan quality is outstanding. The scanner captures everything well, including very fine details. It boosts the contrast and color saturation to make the scan look more vibrant, which is good for text documents because it makes the text easier to read; however, it might not be ideal if you're looking to digitize photos and expect the scan to look as close to the original picture as possible.

• Start Here Guide
• Set-Up CD
• Power cord
• Epson T502 ink bottles:
• 1x black
• 1x cyan
• 1x magenta
• 1x yellow

This is a corded printer without a battery.

The print quality for black and white documents is outstanding. Text looks sharp, and all of the finer elements are present. However, colored areas look grainy, and there's some minor vertical banding.

The print quality of color documents is good. Text looks clear, and colors look good, albeit grainy. Finer elements come through, but not as well as when printing in black and white only. Also, there's a noticeably purple tint when printing with default settings.

The cost-per-print is remarkably low. Thanks to the supertank ink system's high page yields, you won't have to buy ink refills frequently, and the replacement ink is cheap, keeping ownership costs low.

This printer prints decently fast. It outputs black documents fairly quickly but is slow with color documents and photos. It's also slow to initialize from an idle state and get a single page out.

This printer supports most standard paper sizes. You can also set custom paper sizes with a width of 3.5" to 8.5" and a length of 5" and 47.24".

The Epson ET-3850 has a great color gamut. It can reproduce a wide range of colors; however, it struggles with bright greens and purples and darker shades of green and yellow. Unfortunately, color transitions look very grainy.

This printer has bad color accuracy. It reproduces most colors inaccurately, especially blues and greens, and grays have a purplish tone. This level of accuracy is fine for printing the odd casual photo, as printed photos still look relatively natural; however, it isn't ideal for professional-level work that requires exact color reproduction.

This printer is excellent at reproducing small details. The main issue is the halftones (dot effect). They're very noticeable and make edges and distant objects look less defined.

This printer can connect with voice assistants, like Apple's Siri or Amazon Alexa, allowing you to use voice commands to initiate printing or scanning and to check the printer's status.

The Epson Smart Panel mobile app has lots of features. You can use the app to print, copy, and scan (with a smartphone's camera or printer) and perform maintenance tasks like nozzle checking or printhead cleaning. You can also buy replacement ink through the app. Unfortunately, the iOS version of the app can't print Microsoft Office files directly, as it doesn't display the document properly and displays a mobile version of the print instead.

You need to install drivers and the Epson Scan 2 application to get full functionality on Windows. You can also get the Epson Photo+ software for extra photo printing features. You don't need any drivers or additional programs on macOS and Chrome OS.