Epson EcoTank ET-3850 Printer Review

The Epson EcoTank ET-3850 feels relatively well-built. The body feels sturdy, but the automatic document feeder on top feels a bit thin and flimsy, and it squeaks when moved. The design is fairly user-friendly, as it allows easy access to the ink tanks and paper jams. The main complaint is that the scanner’s lid doesn’t have a dampener, so it'll slam shut if you don’t raise it slowly and make sure it’s in the locked position. It’s also difficult to get the lid to lock in that open position.

Like most inkjet printers, the Epson EcoTank ET-3850's printheads can clog if you don't print for a long time. There are a few maintenance functions built in to resolve any clogging or print quality issues, like printhead cleaning, power cleaning, printhead alignment, and nozzle check. There's also a paper guide cleaning, which helps remove the build-up of dust that could smear prints as they pass through the paper feeders. The printhead cleaning task usually resolves clogging issues, although you may have to do it repeatedly to get good results. There's a maintenance box that collects ink flushed during printhead cleanings, which you eventually need to replace. There's a feature in the menu that lets you see when the maintenance box is full.

As for ink refill, you won't need to do it often since the ink tanks yield a large number of prints. You just need to keep an eye on the ink levels and not let them get too low because doing so can introduce air bubbles into the tubes and damage the printer. Refilling the tank is easy; you only need to lift the scanner to access the ink tank's cover. For paper jams, you can access the sheet rollers through a panel on the back of the printer or by lifting the automatic feeder's cover. The input tray holds 250 sheets of paper, which is a pretty good size, so you likely won't need to refill the tray all that often.

You can see the user manual here.

The Epson ET-3850 has an okay display. It's easy to see whether you're sitting or standing, and you can also tilt the front panel to improve visibility. However, it's hard to see from the side. It isn’t touch-sensitive, and there’s no numeric keypad, so entering in passwords to connect the printer to Wi-Fi can be tedious as you have to use the arrow keys to navigate.

The Epson ET-3850 has four refillable ink tanks that yield a large number of prints, making it a great choice for high-volume printing. You can easily see the ink levels from the front of the printer, which is good because this printer doesn't have an ink level sensor. It only monitors ink usage internally to provide an estimate, which means you'll have to keep an eye on your ink levels and manually reset the ink levels in the printer settings when you refill the tanks. As noted in the maintenance section, letting the ink levels run too low or emptying the tank can introduce air bubbles into the print tubes and damage the printer.

As for specific color yields, the cyan ink yields significantly more pages than either magenta or yellow. While the reason behind this isn’t clear, it’s good to know if you intend to print blue-colored images often for a graphic design project using a specific palette or for landscape photos that feature the sky or ocean.

The Epson EcoTank ET-3850 has decent scanning features. Its automatic feeder is on the slower side and doesn't support duplex scanning, but it's still more convenient than scanning each page manually. Its optical character recognition feature allows you to save your scans as PDFs for quick keyword searches. It works well but misspells words at times.

The scan quality is outstanding. The scanner captures everything well, including very fine details. It boosts the contrast and color saturation to make the scan look more vibrant, which is good for text documents beacuse it makes the text easier to read; however, it might not be ideal if you're looking to digitize photos and expect the scan to look as close to the original picture as possible.

• Start Here Guide
• Set-Up CD
• Power cord
• Epson T502 ink bottles:
• 1x black
• 1x cyan
• 1x magenta
• 1x yellow

The print quality for black and white documents is outstanding. Text looks sharp, and all of the finer elements are present. However, colored areas look grainy, and there's some minor vertical banding.

The print quality for color documents is good. Text looks clear, and colors look good, albeit grainy. There's sometimes a purple tint when printing, as you can see in the sample document's header. Finer elements come through, but not as well as when printing in black and white only.

The Epson ET-3850's cost-per-print is superb. Thanks to its high page yields, you won’t have to refill the ink frequently, and the replacement ink is cheap, so your maintenance cost will remain low over time.

The Epson EcoTank ET-3850's overall printing speed is decent. It prints black documents fairly quickly, but but it's slow with color documents and photos. It's also slow to initialize from an idle state and get a single page out.

The Epson ET-3850 supports most standard paper sizes. You can also set custom paper sizes with a width of 3.5" to 8.5" and a length of 5" and 47.24".

The Epson ET-3850 has a great color gamut. It can reproduce a wide range of colors, including bright, saturated tones, like blues, greens, and yellow. However, it struggles with bright magenta , as well as darker shades of green and yellow. Unfortunately, color transitions look very grainy.

The Epson ET-3850 has bad color accuracy. It reproduces most colors inaccurately, especially blues and greens, and grays have a purplish tone. This level of accuracy is fine for printing the odd casual photo, as printed photos still look relatively natural; however, it isn't ideal for professional-level work that requires exact color reproduction.

The Epson EcoTank ET-3850 is excellent at reproducing small details. The main issue is the halftones (dot effect). They're very noticeable, and they make edges and distant objects look less defined.

The Epson ET-3850 can connect with voice assistants, like Apple's Siri or Amazon Alexa, allowing you to use voice commands to initiate printing or scanning and to check the printer's status.

The Epson Smart Panel mobile app has lots of features. You can use the app to print, copy, scan (with smartphone's camera or printer), and perform various maintenance tasks like nozzle checking or printhead cleaning. You can also buy replacement ink through the app. Unfortunately, the iOS version of the app can’t print Microsoft Office files directly, as it doesn’t display the document properly and displays a mobile version of the print instead.

You need to install drivers and the Epson Scan 2 application to get full functionaility on Windows. You can also get the Epson Photo+ software for extra photo printing features. You don’t need any drivers or additional programs on macOS and Chrome OS.