Epson ET-3956 - Laser Color

Great prices on your favourite Office brands plus free delivery and returns on eligible orders. Review: I would change to an EcoTank if I were you. - First time I have ventured into printing with refillable ink and I must say I am very impressed. I have had many Epson printers all with cartridges. I have always bought compatible ones and have constantly dodged warnings, naggings and refusing to print because of it, and they never lasted that long anyway. This is a game changer. The reservoir is huge compared to the cartridges offering up to 72 cartridges worth (they say) of ink. And you get this included with your order. Even when pricing original Epson ink it will work out cheaper and no nagging. Plus, you are doing your bit for the environment and giving the manufacturer all the money to invest. True the printer is a lot dearer but will work out just as cheap or cheaper if you are keeping it for the duration. The actual filling with ink is a doddle. The bottles have been ingeniously designed from the ground up to fit each tank individually. They don’t spill and the ink stops flowing when enough ink is in the tank. I was a bit apprehensive about doing this initially but it’s easy and not messy in the slightest. Epson have put a lot of effort into setting up their EcoTank models. You can install it perfectly and easily from new by downloading the setup APP to your smartphone. This communicates with the printer from the outset and expertly guides you through the whole initial set up process with pictures and confirmations at each stage. Leaving you with an initialised product ready for connection to your computer. This to is easy as it links itself to a specific setup page just for the model and does all the work for you just by responding to the questions. Mine was a Windows 11 installation. Very clever and very simple. It all takes a bit of time but patience is a virtue. The new software is good too. One example is organising scans from the scanner. The software is intuitive. Organising pages is easy and it can even intelligently rotate pages. This more or less does away with spending a lot more on double sided scanning as there is so little effort in just popping the pages back on the ADF knowing there is minimal effort needed for sorting. It takes up a small footprint for the amount it does. It is relatively light as well. It does feel a little plasticky but I don’t think so much so that it will fall apart. It just appears functional and is. The screen is small and is not touch meaning you have to keep pressing buttons and then okaying. Shame I would have loved the touch screen so much better. Also, when you lift the scanner unit it only holds in place when you force it upward so that it locks. I found this nerve racking as I thought it might break, I am sure this could be better manufactured. I will not be printing photos on it. For me it is meant for office type documents and they have all printed really well so far. It prints double sided also. I am more than happy to give anything I print to anyone who I believe should find it much more than acceptable. I do use decent paper. Perhaps the only down side is it seems to be a little slow in everything it does. Don’t get me wrong in no way a deal breaker for me but if you were in the office and want everything at speed then perhaps another model may better suit. I note some people are reporting a WiFi issue mine worked straight away although I cannot know yet whether this will come to haunt me. But there is the 5 year warranty which Epson are currently offering on their EcoTank models. Overall, I am extremely pleased so far. Far better than my Epson’s of old in terms of hardware, ink printing and software. A great upgrade. At this stage I am glad I bought it. My major gripe was desertcart reducing the price 2 days after I bought it. Review: Great so far… - My old HP Multi-function printer was ruined during a house move so I was looking for a quality replacement. I have alway bought HP as I like the software and quality of the kit but was fed up with the cost of the ink and print head cleaning. After much research, I saw the Epson ink tank printers scoring highly in a number of independent reviews. It seemed to me that the initial cost of the machine was off-set by the low cost of ink over the long-term. The features of the ET3850 were exactly what I was looking for; quality printing (including auto-duplex), scanning and wifi printing from mobile devices. It was easy to set up and the ink filling process was easy and spill-free using the foolproof fittings which differed for each colour to avoid mistakes. Connecting it to my wifi network was also easy although it did take a little time to update its firmware early in the process. I have 2 minor niggles when comparing it with the various HP models I’ve owned: 1) the software is not as user friendly or as comprehensive, but it works, 2) pressing the off button does not switch the machine off, you have to then use the menu buttons to change an option and then confirm with the ok button before it switches off. Although some might find this a benefit, I find it annoying that I have to press 3 different buttons to switch it off. On the plus side, as well as good quality printing, the machine seems to be able to print decent quality when started up even when it hasn’t been used for a while. I found that the HPs often required head cleaning and test printing which wasted paper, time and expensive ink! So far, I haven’t had to do this at all. Overall, I think this model is good value when looked at over a two or three year period and hope it last much longer than that. Having owned and used it for a few months now, I would buy it again.