Submitted 5 years ago
By Samuli
From Boston, MA
Verified Buyer Verified Buyer
Reviewed at
I bought my unit refurbished from Epson and it arrived in good condition. There was a minor issue with the ADF where one of the springs that applies pressure had come out of alignment and gotten stuck, which caused paper fed into the ADF to crumple; I assume this happened during shipping. I was able to fix the issue on my own with pliers and have had zero ADF issues since then.
I purchased this printer to complement my mono letter laser printer, as the cost of tabloid+ laser printers is more than twice that of this printer. My main uses are printing sheet music, photos, and making archival scans of antique sheet music (much of which is 9" x 12" so cannot be scanned in letter-sized scanners).
Overall the print quality of the ET-16500 is very good, especially for an inkjet. I extensively tested the mono capabilities of the printer with every possible arrangement of quality-oriented settings tried, to judge its suitability for printing sheet music and woodcuts. At a foot or greater distance, when set to high quality, the difference is all but imperceptible to a high quality mono laser output, aside from appearing somewhat darker, due to a slight thickening of lines. Around 6" you can notice the slight softness of the print, and around 4" it is obviously an inkjet print. However, to all but the most observant viewer/printer fanatic, the results are indistinguishable. Pedantically, I would not agree with Epson's claim of "Laser-quality black text", as at the macro level, the laser printer's output is undeniably sharper regardless of how much finessing one does with the ET-16500, but it's certainly good enough for all but the most demanding print applications and at any reasonable viewing distance, arguably indistinguishable. (see att'd photo)
However, when printing photographs and color prints, this printer really shines, in particular when using 'semi-gloss' or 'luster' photo paper. I printed a bunch of posters for work on high quality Super B (13" x 19") photo paper in both mono and color with exceptional results and incredibly low cost. The colors are very good, although without a discrete 'photo black' and other colors of higher-end photo printers, the darkest portions are not quite as rich as can be obtained, but remarkably good even for professional use.
Typical B&W prints are dry to touch in seconds, although very saturated/dark color prints on conventional paper may feel slightly damp for a time. I recommend leaving such prints to dry for a few hours or overnight before packaging/significant handling to be safe, but I have never had the slightest issue with smudging, even right out of the printer. A quality photo paper will also be dry to the touch on exiting the printer.
It should be noted that the printer can have significantly different results from the set quality and paper type settings. For B&W printing, Premium Photo Paper settings will give a much darker, more contrasty print with heavier lines than even the highest quality Plain Paper setting (obviously at the cost of more ink and more print time). Depending on your paper, you may wish to enable or disable Thick Paper and experiment with different settings to find the best values for the cleanest print given your particular paper of choice. With color prints, I found the photo paper options actually reduced the contrast of the prints, perhaps to depict a wider gamut or to work with Epson's particular paper formulation, but the general result was a somewhat desaturated look compared to Cardstock or Plain Paper settings. As always, experiment to find the best settings for your end use case.
I strongly recommend a quality paper. Don't put 20 lb budget store-brand stuff into this and expect good duplex or dark photo prints, get at least 24 lb if not 28 lb, the best stuff that's within your budget. The ink visibility is slightly more than typical laser toner, so you might even want to stick to 28-32 lb (105+ gsm) if doing duplex. Note that you can't run a lot of 'glossy' papers through an inkjet, so be sure you only buy inkjet-compatible glossy photo paper if that's what you're looking for! Also, this thing can handle quite thick paper, over 200 gsm, so it is fantastic for printing very high quality covers.
Overall the paper handling is alright. The single-sheet rear feed is mildly infuriating, but understandable (it looks like they have done away with it in favor of a multi-sheet rear feed in newer models). It rarely has paper feed problems, although occasionally it can get a sheet stuck in the duplexer (strangely only letter-sized ever gets stuck, tabloid is always fine). Annoyingly it does not re-print such stuck pages, so you have to go back and re-print those pages manually later (although, if a page gets stuck when doing a copy job, it WILL re-print it!?). It also complains when the paper type doesn't match between the print driver and the printer's internal settings, but this can be disabled in the remarkably extensive system administration menu under Setup (thank you, Epson, for actually making a device which exposes useful configuration options to end users!).
Several people have mentioned a high frequency of ink clogging issues. I have found if not used frequently ink may clog up, but for me it always reliably fixes itself after a cleaning cycle. It is also important to keep the unit in a climate controlled space if possible, or to run a dehumidifier if necessary.
Like any inkjet printer, this thing loves making weird noises, all kinds of clicks and creaks (especially when you are feeding cardstock!). However, it has remained remarkably reliable for an inkjet, with relatively few bad prints and only one mechanical issue, which it managed to fix by itself after a reboot. I've never had an issue with ink spillage, though I tend to be careful when refilling.
By far the most useful feature is the 'booklet' and 'n-in-1' options, which I use almost constantly. In such a way I can print off multi-page letter-sized sheet music on a single sheet of tabloid, which not only looks extremely professional but also cuts down significantly on loose letter sheets deciding to fly off music stands. Likewise, I also use it to print off user manuals and other materials.
The unsung hero of this printer is the touchscreen. I have no idea how anyone could productively use a MFP without a touchscreen in retrospect, and I would strongly encourage Epson to implement touchscreens on all other printer models. Doing operations like scans, copies, enlargements, etc. is straightforward, convenient, and surprisingly not infuriating. Better still, the setup menu is actually fairly extensive, though I wish they had a 'Printer stats' screen, instead of having to print out a status report or dig through the printer's settings on your system every time you want to check how many pages have been printed or the like.
The scanner is very good. The built-in scanning functionality works fine, and I often use the 'scan to USB device' option when in a hurry. For the highest quality, I recommend using dedicated scanning software and taking your time; in such cases, the results can be quite exceptional. I have made 800%+ enlargements from high-res scans done via such software onto Super B photo paper with very good results. The ADF is alright, although it always seems to get the bottom of the page in the scan, creating a horizontal line at the bottom of the page. I generally clean the scanning surface and ADF surface before every scan for best results, as any dust, especially in the ADF, will affect quality.
A few things I wish Epson would fix:
- When copying a multi-page document using the flatbed using the built-in copy functionality, there is no way to scan more than two pages in the document.
- The built-in scan functionality does not include a scale option (e.g. for enlargements), while copy does.
- The built-in scan functionality maxes out at 600 dpi for PDF's, while the scanner can do up to 1200 dpi via computer.
- The ADF includes the bottom edge of the page being scanned in the scan by default.
- When printing status reports or alignment tests, the printer will always use whatever is loaded in Tray 1, even if it's Tabloid and there's Letter loaded in Tray 2. The expected behavior should be to always load from whatever tray has Letter.
I've printed 4,400 pages so far and only have had to replace the inks once. That includes over 100 full-color, high-resolution Super B photo prints, dozens of smaller photo prints, and a few thousand B&W prints of sheet music. Even if the exact numbers Epson specified aren't quite met, the sheer economy of this printer is undeniable. It's cheaper than any laser I've ever owned, and its color printing is far superior too. While I prefer the output of my mono laser for most purposes, this is easily the best wide-format printer south of $2K. Overall the EcoTank/Supertank line is an exceptional deal for anyone looking for a balanced printer which can in one moment create stunning color photo prints and in another run off wide-format scores or booklets with competitive quality results. Two years in, it's still running fine and I expect several more good years before I certainly upgrade to another Ecotank. :)
