Epson EcoTank ET-4800 review: plenty of features and very economical
Reviewed By: Sebastian Kozlowski
Table of Contents
I got a chance to get hands on with another one of Epson’s ink tank printers, the EcoTank ET-4800. It’s a budget and compact AIO printer, with a high-capacity ink tank that gives you plenty of economical prints before having to worry about a refill.
I’ve put this printer through its paces, testing its speed and quality, in addition to evaluating its features, design, and functionality. So let’s see if this printer is the right one for you, and how it fared in our testing lab.
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- Printer Output: Color
- Printer Type: Inkjet (Epson Micro Piezo print head)
- Connectivity Technology: USB, Ethernet, WiFi, Wi-Fi Direct
- Duplex Printing: Yes, Manual
The ET-4800 ink tank printer is an economical all-in-one solution, although its elevated price from all the extra features on board may not make it the best choice for everyone. As expected from a more budget option, its print quality isn’t the best I’ve seen, and it is a little on the slow side when it comes to colored pages. However, as a do-it-all option for those who need something cost-effective and easy to use, this printer more than delivers for the price.
- Low cost per print page
- High print volume with one refill
- Plenty of features on board as an all-in-one solution
- No automatic duplex on prints or ADF
- Slow printing speeds
- Not the best quality colored and photo prints
Box contents and setup
When you get the printer, here are the things that arrive in the box with it, although ours is a review unit so things aren’t quite the same as if you were to buy it new.
- 4 x 65ml individual ink bottles (Bk, C, Y, M)
- Main printer unit
- Power cable
- Setup guide and Warranty document
The printer comes well wrapped and protected in the box. It’s very much locked down and snug to prevent any damage that may happen in transport. Just be sure to take out all the protective packaging, as I did miss a bit that caused issues during the setup… where it kept throwing up paper jam errors before any sheets had even touched the printer!
It also comes with a full set of inks for the machine, giving you a whole tank’s worth for the black, cyan, yellow, and magenta onboard. There’s some documentation and instructions for setting it up and any small troubleshooting you may need to do, but that comes as an alternative to the mostly digital setup Epson directs you to on its app to get it going instead.
Epson EcoTank ET-4800 box, Image by PC Guide
Epson EcoTank ET-4800 box contents, Image by PC Guide
Epson EcoTank ET-4800 open scanner, Image by PC Guide
Epson EcoTank ET-4800 ink tank, Image by PC Guide
Epson EcoTank ET-4800 ink tank lids, Image by PC Guide
Epson EcoTank ET-4800 front, Image by PC Guide
Either way, going through it all is rather easy and simple. The ink bottles are keyed to only fit into the correct slots, ensuring you don’t put the wrong color in the wrong place.
During set up there was an issue that came up. The printer doesn’t support 5GHz WiFi, which meant I couldn’t use my phone’s connection to share the password, instead having to type it in manually. Not a big deal, but it did delay me a little.
Ink initialization takes around 11 minutes to complete, leaving you plenty of time to get to know your device or set up the PC drivers at the same. When I ran the firmware update it did seem to get stuck a few times and made me question if it’s still progressing at all. The printer also doesn’t open a great deal to get a good look inside when getting things out or tinkering with it.
Design
As for the design of the printer, it keeps things simple and more basic, but it does pack a lot into its 375 x 347 x 237mm dimensions, weighing in at a hefty 5kg. Smaller size means smaller paper though, so if you’re looking to print in A3, this isn’t the one for you.
Look-wise, the printer goes for a mostly black box, towering rather high to fit in the scanner, ADF (automatic document feeder), and fax at the top of the main printer. The box shape is broken up by the ink tanks that jut out from the front right, and once you actually open up the whole thing it expands out quite a bit. There are the front output and rear input paper trays that will add to the volume needed for the device to actually fit in and function at the same time
Even with all that extra opening and expansion, opening up the lid doesn’t give you much peeking space to actually get in there. So if you get a paper jam or working on the innards, you’ve not got much space to work with, but at least there is a stand that locks into place to hold it open for you.
Epson EcoTank ET-4800 fax tray, Image by PC Guide
Epson EcoTank ET-4800 ethernet and USB, Image by PC Guide
Epson EcoTank ET-4800 right side, Image by PC Guide
Epson EcoTank ET-4800 rear, Image by PC Guide
Epson EcoTank ET-4800 rear tray folded, Image by PC Guide
Epson EcoTank ET-4800 power and RJ45, Image by PC Guide
Epson EcoTank ET-4800 left side, Image by PC Guide
Epson EcoTank ET-4800 front profile, Image by PC Guide
Below the scanner bed and ADF is the large control panel, as with the fax it does fit in a whole keypad on the right side, with the left featuring the controls. Since the machine doesn’t come with a touchscreen but just a simple 3.7cm LCD screen, requiring you to just have a small window to assess the settings and your printing options, which is a bit more tedious but not the worst experience.
The sides offer up nothing too much, although the left has a rather long cut-out indent from the back that extends the port options. It weirdly separates them out at the same level with the far ones being the USB and LAN ports for controlling the printer and actually printing over the network. The ones closer to the back are two phone ports for an external phone and a phone line for the fax machine, with the power cable below that too.
Otherwise, the back is a rather simple design with just the paper feeder sticking out from the top that can be extended out. It also has some decent paper guides inside for keeping the pages lined up, although the page sizes supported are just up to A4 with 100 sheets able to fit on there by standard, which is more than the ADF and output that only support 30 each.
Print results and speed
I checked the performance of the printer in a variety of situations such as the quality of prints, photo capabilities, and the speeds it takes to print things out.
Epson EcoTank ET-4800 color tests, Image by PC Guide
Epson EcoTank ET-4800 B&W test, Image by PC Guide
Epson EcoTank ET-4800 photo prints test, Image by PC Guide
Epson EcoTank ET-4800 photos on printer, Image by PC Guide
Epson EcoTank ET-4800 images, Image by PC Guide
Epson EcoTank ET-4800 color copy, Image by PC Guide
Above is the gallery of results, although with the compression quality, it will be hard to see in detail. However, in general, it’s not the best print quality coming out and it does so rather slowly, especially on the colored pages.
Taking a closer look at the test pages, the prints are rather grainy, especially producing dots around some color wheels and sections. That’s even with the long alignment time and cleaning of the print head to make sure it’s working as it should. They aren’t the most prominent defects however, especially at this price point.
Then I printed out various sizes of photos and glossy paper and, again, the quality wasn’t the best. Here the colors look rather washed and the feed roller leaves a trail on the paper. That makes it a bit less appealing if you are in need of some good photography prints, but passes the test if you’re not looking too closely at them.
As for the speed, it’s fairly slow to get things out in my testing. With a single color page, it took around 27s to print a test sheet, as the monochrome equivalent takes 12s.
I tested queuing up six different pages split between color and black & white I timed the total time and each page. Here the colors take between 18-25s and the monochrome between 8 and 10 seconds. In comparison to something like the ET-8550 we reviewed, the ET-4800 takes its time with color printing, but is on par with the monochrome pages. So if you’re after something that can print many pages quickly it’s not the ideal solution.
Specifications and costs
| Printing Technology | Epson Micro Piezo print head |
| Maximum Print Resolution | 5,760 x 1,440 DPI |
| Ink Type | Ink tank |
| Scanner resolution and type | Contact image sensor 1,200 DPI x 2,400 DPI |
| Operating Systems | Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later Windows 10 (32/64 bit), Windows 7 (32/64 bit), Windows 8 (32/64 bit), Windows 8.1 (32/64 bit), Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows Server 2008 (32/64bit), Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012 (64bit), Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Vista (32/64 bit), Windows XP SP3 or later (32-bit) |
| Dimensions (W x D x H) | 375 x 347 x 237mm |
| Weight | 5kg |
| Connectivity | USB, Ethernet, WiFi, Wi-Fi Direct |
| Mobile and Cloud printing | Apple AirPrint, Epson Smart Panel App, Epson Connect (Email Print, Remote Print Driver) |
| Paper Sizes | A4 (21.0×29.7 cm), A5 (14.8×21.0 cm), A6 (10.5×14.8 cm), B5, B6, C6 (Envelope), DL (Envelope), No. 10 (Envelope), 9 x 13 cm, 13 x 20 cm, 20 x 25 cm |
| Input Paper Capacity | 100 |
| Display | 3.7cm colour LCD |
There are more in-depth specs of the ET-4800, providing a bigger overview of what it can do and the features on board. Showing it still has a good range of connection support and options to send something to print or scan.
As for the price of the unit, at the time of writing the ET-4800 has a price of $300 and £320 here in the UK. That still might be a bit steep in terms of initial pricing, but since it is an ink tank printer with fax and scanning as well, the cost of actually printing pages is quite low. Considering a four-pack refill costs $64/£34.49 and supposedly lasting 4,500 pages in black and 7,500 in color, the per-page cost is rather impressive.
Final word
- Printer Output: Color
- Printer Type: Inkjet (Epson Micro Piezo print head)
- Connectivity Technology: USB, Ethernet, WiFi, Wi-Fi Direct
- Duplex Printing: Yes, Manual
Overall, the Epson EcoTank ET-4800 is a great AIO ink tank printer. It’s packed with functionality, and the quality is in-line with what I’d expect for the price. The real win here is the low cost of usage, which makes it good for anyone looking to stick to a budget in their initial purchase, but also keep things under control on the day to day.
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