'A pleasure to print': Finally, our best printer for the home office gets a price cut in Amazon's Spring Sale — save $100 on this feature-packed Epson EcoTank ink tank unit

2 hours ago 11
The Epson EcoTank ET-4950 series ink tank printer undergoing testing in a home office during our review process (Image credit: Epson // Future)

I've been scouring the Amazon Big Spring Sale for printers worth your money - not the cheapest ones, but the ones that offer excellent value for money. And now I've found one you won't want to miss. The Epson EcoTank ET-4950 is now $400 9was $500) at Amazon.

After recently testing this model, which comes in white or black variants, our senior printer editor Jim Hill called it, "a pleasure to print with, thanks to a combination of good design, a responsive touchscreen, prompt print speed and some useful features."

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The Epson EcoTank ET-4950 is one of those printers that immediately rocketed into our best home printer guide, it really is that good. Earning 4.5 stars out of a possible 5, alongside a TechRadar Pro Highly Recommended badge, it impressed our printer editor across a number of factors in his review.

First, the amount of ink you get is pretty much incomparable to similarly priced printers for the home office. It comes with five 464ml ink bottles, which is the equivalent of about 65 inkjet cartridges. That should, Epson estimates, last up to three years before you'll need to top up. And actually refilling the ink reservoirs proved a quick and clean process

Second, the features cover pretty much everything a home office printer needs. So, there's the standard print, scan, copy, and fax here, alongside a 30-sheet ADF, and an auto-duplex mode. During testing, the ET-4950 delivered faster-than-average speeds.

In the review, Jim explains: "It prints quickly for an inkjet with a claimed top speed of 35 pages per minute with simplex monochrome pages or 23 in color... Suffice to say, that it printed a little faster than its predecessor and compares well with other inkjets in its class. The quoted 8.5-second first page out time is accurate."

Print quality was another area where the Epson printer delivered the goods. It offered "strong all-round performance, printing quickly and cleanly," with minimal noise in simplex mode. Jim's review also noted, "dye-based C/M/Y inks are particularly bright and color documents look pleasingly vivid. It also does well with photography for the same reason. The Epson recognizes a range of coated photo paper types and given premium glossy photo paper, my test photos really popped."

All that's missing here are Bluetooth, NFC, a USB Host port for printing and scanning via USB, and a multi-purpose tray (and if we could only have one from the list, we'd want that second paper tray).

Overall, then, a printer deal well-worth snapping up. It does everything a modern ink tank printer needs to do, and beats rivals on features and supplied ink, too.

For more top-performing models, including the Epson EcoTank ET-4950, see our guide to the best ink tank printers.

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Steve is B2B Editor for Creative & Hardware at TechRadar Pro, helping business professionals equip their workspace with the right tools. He tests and reviews the software, hardware, and office furniture that modern workspaces depend on, cutting through the hype to zero in on the real-world performance you won't find on a spec sheet. He is a relentless champion of the Oxford comma.

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