The Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5850 is an all-in-one printer made to produce 3,000 to 4,000 pages monthly in today's busy tiny and midsize workplaces and workgroups. A letter- and legal-size version of the wide-format Editors' Choice EcoTank Pro ET-16650, the ET-5850's high input capacity, relatively high quantity ratings, exceptional print quality, reduced running costs, and a strong lineup of efficiency and comfort features make it a shoo-in as our existing preferred midrange color AIO printer.
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Epson ET-5850 Review
EcoTank Pro: Power- and Productivity-Packed
Presently, Epson has 4 EcoTank Pro offerings, including the ET-16650 discussed above and a somewhat less-endowed (in terms of shade print and copy speeds) wide-format design, the ET-16600. The letter- and legal-size versions are the ET-5850 tested below and the ET-5880, which adds HP Printer Command Language (PCL) and Adobe PostScript page description language (PDL) assistance.
PCL and PostScript are, certainly, the page description languages utilized in numerous typesetting, printing, posting, and graphics layout environments, and PostScript is additionally the native language of Adobe's advanced graphics layout software application, Illustrator, along with the code Adobe Acrobat makes use of to "attract" or define PDF web pages.
If you plan to use your in-house printer for prepress evidence or brief runs of pamphlets and other marketing products, spending the extra $50 for PCL and PostScript emulation is a good idea. Besides, while writing this, I discovered the ET-5880 for sale at Epson's online store and somewhere else for $50 less than the ET-5850.
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All the same, given its slim construction of 16.7 by 19.7 by 18.1 inches (HWD) and neat 39.2 pounds, the EcoTank Pro ET-5850 packs a lot of wallop into a relatively tiny footprint compared to competing inkjet and midrange color laser AIOs. It's close in dimension, for example, to Brother's MFC-J5945DW, a competing midrange color inkjet AIO, and about 21 pounds lighter than Lexmark's MC2535adwe, a medium-volume color laser AIO that's an additional PCMag leading pick.
If smaller and lighter is what you require, however, you might consider stepping down to a leaner all-in-one, such as HP's OfficeJet Pro 9015, yet another PCMag Editors' Choice. At the same time, it allows you to go back to the ET-5850 and its established features etablished —starting with its 50-page, single-pass, automatic duplexing (ADF) for sending out two-sided, multi-page files to the scanner. "Single-pass" suggests that the ADF releases two sensing units, one for each side of the web page, making it efficient at capturing both sides simultaneously.
The majority of competing versions, including those mentioned here so far, featured auto-duplexing ADFs. Some, such as the OfficeJet Pro 9015 with its 35-sheet feeder, hold fewer originals. In contrast, others, such as the Lexmark I simply stated, included reverse-duplexing ADFs (with simply one sensing unit, so the tool processes one side, then reverses and turns the paper to refine the other).
Reverse-duplexing isn't as fast or efficient as single-pass, yet over time they both finish the job. Regardless, setup, making copies, scanning to network and cloud storage, configuring security options, producing and publishing usage reports, and more are all handled from the ET-5850's spacious 4.3-inch shade touch-screen control panel.
As you can see above, the display screen occupies the entire panel. You likewise obtain, as you do with any business-oriented AIO these days, an onboard server that provides access to all operational and configuration tasks from practically any desktop, laptop, or mobile web browser.
Like the other EcoTank Pro AIOs, the ET-5850's paper capacity is 550 sheets from 3 different sources —2 250-sheet cassettes and a 50-sheet multipurpose tray that lifts up and out from the rear of the equipment, as shown in the picture below.
The HP 9015 holds only 250 sheets from a single input source, as does the Lexmark MC2535adwe, though the latter also has a one-sheet override tray and can be expanded to a total capacity of 1,451 sheets. The Brother MFC-J5945DW holds 600 sheets from three sources, and the Epson WF-C5790 supports 330 sheets (expandable to 830) from two input trays.
Like the other three EcoTank Pros, the ET-5850's maximum month-to-month duty cycle is 66,000 pages, with an advised month-to-month print volume of 3,300 pages — among the highest among the other midrange color AIOs discussed here. The Lexmark, at 85,000 maximum and 8,500 advised, is the greatest, and the OfficeJet Pro 9015, with a 25,000-print duty cycle and 2,500-page advised quantity, is the most affordable.
