[ad_1]
The Epson WorkForce Pro ET-16500 EcoTank Wide-Format All-in-One Supertank Printer ($999.99) is the first wide-format inkjet printer we’ve looked at in Epson’s EcoTank line, which uses ink tanks or bottles in place of cartridges. As such, it can print pages up to supertabloid size (13 by 19), as well as scan, copy, and fax tabloid (11-by-17) pages. Overall, the ET-16500 is a fine printer, but it performed slowly during some of our benchmark tests, and, at $1,000, it’s expensive to purchase. Its running costs, though, are low enough to take the sting out of the purchase price—as long as you use it frequently, that is.
Design and Features
Essentially, the WorkForce Pro ET-16500 ($999.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) is the Epson WorkForce WF-7620 All-in-One Printer ($771.88 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) with the EcoTank plumbing inside and the refillable EcoTank ink tanks attached to the right side of the chassis. There are a few differences between the two—the ET-16500’s maximum copy size is 11.7 by 17 inches versus the WF-7620’s 8.5 by 14 inches, for example—but the biggest is price. The WF-7620 lists for $299.99, or $700 less than the ET-16500.
In addition to being somewhat large—16.5 by 26.2 by 32.2 inches (HWD) when printing, 16.5 by 26.2 by 19.1 inches when closed—the ET-16500 weighs a substantial 51 pounds. Most likely you’ll need two people to wrestle it onto its own dedicated (and sturdy) table or printer stand. The good news is that the ET-16500 supports wired Ethernet and USB connections, as well as Wi-Fi, which should make finding a suitable location easier. Mobile connectivity options consist of Wi-Fi Direct (a peer-to-peer, router-less protocol), Epson Connect, Epson Email Print, Epson Remote Print, Epson Scan to Cloud, the Epson iPrint App (for Android and iOS devices), and the Epson Print and Scan App (for Windows), as well as Google Cloud Print, Android printing, Fire OS printing, and Mopria Print Service.
Other functionality, such as managing mobile connectivity, printing from cloud sites, and printing from and scanning to USB thumb drives and various flavors of SD and Memory Stick Duo cards, is all handled from an easy-to-use 4.3-inch color touch screen. This display, combined with a number pad, a few buttons, and status indicators, makes up the ET-16500’s control panel.
Similar Products
Brother MFC-J985DW
See It
(Opens in a new window)
Read Our Brother MFC-J985DW Review
HP PageWide Pro 577dw Multifunction Printer
Check Stock
(Opens in a new window)
Read Our HP PageWide Pro 577dw Multifunction Printer Review
HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277dw
Check Stock
(Opens in a new window)
Read Our HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277dw Review
Canon Pixma MG5720 Wireless Inkjet All-in-One
See It
(Opens in a new window)
Read Our Canon Pixma MG5720 Wireless Inkjet All-in-One Review
Dell Color Cloud Multifunction Printer H625cdw
See It
(Opens in a new window)
Read Our Dell Color Cloud Multifunction Printer H625cdw Review
Epson WorkForce Pro WF-6590
See It
(Opens in a new window)
Read Our Epson WorkForce Pro WF-6590 Review
Epson WorkForce Pro WF-8590
See It
(Opens in a new window)
Read Our Epson WorkForce Pro WF-8590 Review
Epson WorkForce WF-7620
See It
(Opens in a new window)
Read Our Epson WorkForce WF-7620 Review
Epson WorkForce Pro WF-R4640 EcoTank All-in-One
Check Stock
(Opens in a new window)
Read Our Epson WorkForce Pro WF-R4640 EcoTank All-in-One Review
Epson WorkForce ET-4550 EcoTank All-in-One Printer
See It
(Opens in a new window)
Read Our Epson WorkForce ET-4550 EcoTank All-in-One Printer Review
Epson Expression ET-2550 EcoTank All-in-One Printer
Check Stock
(Opens in a new window)
Read Our Epson Expression ET-2550 EcoTank All-in-One Printer Review
Canon Maxify MB2720 Wireless Home Office All-in-One Printer
See It
(Opens in a new window)
Read Our Canon Maxify MB2720 Wireless Home Office All-in-One Printer Review
Brother MFC-L6700DW
See It
(Opens in a new window)
Read Our Brother MFC-L6700DW Review
HP OfficeJet 250 Mobile All-in-One Printer
See It
(Opens in a new window)
Read Our HP OfficeJet 250 Mobile All-in-One Printer Review
Samsung Multifunction Printer ProXpress C3060FW
Read Our Samsung Multifunction Printer ProXpress C3060FW Review
Paper Handling
The ET-16500 comes with two 250-sheet paper drawers that can expand to fit paper up to 13 by 19 inches, as well as a one-sheet multipurpose paper input tray at the rear of the chassis, for a total of 501 input sheets at the ready from three sources.
The 35-page automatic document feeder (ADF) is auto-duplexing, meaning it can flip your two-sided, multipage originals automatically. In addition, the ADF and the scanner itself can handle originals up to tabloid size, as well as flip two-sided pages automatically. But the ET-16500’s ADF does not support single-pass two-sided scanning, which is faster and more reliable than the legacy method of scanning one side at a time. The ADF on the HP PageWide Pro MFP 577dw ($1,229.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) can do this.
Print Speed
Epson rates the ET-16500 at 18 pages per minute (ppm) for black-and-white pages and 10ppm for color pages. These would be respectable speeds, but the ET-16500 was not able to reach them. When printing the 12-page text-only (Microsoft Word) portion of our business application suite, the ET-16500 managed only 4.7ppm—one of the lowest scores we’ve seen since starting our new testing regimen. But when we averaged in the more complicated documents that round out our suite, including charts, graphs, tables, gradients, and images, the ET-16500 didn’t really take a performance hit. Its print speed dropped only marginally, to 4.4ppm.
With these print speeds and a 20,000-page monthly duty cycle (though a 1,300-page maximum is recommended), this is by no means a high-volume printer, and in most scenarios a speed of less than 5ppm would be acceptable. Even so, the ET-16500’s 4.7ppm rating for text documents is sluggish, especially for a $1,000 business printer.
Output Quality
The PrecisionCore-based printheads deployed in Epson’s WorkForce and WorkForce Pro lines of business-oriented inkjets print quite well, for the most part, although I did run into some (occasionally significant) banding when using dark fills and gradients.
Text, on the other hand, looked very near typesetter quality, and when printing standard business typefaces, characters remained well shaped down to about 4 points. Decorative typefaces lost their legibility much sooner, at around 10 or 12 points, but then these types of fonts are designed to be used as headlines and subheads, to attract attention, not body text.
Like most other PrecisionCore printers, this one printed good-looking photographs, whether embedded in larger layouts or as standalone “keeper” images printed on premium glossy and matte photo papers. They weren’t at the level of those you’ll see from some of the five- and six-ink photo-centric models from Canon or even Epson itself, but they’re fine for most business uses.
See How We Test Printers
Running Costs
Where this printer quells most of its competition, especially wide-format AIOs, is in running costs. Here, we’re talking not about the expense of printing a stack of 13-by-19 documents, but instead a more common measurement of how much the ink to create each page costs while printing standard letter-size (8.5-by-11-inch) pages.
Up front, the ET-16500 costs a lot of money, which both covers the ink in the bottles (enough for 10,500 black-and-white pages and/or 11,000 color pages) included with the printer and subsidizes your future ink purchases, at least partially. And refill bottles are where the real savings come in. Replacement bottles of black ink sell on Epson’s site for $19.49, and, according to Epson, they’re good for about 6,000 prints. Bottles of cyan, magenta, and yellow inks sell for $12.99 each, and when combined with the black ink, they’re good for about 6,500 pages. Using these numbers, we calculated running costs of 0.3 cent for black-and-white pages and 0.9 cent for color.
The Brother MFC-J985DW XL ($688.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) has low running costs, but its per-page costs are higher than the ET-16500’s (1 cent per black page and 4.7 cents per color page). It also doesn’t print photos as well as the ET-16500, its ADF does not auto-duplex, and it doesn’t have two large paper input sources, though it sells for far less.
Conclusion
Is the Epson WorkForce Pro ET-16500 EcoTank Wide-Format All-in-One Supertank Printer worth $1,000? Aside from its sluggishness and a couple of issues printing graphics, this printer is much more robust and feature-rich than the Brother MFC-J985DW XL. The only reason to choose the ET-16500 over its much more affordable WF-7620 sibling, though, is to save on ink, and you’ll only do that if you print enough. If you can live with its slow speed and reduced graphics print quality, what you save on ink should, depending on what and how much you print, quickly make up for the printer’s high cost. After that, you’ll breeze along at less than a penny a page for black-and-white and color documents for the life of the printer.
3.5
(Opens in a new window)
(Opens in a new window)
View More
View More
Epson’s wide-format ET-16500 is a welcome new addition to the EcoTank line of inkjet printers. It’s slow, but you’ll be hard pressed to find a 13- by 19-inch printer with lower running costs.
[ad_2]
Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/epson-workforce-et-16500-ecotank-wide-format-all-in-one-supertank-printer