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One
essential tool that every home or small office needs is a decent
wireless printer. Even if its only to print off your eBay address
labels, printers still very much have their place for work and play,
as long as they are considerate to the environment and your bank
balance. We've found one that not only produces great quality A4 and
A3 colour prints, but also won't need refilling for two whole years!
We review the Epson ECOTANK ET-4550 Printer.
Obviously
the headlines for this printer are about the ECOTANK technology that
we'll look at later, but first the physical printer itself. The
Epson ECOTANK ET-4550 Printer is a four-in-one unit that can print,
copy, scan, and also fax. Yep, if you know someone in 1992 and would
like to say hello, you can fax them. It can print both A4 and A3
(despite being relatively compact at just 50 cm wide), and can be
connected to wirelessly. Plonk it in the middle of your office (or
indeed your home) and anyone can easily send documents to it without
any fuss. In terms of filling it with ink, the Epson ECOTANK ET-4550
Printer does not have a single cartridge to worry about.
Included
in the box along with the printer (and y'know, a plug, obviously) is
enough ink to keep the printer going for two whole years! There are
six colour refill bottles, as well as two larger black ink bottles,
providing enough juice for 11,000 pages! Put that in a home
environment, where you might print just a few sheets each week, and
you have a printer that doesn't need refilling for a very long time.
We don't know about you, but we're not sure if any of us have ever
printed more than 11,000 pages in our entire lives. And one of us is
a really bad failed novelist as well.
You
might think getting a liquid into an electrical device is a dangerous
job, but refilling the different reservoirs is refreshingly easy. The
Epson ECOTANK ET-4550 Printer even has a very effective low ink
early warning system, letting you know that you'll soon have to top
up the tanks. This info is clearly conveyed on the LCD screen on the
front of the unit, as are other titbits of data such as WiFi
connectivity and print job progress.
The
paper try will take abut 150 sheets, reducing the number of times
you'll have to get off your bum to fill it, and depending on if the
machine is already on and warmed up, it takes about three to five
seconds from hitting send for the print job to start, over Test Pit
Tower's WiFi. All the copies were very clear, with even full-colour
images printing quickly, and the quality of the scans was, also, very
good. One thing we didn't test was the fax capabilities. Because who
use s a fax machine these days? Seriously, we didn't know anyone we
could fax. Still, nice to have it there. Same reason you've still got
that VCR in a cupboard, eh?
Despite
those high specs and economical outcomes, the Epson ECOTANK ET-4550
Printer is very easy to set up and use. Yes, its the ideal home
printer, but because it can print so many copies at a fraction of the
cost of a conventional printer, it will also serve a small to medium
sized business very well.
£369.99
Visit
www.epson.co.uk
