Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5180 Printer Review

The Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5180's build quality is passable. It's entirely plastic and feels sturdy overall, though the quality of the hinges and ports is only okay. Design-wise, the ink tanks are on the front, so you can easily check the ink levels and perform refills. However, the scanner makes it hard to take out prints from the output tray and to access paper jams (by lifting the output tray). There isn't a lid damper to hold the output tray open; you can keep it in place by locking the tab at the top of the lid to a notch under the scanner. The input tray only has a slider for width, not length, and there aren't any indicator lines for paper placement.

The Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5180 doesn't take up much desk space, but it's tall, so you just need to ensure you have enough clearance above the scanner's lid. Note that we weighed the printer with the ink tanks filled as emptying the tanks can damage the printer.

The Epson ET-5180 requires a little bit of maintenance as, like most inkjet printers, the printheads can clog up after extended use. The built-in printhead cleaning function is effective in resolving the issue, though you may need to repeat the process a few times to get good results.

The ink tanks are on the front of the printer and easily accessible; the printer doesn't need to be on for the refill. Refilling a supertank can get a little messy, but thankfully, you won't have to do it too often as a full tank yields thousands of prints. One thing to remember about supertank printers is that you should never empty the tanks completely, as it can introduce air bubbles into the tanks and tubes, damaging the printer.

You can access the sheet rollers to remove paper jams through a panel on the back or by lifting the output tray. The input tray isn't fully removable, but you can still pull it out enough to reach any paper stuck at the back. As for capacity, the input tray holds 250 sheets of paper. You can see the user's guide here.

The Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5180's display is decent. It feels responsive, and the interface is easy to navigate. It's in a fixed position with no tilt or swivel adjustment, but it has good viewing angles, so visibility isn't an issue when viewing from above, below, or the sides. That said, it's on the smaller side, and because it sits below the front panel, people with large fingers may have trouble pressing icons at the edge of the screen.

The Epson ET-5180 yields a remarkably high number of pages with a full ink tank, which means you won't have to refill the tank all that often unless you regularly print in bulk. The tank should never be empty, and the printer will remind you to check the ink level before it begins a print job. A message also pops up when the ink runs low, but the printer doesn't stop printing. It'll only stop when the ink reaches the lower line, prompting this message. You don't need to refill the tank if you don't need to; however, you need to change the ink level in the settings to continue printing. If you refill the tank but don't have enough to fill to the top, you can set the exact ink level so that the printer can more accurately track how much is left.

The scanner's lid has extendable hinges so that you can close the lid over thicker items like textbooks, thus avoiding black bars around the scanned page. Although the flatbed's maximum scan size is 8.5" x 11", you can scan sheets up to 8.5" x 11.7" through the automatic feeder. Its optical character recognition (OCR) feature only works via the Epson Scan 2 software; you need to select the output as a searchable PDF or TIFF file. The OCR makes mistakes sometimes, but it's mostly when there are special characters. Note that the ET-5150 variant doesn't have fax functionality.

By default, the Epson ET-5180 scans at 300 DPI, in black and white, in portrait orientation, and saves the scan as a PDF file. You can change the settings to scan at a higher resolution if you need to digitize or retouch photos. For this test, we set it to scan in color at 300 DPI, rotated the image by 90°, and saved the scan as a JPEG file. As for the quality of the scan, it's outstanding. The main issue is that the numbers with a red background are a little hard to see. It seems to raise the contrast and make colors look more vibrant automatically, a behavior we also observed when scanning the sample for our photo printing quality test.

The Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5180 supports A5 paper size, but you need to set a custom size as there isn't a preset available. Although Epson only advertises the maximum paper weight for plain paper (90 g/m²), the printer supports up to 297 g/m², the weight of the Epson Ultra Premium Photo Paper Glossy.

• Start Here installation guide
• Power cord
• Epson 542 ink bottles:
• 3x Black
• 1x Cyan
• 1x Magenta
• 1x Yellow

Thanks to the printer's high page yield and the cheap cost of replacement ink, the Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5180's cost per print is superb, meaning your running costs will remain low over time.

The Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5180 prints black documents reasonably quickly but is slow at printing color documents and photos. The input tray holds 250 sheets of letter-size or 50 sheets of legal-size paper, while the rear input tray can only accept one sheet at a time. The output tray holds 30 sheets.

The Epson ET-5180 prints black and color documents with visible vertical lines when printing in the Standard Quality mode. However, these lines aren't present when printing in the High-Quality mode. As noted in the maintenance section, emptying the tank can damage the printer, so we consider color ink necessary for black and white printing.

The Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5180 prints good photos. The pictures look detailed but a bit flat and muted, and they come out matte even though it's on glossy paper. There's no banding, though there's some graininess, especially in areas with a uniform color or in gradients. It also has trouble printing a wide range of yellows. It can print a wide range of greens; it just struggles with the really vibrant greens. Epson advertises borderless printing; however, there isn't a setting to enable it.

We base the score on the actual physical photo, not the scanned image provided for reference above, which may not represent the printer's photo print quality.

The Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5180's color accuracy is okay. It mostly struggles with blues, greens, and yellows. It's good enough for graphs in reports and casual photos but not for professional photography.

The Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5180 has a good color gamut. It prints bright, saturated colors well, as you can see the zigzag line clearly in the photo. Dark tones look good; they don't have the red or blue tint often seen with other printers. It mainly struggles with dark greens and yellows and has trouble transitioning from one color to another, causing noticeable noise.

The Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5180 has Wi-Fi connectivity; however, the connection is spotty as it disconnected from the network more than once during testing and could only reconnect after a reboot.

The Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5180 is compatible with the Epson Smart Panel mobile app. You can use it to print, scan, copy, order ink, register your product for warranty, and perform maintenance tasks like firmware update, nozzle check, and printhead cleaning. It has Google Class integration, allowing you to print assignments or scan documents from Google Classroom, and it includes links to Epson's Creative Print app and Gallery website. You can use the app to create a QR code so guests can access the printer without connecting to your existing Wi-Fi network.

The Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5180 is fully compatible with common-used desktop operating systems. You have to install drivers to access full functionality on Windows devices, but not on macOS and Chrome OS devices. Chrome OS devices have access to the Android version of the Epson Smart Panel through the Google Play Store.