The Epson Expression ET-2550 EcoTank All-in-One Printer ($399) is a basic inkjet multifunction printer (MFP) with features that peg it for light-duty home use, but it has a secret weapon. As one of Epson's EcoTank printers, it sells at a much higher price than similarly equipped models, but includes much more ink, with replacement ink available at a very low cost. You can save a lot of money with the Epson ET-2550 ($378.00 at Amazon) over time, but before you make the investment, be sure that you'll be satisfied with the printer's limited features and uneven performance, which includes slow speed for both document and photo printing, and below-average graphics in our tests.

Epson's EcoTank printer line takes the old razorblade pricing model, in which a company sells a product at a deep discount (the "razor," in this case a printer), in order to sell the consumables ("blades," in this case, ink), and stands it on its end. One of the perennial complaints we get from our readers is the high price of ink. With its EcoTank printers such as the Epson WorkForce ET-4550 EcoTank All-in-One Printer ($599.95 at Amazon) , the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-R4640 ($1,527.00 at Amazon) , and the ET-2550, Epson sells the printer at a relatively high price, but includes a large amount of ink, with additional ink available for a low cost per page.

Design and Features
The ET-2550 can print, copy, and scan, but not fax. It measures 6.3 by 19.3 by 11.8 inches (HWD) when open for printing. It's wider than similar inkjets to make room for the ink tanks, which reside in a bay on the printer's right side. Paper capacity is limited, with a rear feeder that can hold up to 100 sheets of plain paper or 20 sheets of photo paper. It lacks a duplexer for two-sided printing. The flatbed can hold up to letter-size paper, but there's no automatic document feeder (ADF). It has an SD card slot, but lacks a port for a USB thumb drive. The front panel, which tilts up for easy access, resides above the output tray. It houses a tiny, 1.4-inch, non-touch color display, plus a four-way controller, an On-Off button, a Home button, a Scan button, and a Stop button.

Setup
As an Epson EcoTank printer, the ET-2550 eschews ink cartridges in favor of ink tanks. Unlike the Epson WF-R4640, whose ink tanks—which resemble IV-fluid bags—snap into place in receptacles to either side of the printer, the ET-2550's ink comes in bottles. The printer ships with one bottle for each of the four colors (black, cyan, magenta, and yellow). The black ink has a rated yield of 4,000 pages and each color has a yield of 6,500 pages, with both yields based on ISO/IEC standard test pages.

To fill the tanks, you unseal the bottles, and pour the ink into the designated tanks. You unseal a bottle by snapping off its top—which also serves as the nozzle through which you pour the ink—unscrewing the cap, and removing an aluminum seal. Then you tip the bottle, place it nozzle-first into the hole on the top of the appropriate tank (identified by ink color) and then gently squeeze until the bottle is empty. The process is more onerous than with the WF-R4640, and Epson recommends using gloves when pouring the ink. I did not spill a drop on myself, although I did spill a very small amount in the area around the top of the tanks.

Connectivity
The ET-2550 can connect to a computer via USB 2.0, to a local-area network via 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, or make a direct peer-to-peer connection to a computer or mobile device via Wi-Fi Direct. It supports printing from the Epson iPrint app for iOS or Android, and Epson Email Print and Epson Remote Print, both of which allow users to automatically print to the ET-2550 by sending it documents via email. Epson gives you the option of having an email address assigned to the printer during the setup process, which you can change to an address more to your liking.

Printing Speed
I tested the printer over a USB connection, with its driver installed on a computer running Windows Vista. I timed it on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing), at 2.6 pages per minute (ppm). This is sluggish, but not unusually so for a basic home MFP. The Canon Pixma MG5620 Wireless Photo All-In-One Printer ( at Amazon) also scored 2.6ppm, and the HP Envy 5640 e-All-in-One ($387.90 at Amazon) scored 3.2ppm. It is considerably slower than the Epson ET-4550, which we timed at 3.8ppm.

See How We Test Printers

The ET-2550 edged out the Canon Pixma MX922 Wireless Office All-In-One Printer ($289.00 at Amazon) (2.4ppm), our Editors' Choice home MFP that can do light-duty office work as well. Despite its ponderous speed, the Canon MX922 earned its Editors' Choice by virtue of its excellent text and photo quality, and rich feature set, including a 250-sheet input tray plus a separate photo tray, a 35-sheet reversing ADF, a port for a USB thumb drive, fax, Ethernet, and the ability to print on optical discs.

Output Quality
Overall output quality is above par for an inkjet, with above-average text and photos and subpar graphics. Text quality is fine for any documents short of ones that require very small fonts.

With graphics, colors look dull, and some test graphics showed obvious dithering (graininess or dot patterns). Very thin, colored lines were barely visible in a couple of test illustrations. Photos in our tests were all of a quality better than what you would expect from drugstore prints.

Ink Costs
Most cartridges for lower-cost inkjets have yields of several hundred pages, while the ink bottles for the ET-2550 cost $12.99 and have yields of 4,000 to 6,500 pages. Of course, for the initial purchase, you are paying a premium for the printer plus the ink. The ink itself that comes with the printer is worth $52 total, so the cost of the printer minus the ink is $348, based on Epson's direct price of $399.99. That's several times as much as you'd pay for any comparable non-EcoTank inkjet. If you were to print about 10 pages per weekday, it would take about two years to run through the ink that came with the ET-2550.

Conclusion
Buying an EcoTank printer is a considerable outlay of cash, with the promise of dramatic cost savings over time. To realize them, you may have to stick with the printer for several years. For $100 more than the ET-2550, the Epson WorkForce ET-4550 comes with much more ink (and the promise of dirt-cheap ink when you finally run out), and a robust feature set that includes an ADF, fax capabilities, Ethernet, and a larger paper capacity; it's perhaps a more compelling option than the ET-2550. Or you could go with a non-EcoTank model like the Editors' Choice Canon Pixma MX922, which is no faster than the ET-2550, but has a far more comprehensive feature set. If the promise of such savings, coupled with the ET-2550's fine text and photo quality plus mobile printing chops, outweighs any reservations you may have about its drawbacks, it may still be a good deal.

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