Info about Ecotank ET-15000

[Danny Freer]

Hi,
I am considering purchasing an Ecotank ET-1500.
Just wondering if anyone is aware of performance / reliability issues.

Last epson printer purchased was a Workforce WF7210DTW, which was temperamental from day 1.
When it worked it worked well but to many issues, such has saying paper jam when there was not, Saying wrong paper in drawers when not , wont print double sided but cannot find any issues, wont recognize epson print cartridge's and refuses to print.
dont want to get another printer like this so any information would be grateful

 

[VA1DER]

I assume you mean the ET-15000. I bought this printer on the strength of my experience with my WF-7720. I love my 7720 (and still have it), but grew frustrated with its small cartridge size and the trouble refilling them. I do a lot of 13x19 size posters, but the ecotank version of my printer (ET-16500) deleted the ability to do borderless.

So I bought the ET-15000 because Epson finally released an eco-tank printer that advertised borderless printing. But when I set it up I discovered the printer can't do borderless at 13x19. The largest it will do borderless is 11x17. It's not a print head issue - the platten is wide enough. It seems to be the same marketing decision they made for the ET-16500 - they don't want you buying large format ecotank printers you can crank out large numbers of posters on. They want you to have to buy their expensive ink cartridges for that.

All the other issues which keep me from using my WF-7720 as an every-day printer are in the ET-15000 too. They tell you it uses pigment ink, but that's only for black. Colour inks are all dye-based. And the printer has no postscript or any other real page description language support. I kid you not, it still uses the old ECP/P-R printer codes. I think this is why its halftoning is so terrible. Anything that is greyscale looks like it's done on a dot matrix printer. This issue comes up with some colour graphics too.

If you want borderless at 13x19, there aren't many options - certainly no eco-tank ones. You'll need a WF-7820 for that prolly.

If you don't need 13x19 printing, if 11x17 is good enough then I would (highly) recommend the Brother MFC-J6945DW. This is my every day printer, and I've never owned a better one. It really is a work of art. Borderless on any kind of paper, it's fast, its price-per-page is down in the eco-tank range anyway, but refillable cartridges just became available for it too. This printer takes cartridges in the front and pumps the ink from them into internal tank resevoirs - which means if you do use refillable cartridges for it they are stable and no-fuss. It has postscript and PCL5, it will communicate in almost every protocol known to man short of smoke signals. It has a USB port (which Epson deleted off the ET-15000) and because it supports postscript it can natively print PDFs. A guest can come in with a PDF on a stick and print it. On top of that, what surprised me is that it does the finest (and most colour-accurate) photos I've seen on a 4-colour printer.

 

[Edward G.]

Hi,
I am considering purchasing an Ecotank ET-1500.
Just wondering if anyone is aware of performance / reliability issues.

Last epson printer purchased was a Workforce WF7210DTW, which was temperamental from day 1.
When it worked it worked well but to many issues, such has saying paper jam when there was not, Saying wrong paper in drawers when not , wont print double sided but cannot find any issues, wont recognize epson print cartridge's and refuses to print.
dont want to get another printer like this so any information would be grateful

Don't Buy this temperamental is an understatement, it claims to print 14 pages per minute not in my experience with this, double sided printing? Does't work either especially with presentation paper. This is the last epson I will own. A BIG WASTE OF MONEY

 

[Nebcop]

I bought a ET-15000 as it said it could do A3 which is sort of true but only from the rear feed and one cannot scan or copy from the glass plate so I was a bit disappointed with that, I contacted Epson but was disappointed with their no care response, I had to return the first one as the paper was showing a crease when it came out but the replacement was ok.
I used it a reasonable amount and now have a problem of when printing using paper from the tray underneath it keeps saying no paper so I press retry and after a couple of attempts it will pull a sheet through, does anyone have any idea why this is happening and what can I do to rectify it?