EcoTank Photo ET-8550 All-in-One Wide-format Supertank Printer

I make a point to never leave bad reviews. I don’t like the idea of putting negativity out in the world. BUT MY GOD I HATE THIS PRINTER. Before purchasing I read (and still see) so many great reviews, so I’m willing to concede that maybe I just got a total lemon. But if I hadn’t spent $800 on this printer, I would’ve chucked it on week one. Printers can be fussy, but I’ve never experienced so many different issues that I can’t even pinpoint a potential problem. I’m going to allow myself one glorious meltdown venting session. Bc this printer is worth it.

The manual feed on the back works about 1/10 attempts. At best. Error after error message even though everything was completed 100% to spec. I’ve stopped using the manual feed completely, and have conceded that even though I purchased this printer SPECIFICALLY for the ability to print on cardstock and other thick paper stocks, this is simply not a feature I get to use. Ever.

I am not a stupid woman, nor am I technologically challenged. * This is not user error. *

When I use the top paper feed, anything above basic print quality produces lines. When I try to realign the print heads to fix this, it will only select from one particular print cartridge for this, and the paper folds and crumbles in the interior (even though all the back manual feed equipment is properly reinstalled) and has to be carefully pried out by hand, so bc it only accepts paper for print head alignment, etc, through THIS ONE paper feed, I have not been able to realign the print heads. I get decent enough prints from the basic print setting, but I’m prevented from printing higher quality. As a professional artist, this is not okay.

As I sit here venting on Amazon for the first time ever, the printer sits beside me, refusing to accept print commands from my computer wirelessly even though it says it’s connected. So I transferred my 12×18″ image to an SD card to print directly from the unit, but for some reason, the printer tells me that 12×18″ is not a valid paper size and refuses to print, even though it has (in the past) via wireless connection. My only other option was to connect the printer directly to the computer (with a wire that is NOT included with purchase).

Right now, it’s pretending to print. It’s a liar. I hear a single print line being created once every 30-45 seconds. It’s been doing this for about 15 minutes, and I’m guessing I have about half an inch of my image completed in that 15 minutes.

Have I mentioned the weird chugging sound it makes…all the time?

This MUST be an anomaly. Maybe everyone else received a perfect printer and I got a factory reject that slipped through inspection.

I am a professional artist and photographer, and rely on the sale of prints to help support my work. I have an event this weekend and at this point I am quite screwed. Could I go back in time, I’d purchase anything else.

I hate this printer more than I hate any other item in my studio/office…and I sit next to a litter box.

My mother passed away this past May and I was scared of losing pictures of her to time. I purchased this all-in-one because I wanted to digitize old photos, restore them, and print my favorites. I received the printer yesterday and have only tested the scanning function, so far. I was initially concerned because I had read that there weren’t drivers for Windows 11 or the newest versions of Macs, but I had read on their website that there might be some drivers that would still work.

Setting it up was relatively easy, though the “cassettes,” as the trays are called, could be better labeled. It took me a while to figure out where cassette 2 was to load paper for the calibrations. Ink is super easy to fill and the calibrations weren’t hard either. I used my iPhone for set up (you’ll need to download the Epson Smart Panel app*) and connected my MacBook Pro running Ventura 13.4.1 to it once set up was complete. It was easy going to epson.com/support, searching for the printer, and downloading the drivers. The computer and laptop must be on the same SSID or they will not be able to communicate. (I mention this because I normally keep my laptop/phones/IoT devices on different WiFi networks.)

I started by scanning an 11×14 of my mother’s senior photo. This was a little frustrating because parts of the picture would be cut off and I could see no obvious way on the scanner or my phone to adjust this. Only one device can be actively attached to the scanner at any one time, so I had to close the application in the phone completely and go back to the home screen on the scanner. Once that was done, instead of hitting scan on the scanner screen and telling it to send the image to my computer, I had to open Epson Smart Scan on the computer and I could finally adjust the settings. I set the scan size to maximum and then could also finally adjust the DPI at which it was scanning. Instead of 200 DPI (default), I set it to 2400 DPI and also did a second scan at 600 DPI for uploading to social media. The other amazing feature is color restoration. I had been watching tutorials for Adobe Lightroom so I would be able to restore all these photos and Smart Scan does this natively (if enabled). The two photos of my mother attached show the before and after enabling the color restoration feature. One thing I have noticed is that occasionally it seems to forget color restoration is enabled. After messing around with it and closing and opening the software repeatedly, I hit “Preview” before scan and it fixed my issue. Using Preview has also fixed an issue where rarely it would scan about only an inch of whatever photo was inside.

I have a ton of photos, so it’s been a bit slow going, but I love how quality the scans are and the time that’s been saved on the back end with the color restoration feature. For someone that has the same uses I do, I would strongly recommend this scanner.

I gave it four stars because of the intermittent errors and it could be a little easier to use. It also makes tiny crops to the photos I cannot get it to stop. Most of the time, they don’t matter so much, unless a subject is already close to the edge.

I will test the print function and update once I’ve finished scanning all my photos.

*You can also scan and print from this app.

Pictures posted above are from my ET 8>-8550 printer and it does this every single time I print something. It’s beautiful until it gets to the bottom, then the printer starts going real fast and reprints over what is was already printed. Sometimes it likes to move the the bottom far away from the rest of the picture and sometimes it likes to just keep printing black many time over what’s printed. I cannot use it with my Cricut because it won’t print the bottom guides that Cricut needs.
This company is Cosmo Tech – please don’t buy from them! I purchased a ET-8550 printer from the in April 2023. No where on the description did it say that the printer was used (I now know that’s in the invoice). I thought I was buying it new with warranty or I NEVER would have bought it! The printer has never worked a day since I bought it. I called Epson because it said the warranty was still good – found out it was good for Cosmo Tech, but not for me because I was the 2nd user. I asked Cosmo Tech to just call and initiate the warranty since Epson has all the information needed, but they said no.
When I went to the product support page for the printer, it sends me to the Epson website and said service of printer is ‘offered by Epson’. NO IT ISN’T! Epson has never heard of the company and doesn’t do business with them.
So, now I have a $700+tax printer that is still under warranty, but nobody will help me fix this mess. My husband bought my a computer hoping that I would be able to fix it having more control of the drives – another waste of money. This damages printer has cost me $699 + $43 tax + $100 new maintenance box and Epson ink $450 new computer to see if it helps = $1300 for a printer that Epson said could not have ever worked because the damage is factory – no way to fix it.
There are plenty good, honest sellers on here, but Cosmo Tech IS NOT one of them!
Please look somewhere else.
As far as I know, all their stuff is used, so it doesn’t have a warranty (even if the product says it does). I don’t know what else to say except they are a not a good company and I don’t want them to be able to put anyone else through the hell they’ve put me through.
They had to know it was damaged and couldn’t be fixed when they sold it to me. Who does that?
I hope this information helps at least one person! Some may have had a great experience with this company and I’m very happy that was their experience, but I wouldn’t suggest taking your chances. That can be a very expensive chance you’re taking.
I have Multiple Sclerosis and am stuck in bed – all I have is my art which is what I wanted to print, but I can’t.

I purchased this printer because of the ink tanks and to be able to print 11 x 14 prints. I print a lot of photos and the print quality is fantastic and it is very quiet but a bit slow. HOWEVER, for a $700 printer this thing is a plastic disaster waiting to happen. The two paper cassettes are extremely flimsy and difficult to get pushed in correctly. Once a print is finished the output tray remains extended and you have to close it via the LCD on the printer. I forget to do this and sometimes end up accidentally swiveling my chair into it thus I will have to move the printer to avoid this. You would think if the output tray auto slides out it could also auto slide back in once the print has been removed.

I had two older Canon printers — a desktop all-in-one printer and a large format photo printer — and for various reasons decided it was time to switch the two for a single printer and boy, am I happy that I found this Epson EcoTank! The print quality (using Epson paper — especially the “Ultra Premium Photo Paper Luster”) is absolutely stunning with darks and lights and colors and sheen. I am so thrilled for the improvements made in printing since I last bought the smaller printer (~6 years ago).

The wifi connection was/is seamless and fast and allows printing from all over the house (and even from my iPhone!). The printer goes to sleep after a bit, but wakes instantly so I do not have to run to see if it is on before printing from a remote part of the house.

I am most thrilled with the “supertanker” inks this uses…I was constantly having to replenish the little plastic Canon cartridges (at great expense) and got to the point that I avoided printing anything even close to a full page, because it meant I was going to have to buy more cartridges. These last a long time and the quality is great.

I already had two Epson scanners (V850 Pro & FF-680W) and so wasn’t needing another one, so this printer seemed about perfect. HOWEVER, I just now had a thought and went to check it in my office and it also has a large format scanner (it was under the top section of the printer)! Bonus time.

The touchscreen controls are pretty intuitive — and the only beef I have is that to close the auto–extending “output tray” after printing, you have to touch that option on the screen, but that option is ONLY on the home screen, which means you have to navigate to find it each time (Epson–please update the software to place that option on every screen from which you have just printed).

So far, I have absolutely nothing but praise for this beast (it is large and heavy), but so quiet that I am not always sure something is printed or done printing unless I go into the other room to check.

Reviewing Prints: Please note when looking at pictures of monkey and elephant the larger print job is the Epson ET-8550. The smaller is my previous HP printer. Not the lack of details and how off colors are on the HP vs the Epson ET-8550

A very good photo lab quality printer. Go and get yourself some premium 13×19 matte paper and you’ll have a printer that is really good at filling out a wall with your photos for a fraction of lab prints.

I was worried about its ability to reproduce colors with only having one gray but it works really well. I put the print out against my color calibrated monitor and what was on screen was pretty close.

What I noticed immediately over my old HP photo printer was that the grays looked gray and not blueish and my daughters red dress wasn’t faded looking once printed but the same red pop in the photo.

All in all I would say buy this if you are into printing photos. I’m getting prints that would have cost me $20-32 bucks out for $1.20-1.30ish at 13×19 and most of that was the expensive paper I bought that was $1.10ish a sheet.

If you buy this printer make sure you download the drive from Epson. You don’t need the extra tools unless you really want them but you want the full driver. The windows installed version is a light version and will be missing a ton of advanced features like the ability to print up to 13×19 and setting high quality print.

This printer is great, the quality of the output is superb, but as with any printer you have to send quality images to the printer. The marketing pitch for this printer is the savings on ink, understand that a pack of ink bottles not including Black is $87 but I have printed at least 6 13×19 prints both black & white and color, at least 12 or 13 8.5×11 prints and several 4×6 full color prints all excellent quality. The ink tanks are barely below the full mark except for the Gray ink, it seems to go down faster.. If I did this with my other printer I would have gone through two or three ink cartridges by now both B&W and color (about $53 per cartridge set) so I think their sales pitch is legit!
The one drawback I see is that you have to print frequently or the print heads can clog up. I don’t know about how frequent but if you are going to print a large print once a month or any print once a month you are better of just going to a lab. This is mainly a photo printer but you can print other things as well, text etc.

So far I’ve had a little under a week to print on various sizes of glossy photo paper. 4×6, 5×7, 8.5×11, 11×17 and 13×19. All of which not only load, feed and land neatly and safely, but the little bit of noise for paper loading doesn’t indicate any issues with crunching edges or rippling during loading. Even when I loaded a stack of 4×6 photopaper unevenly and a bit further than it should have been into the cartridge the printer itself detected an issue and ejected that page to grab another to avoid malfunction.

The color accuracy is far better than I anticipated and this will become a business advantage I couldn’t have hope for. On the subject of color, black and white come through beautifully as well as having the ability to make on the fly adjustments in the epson photo print set up prior to sending to the printer.

Connectivity was a breeze after the initial set up and firmware update I’ve been able to print from my desktop, iPad, and phone with ease.

EcoTank was an understatement, I anticipated some degree of capacity but this has far exceeded my expectations for the level of ink both in its holding capacity and in just how far the ink will go. I’ve printed roughly 30 11x17s, 50 4x6s, maybe 20 5x7s and a handful of other large sizes with only now just starting to see a difference in the tanks levels.

I’ve waited a long time to hope for the ability to print
like this from home and it has been a dream tool so far!!!

I procured this printer after weeks of study. I have not made “fine art” or nature prints in a few years, due to a bad experience with an EPSON R3000 (PK/MK Issue – but due to a 3rd party warranty I received all my money back, less the $300 re-fill inks.) The R3000 made great prints, better than the R2200 and probably better than a large format printer of 20 years ago. Now I need CD/DVD printing, some smaller prints for family, maybe gift cards, and perhaps a 13×19 now and then. Don’t anticipate a need to make 200-year archival prints and don’t want to invest into something that requires $300+ to fill up. Historically I made a few matte prints but used Luster paper a lot. With the ET-85xx I expect to make gloss, luster and perhaps some matte/fiber papers (low expectations for matte). Since the price of inks per mililiter for the ET-85xx is about 6x cheaper than a P700 printer, and 3.6x cheaper than a P900 pigment printer. (Though a P900 will cost $440 for a complete refill of 10 carts.) Some Canon offerings looked good except for smaller ink cartridges. With a lot of skepticism, I obtained the ET-8550, with its somewhat limited gamut of 4 color dye and 2 black inks. (Canon probably has the best color gamut using dyes at a reasonable price.)

I’m a semi-retired videographer, editor, photographer and YouTube/Tiktok contributor.

I’ve been relying on Keith Cooper on YouTube, for printing advice. It’s paying huge dividends. His take on this? It’s fantastic, if you use the right paper and right settings for your taste. Paper choice is crucial…and most printers these days are extremely good at what they do, regardless of cost.

I received my printer 3 full days earlier than originally predicted. The setup was simple. Most of the time was spent charging the tanks with ink and doing the alignment check. The alignment check was a bit weird, in that there were several correct possible choices for me to make. I did my best and didn’t worry about it.

This printer is a compromise, in that most of the inks are dye-based. If you’re not a professional printer, especially if you’re not going to sell your prints, you can varnish them, after the ink dries on the paper. They’ll last 100+ years.

The output is extremely good, although I’ve only had the stock photo paper to test and one card stock greeting card thus far. I will be testing out a lot of different papers, smaller sizes, to find what works for me.

I scanned an old black & white photo, yellowed with age, in a color setting. The resulting image is missing the exact tone, though. I don’t know how I feel about that. I can fix it in post editing if I want…

Printing text on regular bright white paper is adequate and swift. The Duplexer worked fine. Note: If you plan to print on poster board, you’ll need to remove the duplexer so the poster board can pass through the rear bottom of the unit. The card stock card I printed was perfect.

My one issue is that since it prints large prints, it requires more real estate than my old printer did. It’s well worth the trade-off, however. Recommended.