Epson’s EcoTank Photo ET-8500 Wireless Color All-in-One Super Tank Printer is a small step up from the EcoTank Photo ET-8550 All-in-One Wide-Format Super Tank Printer, which recently won an editorial award. The ET-8500 delivers stunning prints, especially photos, at the lowest cost of ownership in the industry, making it an excellent choice for the home office or family.
The ET-5800 measures 6.4 x 15.9 x 14.5 inches (HWD) and weighs 18.5 pounds. That’s comparable to most of its competitors, including Canon’s Pixma G6020 MegaTank All-in-One, HP’s Smart Tank Plus 651 Wireless All-in-One and Brother’s MFC-J805DW INKvestment Tank All-in-One.
The latter device, the entry-level Brother AIO, is geared more toward business users, so it has a 20-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) for sending multi-page documents to the scanner. The HP Smart Tank Plus 651’s ADF holds up to 35 pages, as does that of the Canon Pixma G7020 MegaTank All-in-One. Like the ET-8550 and Pixma G6020, the ET-8500 does not have an automatic document feeder, so only one page at a time can be scanned and copied.
In addition to the standard Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK) inks, the ET-8500 has two additional inks: Photo Black and Gray. This increases the color gamut, improves color accuracy and detail, and enables impeccable grayscale images. This is the same ink configuration as the ET-8550 wide format printer.
You can operate most of the ET-8500’s features from a computer or mobile device, either through Epson software or the built-in web portal. For simple tasks like making copies, the control panel, a 4.3-inch color touchscreen, is easy to use. Both interfaces let you create workflow profiles that provide shortcuts for common tasks. There’s also support for voice commands via Amazon Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Epson Connect and Google Assistant.
Epson doesn’t specify the print volume of the ET-8500, but the shallow paper feeds and meager 50-sheet output tray suggest that this is by no means a high-volume AIO. The paper feed consists of a 100-sheet paper tray and a 20-sheet tray inside for snapshot-size photo paper (4 x 6 inches or 5 x 7 inches). Unless you like refilling paper trays, you won’t want to print more than 500 pages and snapshots per month.
Like most Epson printers, the ET-8500 offers multiple connectivity options: USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Direct. Mobile devices can print via Apple AirPrint, Mopria and Epson’s own Epson Connect. You can also print from or scan to SD, SDHC and SDXC flash memory cards and USB drives. The software package consists of Epson Scan 2, Epson ScanSmart, and Epson Photo+, as well as Twain and ISIS scanner drivers for connecting to and scanning in third-party applications like Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Word.