Great printer

This printer from Epson (the ET-2750) is the second printer I’ve seen in recent weeks equipped with what appears to be the new “it” feature for printers: refillable ink tanks replacing the old ink cartridge system. This change has its upsides and downsides, but for the most part I consider it a big upgrade from the old system, and I think this printer is much better for this new inclusion. The fact that it includes 2 years of ink right away is a huge selling point and makes the price a lot more reasonable!

If you haven’t seen one before, the new ink tanks are very straight-forward: instead of buying or coming with ink cartridges, you are given bottles of ink (Black, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow) which you then pour into designated tanks for each colour. This makes it cheaper to buy replacement ink (roughly 20$ per bottle), easier to keep track of how much ink you have left, and much simpler to refill when you do need to top it up.

On the issue of cost, it is cheaper to buy bottles of ink than cartridges, but the downside is that you can’t buy third-party ink. The bottles have to come from Epson, as nobody else (that I’ve found) makes the ink bottles in the exact shape that is needed to be compatible with this printer. That’s fine as long as the price remains competitive from Epson, but I know some people don’t like to be locked in to buying from one company.

On tracking your ink, the windows into the ink tanks are easy to use to keep an eye on your ink levels, and I did find it convenient being able to know at a glance, even if the printer was off, whether or not I had much ink left in my printer.

On the refilling point, the special design of the bottles makes it so that the ink cannot come out until it is placed in the special receivers on the ink tanks, which eliminates the issue of accidentally pouring ink on your hands or table. This was a big problem with some other ink tank printers I’ve used, so it’s good to see that Epson has found a solution to this issue. If you have shaky hands or motor problems, there's no worry about spilling these.

The printer itself is great quality, and comes with all the bells and whistles you’d expect at this price point. It can print wirelessly from laptops, computers, phones and tablets, in colour or black and white, and on two sides if needed. It also has a scanner built into it, and can be adjusted to fit various sizes of paper depending on what you need.

Installation and setup is your basic package, simple to use and includes a few programs from Epson which you can use to streamline your printing/scanning if you need them. The whole setup process takes maybe 15 minutes, and that’s including a 10 minute process where the printer made a lot of noise and pre-loaded its ink, during which I had plenty of time to flip through the manual and check out its various features. By the time it was all set and ready to print, so was I.

This lower model number (ET-2750) comes with slightly less ink and lacks an auto-feed scanner, but other than that, it has all the features of the more advanced models, making it a decent buy!

All in all, I think this printer does a fine job at covering all the basics you might need, and the ink tanks are an interesting new twist that looks like it will save money and be more convenient in the long run.