Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5170 Wireless All-in-One Supertank Printer

I have a small home business, so my printing needs fall somewhere in between personal and business use. I have no complaints with the actual printing but I have a LOT of issues with other things Epson put in which have no purpose and do nothing but suck up your time and complicate things, for no reason that I can see other than to complicate things and suck up your time.

I love that you can see the ink levels from the outside of the machine without having to open the lid or a compartment, very nice. I found filling the containers very easy and did not get any ink on my hands. Each ink bottle filled it’s compartment fully, using about 3/4’s of the bottle. As you can see in Photo 1, the ink automatically fills to the very top of the container (see yellow is full). But after “initialization” you are down to 3/4’s of a tank…initialization took 1/4 of the whole tank of ink (photo 2 shows how much was used after initialization).

The setup time was ridiculously long….taking me almost an hour! Initialization, downloading, installing, and connecting all seemed to take much longer than setting up any other printer in my life. It just went on and on and on. I can no reason for it all to have taken so long, other printers manage to do it in considerably less time.

Paper removal is HORRENDOUS! Please watch my video. The printed pages come out inside the space between the top and bottom parts, and in mine, they come out upside down (in the product video they come out printed side up…if that’s an option, I can’t find it). There are six flexible plastic strips that your pages move through. You must reach into the middle of the gap area to remove your pages not only from the gap, but from those six pieces AND from the support column that holds up the copier/fax bed. They have built in a scooped out area to help you slide your fingers in to grab your pages but to remove your paper you must pull them at an angle in front of the support column yet away from the six pieces… and that crumples your papers every single time. In my video, I’m removing the paper slowly and it still crumples when it hits that support….wait till your office is busy and you try to quickly grab your paper! I noticed that in the product video, the only time they show someone removing a paper, it’s from the back of the machine. In my office, this sits on a desk in front of a wall, I have no option to reach in from behind to remove my paper….and why would anyone have to stand in front of it to use the controls and then move behind it to remove their paper???

And if that isn’t weird enough, after every single copy you make you must interact with the touchscreen by touching the screen to acknowledge that you are aware you shouldn’t touch the wet ink…not kidding (Photo 3). After every copy the touchscreen will not return to the “copy” screen until you tap the area acknowledging that yes, ink will be wet. It’s a HUGE and ridiculous waste of time and I can’t believe Epson expects anyone to do that over and over again, least wise business people.

The same ridiculousness comes up when you try to turn it off. You can’t just hit the power button and walk away, nope, you have to acknowledge that yes, you do indeed want to turn it off by answering the question on the touchscreen.

And I have found that the touchscreen is not very sensitive and requires multiple taps to get my selections to register. I see another reviewer saying the same thing, too, so it’s not just me. It takes 1-3 taps on the screen to get it to do anything.

Another way it sucks up your time is updates. I’ve had mine three days and every single day, while working, up pops the Epson screen asking me to check for updates. It actually interrupts your workflow to do so! I searched for a way to make it do this in the background or to limit how often it did it, but again, found no solution other than to turn it off entirely.

Great way to slow down business…constantly make you acknowledge ink is wet, updates need to be searched for and question if you really do want to turn it off all while crumpling your paper unless you can walk behind it.

I own both this printer and the similar SOHO Maxify GX7020 from Canon.

Both are fine printers. Both save you bundles of money on printing in B&W and color. Both are about one-eighth the cost of laser or older inkjet printers for both color and B&W price per page.

Monthly duty cycle is 33,000 pages for the Epson and 45,000 for the Canon.

–Speed in B&W: 17 ppm Epson vs. 24 Canon,
–Speed in color: 9.5 ppm Epson vs 15.5 Canon
–Both have built in duplex printing
–35 sheet auto document feed Epson vs. 50-sheet duplex auto document feed Canon
–One 250-sheet feed cassette Epson vs. two 250-sheet cassettes Canon
–Replaceable ink maintenance box costs $10 for Epson vs. $18 Canon
–Cost per page is about the same. No real difference. Both print color for about $.02/page and B&W for under $.01/page.
–Max print resolution: 4800×1200 Epson vs. 1200×600 Canon
–Replacement ink page capability: 7500 pages B&W and 6000 pages color Epson vs. 6000 pages B&W and 14,000 pages color Canon (this is from the printers’ product pages–I wonder if they’re comparing apples to oranges in how they define printing capacity….)

Epson and Canon are both known for making wonderful photo printers. Neither of these SOHO models are great for photos. I have the Canon Pixma Pro 100 and it’s a FAR superior photo printer to either of these, despite being nearly ten years old now. Buy this for general printing, not for putting out photographic prints.

Unfortunately, the higher resolution of the Epson really doesn’t amount to significantly greater printing quality in the real world.

The Canon has better page routing options from its auto document feeder through its paper cassettes. The Canon is also faster.

The Epson, however, costs about $250 less at this time.

I call it a draw. Both print well and cheaply. Consumer Reports is iffy on Epson reliability and this has been the rap on Epson over the years, but it’s still a good printer. And more recently I saw a reputable review give Epson the nod over Canon for reliability….

I have always bought HP printers. But they never seem to last more than 2 years. A lot of phone calls to service support when it ultimately ends with a trigger being pulled condemning it to death! The ink was getting more and more expensive and I was FORCED into using their “instant ink” program — also a hassle. This printer (I now have 2 Epson EcoTank models) are really nice! I’ve had both of them less than a year, so I don’t know if the longevity is any better, but the INK is F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S! Affordable for all and seems to last a LOT longer than the cartridges’ that were always “expiring”. As of this date, I would highly recommend this printer… and the 2720!

I ordered this item based on the specifications posted on Amazon. They stated that this printer could print 11×17″ paper. It does not! The product had to be installed because of an immediate need. Despite this negative issue which wasn’t the fault of the manufacturer, we were very pleased. Installation was simple. The print quality was excellent — fast and trouble free. The very first print job was several double sided, full color documents. It functioned flawlessly. The only reason I rated the product with four stars was the format size issue. I highly recommend this printer… unless you need 11×17″ capabilities!!

I cannot recommend this printer after purchasing it in August 2022. I feel like i have had a sufficient amount of time to give a review at this point. It prints very good and the ink use is great! But the scanning, coping, and fax are HORRIBLE!! The automatic feeder constantly has to be monitored or it will jam! If you go to make a copy using the flatbed, it never lines up properly and makes fuzzy unaligned copies. When you scan documents, it does not align properly and the image is distorted. It takes a while for it to start scanning. Faxes are mostly illegible. Also, paper jams ALL THE TIME when trying to print documents. Touchpad is very small and I recommend using a stylus instead of your finger. It also prints black and white copies slow and color copies VERY slow.

Looks and prints like a commercial printer. Print quality is as good as comparable printers costing twice as much. Easy to set up with the provided instructions, however, when trying to register the warranty coverage per instruction, the on-line information will not allow registration of the ET-5170 and indicates ” Not Eligible for USA registration”. I will be contacting the seller for clarification as to why this is sold as a new unit but apparently cannot be warrantied

Although I love the refillable ink, this printer has not worked correctly since we bought it. The print heads get clogged up frequently. We have to clean them every few days. We’ve gone through 3 of those maintenance boxes in the past couple of months. Now it is printing out a code that Epson can’t tell me what it is. It has wasted about a ream of paper doing so and now won’t print at all. I have been on the phone with customer support at least 4 times in the past week. Each time for at least 30-60 minutes. Each time I’m given a new reference number. I was told last week that it was a “hardware failure” and I need to send them photos. Photos were sent. I was just on the phone for over an hour before they would okay the replacement. At times I was put on hold for so long I think they just wanted me to hang up. Epson requires a hold put on my credit card for the new printer in case I don’t return the old one. Ridiculous. They also told me I was getting a refurbish printer, not a new one. They have made this process EXTREMELY DIFFICULT and I am extremely unhappy with this purchase.

The Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5170 Wireless Color All-in-One Supertank Printer has cartridges that must be filled with ink. This made me nervous and it was a bit intimidating for me but it was extremely easy to do. I never spilled a drop of ink in the process. From there I downloaded the drivers which is was mostly the automatic process of my laptop detecting the new printer and setting it up but I did have to do some things with manual decisions. The ink is a very good value in printer ink. The printed copies are easy to remove simply by putting your hand under the copies and lightly lifting while gently moving your hand away from you. When I do this the paper comes out perfectly with no crinkling whatsoever. It comes right over the paper guards without lifting them. Under no circumstances should you try to remove the copies by pulling them to the side. Always put your hand under the bottom of the copies, lift gently while moving your hand away from you, lift lightly and the copies will come right out without crinkling and without having to lift the paper guards in the front (see my video for copy removal technique) It is a little different from most copiers but it is very easy once you do it a couple of times. The copy quality is okay but the print quality setting must be put to high definition if you do not wish it to come out light. The touch screen seems a bit small unless you have small hands. It is a smaller equipment footprint than most copiers which is nice.