Epson WorkForce Pro ET-8700 EcoTank All-in-One Supertank - Review 2022

Save for the earlier WorkForce Pro WF-R4640 EcoTank, information technology's difficult to find a proper head-to-head competitor for the WorkForce Pro ET-8700 EcoTank All-in-I Supertank Printer ($999.99). This large inkjet is unlike from most other Epson EcoTank printers in that it uses large ink bags, rather than reservoirs you refill from bottles. It's a higher-end, higher-volume all-in-one (AIO) designed for midsize to large offices and workgroups. Information technology's a snappy-enough printer for an office inkjet, the output quality is quite proficient, and y'all can't shell its ultra-low running costs, making it a acme-notch car inside its class. It comes up just brusk on the oomph, in terms of speed and rated monthly book, though, needed to nudge it into an Editors' Choice slot as a midsize business organisation AIO.

A Bacteria, More Streamlined Supertanker

While the WorkForce Pro ET-8700 has many things in common with the WF-R4640, this latest model really is an all-new design, starting with the deployment of the ink bags. The previous iteration, a big beast of a machine, comes with large, saddlebag-like attachments on each side. The left side holds a big bag full of black ink, and the right side holds three slightly smaller cyan, magenta, and xanthous ink numberless. (Recollect of those foil juice bags that kids take to school in their luncheon kits.)

The older model'southward bags hold significantly more than ink than the ET-8700's, simply the overall design is wholly unlike. The newer bags have been deployed at the bottom front of the chassis in a much tidier, more compact space, using drawers.

That said, the ET-8700 delivers the aforementioned low running cost, which is a more important factor for most users than where the ink bags reside. With this more streamlined configuration, the ET-8700 measures 17.seven by 22.viii by 16.7 inches (HWD) and weighs 40.6 pounds. That'south several inches smaller in all directions than the WF-R4640, and 12 pounds lighter.

Information technology's difficult to find straight competitors to the ET-8700, merely some college-terminate, higher-book models come close, including a few midrange to high-volume color laser AIOs, such as the Editors' Pick Dell Color Smart Multifunction Printer S3845cdn. Compared with the ET-8700, though, information technology's several inches taller and wider, and information technology weighs more than twice as much. Another key competitor, the HP PageWide Pro 577dw Multifunction Printer, is a loftier-stop inkjet AIO much closer in size to the ET-8700. (It weighs only 8 pounds more.)

Also close in size (but most 11 pounds heavier) is the Brother MFC-J6935DW, a formidable top pick amid inkjet AIOs that delivers a primal reward over these aforementioned models: It can print, scan, and re-create tabloid-size (xi-by-17-inch) pages.

While the ET-8700'southward 30,000-page maximum monthly duty cycle (and much lower i,500-folio recommended print book) is a fleck meager for a higher-finish, business-centric AIO like this ane, the printer does feature impressive paper treatment. Out of the box, information technology holds 330 sheets, split between a 250-sheet drawer and an eighty-sheet tray that pulls out from the back of the chassis.

If that'southward not enough, you lot can add together a 500-sail cassette for $199.99, for a total of 830 sheets, which makes that duty cycle and recommended print volume seem even smaller yet. In improver, the ET-8700 comes with a 50-sheet auto-duplexing automatic document feeder (ADF), although the duplexer is non single-pass. The WF-R4640's initial paper capacity right out of the box, in contrast, is 580 sheets from two 250-canvass drawers and an fourscore-sheet rear tray. Merely carry in mind that that printer is not expandable, and its ADF holds merely 35 pages. In a bit of seeming irony, its duty bike is fifteen,000 pages higher than the ET-8700's.

Dell'south color-light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation competitor, meanwhile, is in a whole other league. The S3845cdn's duty cycle is 50,000 pages higher than the ET-8700's, and its standard paper capacity is about double, expandable to 1,250 sheets. It, too, has a fifty-page ADF, though it supports single-pass duplexing (scanning both sides of a page in 1 stroke). Also, the HP PageWide 577dw'southward duty cycle is also fifty,000 pages higher than that of the ET-8700, and its out-of-the-box paper capacity is 220 sheets higher and is expandable to one,550 sheets; its 50-canvas ADF is also single-pass. And in the case of the the Brother MFC-J6935DW, you become a fifty-sheet wide-format ADF that does unmarried-pass, too. (Its duty wheel is the same as the ET-8700'south, and its paper capacity is 270 sheets greater.) In sum, the ET-8700's deep newspaper capacity and long-between-swaps ink arrangement aren't matched by its low suggested monthly press specs.

Finally, there's the ET-8700's spacious, like shooting fish in a barrel-to-utilise control panel, which consists of a handful of buttons and an alphanumeric keypad. All of this is anchored by a 4.2-inch color affect screen. These buttons constitute a new configuration I've seen on a few contempo business-oriented AIOs from Epson, and it seems quite practical.

Setup and Connectivity

Normally, I don't dote much on printer setup, unless information technology is somehow unusual. Setting upwardly the Epson ET-8700 is, in a few ways.

First, it comes out of the box strapped downward with loads of tape and other packing fabric, mostly paper-thin and cream. It takes a while to get all of that removed, and between that and the packaging for the ink bags, y'all terminate upward with a big pile of trash.

Simply what is particularly dissimilar is installing the ink packs. The ink numberless themselves come packaged within heavy cardboard boxes and ii heavy plastic bags. One time yous've extracted them from all of that, to install them you open a compartment at the bottom forepart of the chassis, where you'll observe four drawers, 1 for each color. To open each drawer, you push it in slightly, and it pops out; so, you lay the ink handbag in the drawer and slide the drawer back into the printer. This is completely different from the WF-R4640'due south saddlebags, which hang vertically. The lying-in-drawers method seems to work fine, and it does, after all, shave a lot of width from the chassis.

Connectivity consists of five chief means: gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi, connecting to a single PC via USB, Wi-Fi Direct, and Near-Field Communication (NFC). NFC, of course, is impact-to-print technology where yous simply touch your smartphone or tablet to a hotspot to connect to the printer. On this printer, the spot is to the left of the brandish.

You also get support for Google Cloud Impress, Android printing, Fire OS printing, Mopria Print Service, and Epson Connect. The last consists of the following mobile apps: Epson E-mail Print, Epson Remote Print, Epson Browse to Cloud, and Epson iPrint (iOS and Android). And you lot can print from and scan to a USB thumb drive via the port located on the left side of the chassis.

Speedy Enough for Office Piece of work

Given the Epson ET-8700's price, its rated print speed of 24 pages per infinitesimal (ppm) is a lilliputian slow, simply it's passable. I tested it over Ethernet from our standard Intel Core i5-equipped testbed PC running Windows 10 Professional person. It printed our 12-page Microsoft Word text document at 23.7ppm, essentially tying its rating. Unfortunately, both the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-R4640 and HP PageWide 577dw were tested under a previous testing methodology and therefore impossible for united states of america to compare here. The Dell S3845cdn, however, printed the aforementioned pages at 34.7ppm, and Brother's MFC-J6935DW managed 16.5ppm.

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When I combined the results from the previous 12-folio Word document exam with those from press our color PDF, Excel, and PowerPoint documents heavily laden with business concern graphics and photos, the ET-8700'southward print speed dropped to xv.9ppm, which isn't bad for this portion of our examination. The much more robust S38545cdn, for example, slowed down to xv.3ppm, and the MFC-J6935DW managed 12.2ppm.

While this isn't a photograph printer, I also timed it as it printed my colorful and detailed four-past-vi-inch test snapshots. On average, it managed a brisk xi seconds, or 1 second faster than the S3845cdn and 3 seconds slower than the MFC-J6935DW.

Smart-Looking Output

Like other Epson WorkForce and WorkForce Pro AIOs, the ET-8700 uses the company'south PrecisionCore print chips in its printhead, meaning that the ink nozzles are smaller and more tightly spaced than the nozzles on most other inkjet printers (except HP'south PageWide models). It prints light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation-quality text consisting of tight, well-shaped characters at all sizes. Graphics, too, are terrific-looking, with no banding in dark fills and backgrounds. Gradients in the test graphics appeared very well delineated, too.

I also liked the ET-8700'south brilliantly colored and detailed photo output, except in one aspect: This printer can't print borderless photos or documents. That'due south unusual for an inkjet, fifty-fifty an Epson WorkForce Pro AIO. (Laser printers, likewise as HP'southward PageWide models, are similarly unable.) Hence, all your photos and documents must take at least a quarter-inch margin around them, which, in this case, is a shame.

Why? Because this AIO prints well enough to create keeper-quality photos and stellar marketing material. Both types of output often look much ameliorate—and appear more than professional and refined—when printed in borderless fashion. Including borderless press would accept been a nice affect.

Low, Low Running Costs

EcoTank printers, of grade, accept very depression running costs; that's much of the point of bulk-ink-delivery arrangements similar this. When you buy and use Epson'south highest-yield blackness-ink bag, your cost per page comes out to 0.ix cent per monochrome page and 2.four cents each for colour pages, which is among the everyman in the business. (In contrast to the black ink, Epson offers the three color bags in only one size.) In addition, the ET-8700 comes with what Epson estimates is 2 years' worth of ink in the box—three sets of the standard-capacity ink bags, for a total of 16,000 monochrome pages or eleven,000 color pages.

That comes out to 667 black pages per month, which, frankly, is barely enough to make this AIO a skilful value. Actually, the closer yous go to its 1,500-folio recommended monthly book (and the farther y'all shoot beyond information technology), the better a bargain it is. The adept news is that, compared to the ones for the WorkForce Pro WF-R4640, the ink bags themselves aren't that expensive: $24.99 each for the color 5,000-page numberless (yous'll need three) and $89.99 for the high-yield (10,000-page) black purse; a half-size 5,000-page black bag costs $49.99.

Once more, go on in listen that with EcoTank printers, the more you lot print, the better the value, taken against its competitors. Speaking of which, the Dell S3845cdn's running costs are half a cent higher than the ET-8700's for monochrome pages and 6.5 cents higher for color, and the HP PageWide 577dw's toll per folio is a tenth of a cent lower than the Dell model'south for both black and color pages.

The Brother MFC-J6935DW's running costs, on the other hand, are a 10th of a cent higher than the ET-8700'southward for black pages and two.iii cents higher for color. Only, again, call up that that model can impress wide-format pages, whereas the others here practice not. If that matters to your part, that may be the bargain-maker or deal-breaker.

A Quality Pro With Low TCO

I accept only two quibbles with the WorkForce Pro ET-8700. The kickoff is that it needs a college monthly duty cycle and recommended print volume to match the hardware and the ink scheme. That would allow you to take better advantage of its deal-basement running costs. And second, it would exist a more versatile machine if information technology supported borderless press, allowing you to impress a wider range of documents. The latter, in fact, would give it a leg up on all laser printers, as well equally HP'due south PageWide inkjets.

Otherwise, this Epson machine is a superb higher-end business printer that is more than suitable for mid-book printing in a medium-size to big office or workgroup—especially if yous push information technology to its limit month after month, taking full reward of its two-yr warranty. (You get the second twelvemonth with product registration.) This printer gets better the more that y'all use information technology.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/printers/28758/epson-workforce-pro-et-8700-ecotank-all-in-one-supertank

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