Epson EcoTank ET-4800  Printer Review

The build quality is mediocre. The plastic used in its construction feels a bit cheap but still reasonably sturdy, especially the input and output trays. Unlike other models, you can't fully lift the entire scanner to access the sheet rollers. While the top does rise a little, it isn't by much, and you can only access the sheet rollers by pulling down the panel at the front. When removing paper jams, you need to be careful not to touch the tubes inside the printer, which is hard since there isn't much space to move around. On the bright side, the ink cartridges are easy to access by pulling up the cover on the right side, but you need to lift the scanner first.

The weight includes the ink, as we took the measurements after filling the ink tanks.

Like all inkjet printers, the Epson EcoTank ET-4800's printheads can clog and become misaligned if you don't use it regularly. There are some built-in maintenance routines, like nozzle check, printhead cleaning, power cleaning, printhead alignment, and paper guide cleaning. Refilling the tanks is an easy process. You simply need to lift the scanner, then pull up the ink tank cover. Each bottle's nozzle is slightly different and corresponds with its ink tank; this means you don't need to worry about accidentally filling up the wrong tank. The refilling process can be messy if you're not careful, but at least you don't need to do it very often since the printer can print thousands of pages before the tanks run low. Since the printer doesn't have an ink sensor, it can't measure exactly how much ink you have left, so you need to reset the ink level counter each time you refill the tanks.

Unfortunately, the paper tray can only hold 100 pages, meaning you have to add paper often if you regularly print long multi-page documents. To access the sheet rollers, you need to lift the display panel, lift the scanner, and pull down the black cover. From there, you can reach the rollers to pull out paper jams, but the space is very narrow, and you need to be careful not to touch any of the tubes.

See the user guide here.

The display is tiny, making it hard to read any text on the screen. It's easy to navigate with the buttons, though it doesn't register some inputs at times. It has good viewing angles, and you can also tilt the display panel vertically to help you see the screen better.

This is a supertank printer, meaning that it has four refillable ink tanks instead of traditional cartridges. It has a very high page yield, so you don't need to refill the tanks too often, though if you're looking for a supertank printer with an even higher page yield, the HP Smart Tank 7301 is worth a look. There are no built-in ink-level sensors. Instead, the printer monitors ink usage internally (via a page counter) to estimate when the ink levels run low. You'll have to keep an eye on the ink levels and manually reset the printer settings when you refill them. Make sure you don't let the ink levels run too low, as this could introduce air bubbles into the print tubes and damage the printheads.

Unfortunately, the printer is prone to printhead clogging and misalignment, which happened every so often during the page yield test. Running a printhead cleaning and alignment helps solve the issue, but you might use considerable ink during these tasks. Let us know in the discussions if you have this printer and have experienced the same issue.

The optical character recognition (OCR) feature is software-based, meaning you need to install the Epson Scan 2 application to use it. The app lets you scan documents as a searchable PDF or as a TIFF file.

The scan quality is decent. The text is clear, but the image processing removes a lot of the finer details, like the lines in the graph and watermarks. The image processing also boosts the contrast and color saturation, which you may or may not like.

• Start here guide
• Power cable
• Setup CD-ROM
• Epson T522 bottles
• 1x cyan
• 1x magenta
• 1x yellow
• 1x black

The print quality of black-and-white documents is great. Printed text looks sharp, and fine details are present and easily visible. However, white text, especially thinner fonts, within a gray background looks blurry and can be hard to see properly.

The print quality of color documents is good. The text looks clear, and the colors are vibrant. However, fine details, thin lines, and white text within a colored background can be a little hard to see.

Like most supertank printers, the cost-per-print is incredibly low due to its high page yields and inexpensive ink bottle cost.

This printer has slow printing speeds, falling slightly short of its advertised ten black and five color pages per minute. It can't automatically print double-sided sheets, so you'll have to flip the pages when prompted. A message pops up when it has finished printing the even pages and shows you how to reinsert the stack back in the input tray. If you want a supertank printer that automatically prints double-sided sheets, consider the Canon MegaTank MAXIFY GX2020/GX1020.

This printer supports most standard paper sizes. You can set custom sizes between 2.13” (5.4 cm) and 8.5” (21.6 cm) in width and between 3.39” (8.6 cm) and 47.24” (120 cm) in length.

The Epson EcoTank ET-4800 has a good color gamut. There's not a lot of distinction between highly saturated yellow, orange, and red, and it struggles with darker shades of green. There's some noticeable graining when transitioning from lighter shades of blue to green.

This printer's color accuracy is okay. Some colors are visibly off, but the pictures still look relatively natural, albeit a tad too warm.

This printer reproduces small details remarkably well. While there's a slight loss of fine details due to halftones, it isn't noticeable overall, even when looking at faraway objects.

The Epson ET-4800 supports various glossy paper sizes up to 8.5x11. It supports borderless printing, but there might be a slight loss in print quality. Also, you can only print borderless photos on 3.5x5 or 4x6 photo paper.

The Epson Smart Panel app allows you to print, scan, and copy documents, and you can also check ink levels and start a printhead cleaning. It also has some extra features, like Access to Class, which lets you print assignments and documents from Google Classroom. Also, there's the Creative Print and Epson Gallery website for artistic prints or printing on different media formats. Guest Connection creates a QR code that lets your friends easily connect to your printer. Some file types don't work properly on the iOS version, as the app alters the formatting, so you'll have to print these files from whichever app you use to view them.

You need to manually install drivers on Windows devices to print with the Epson ET-4800. Get the drivers here. While there's no printing software, there's a Maintenance tab in the Printing Preferences that lets you access printhead cleanings, alignments, and other maintenance tasks. There's no need to manually install drivers on macOS and Chrome OS devices.