Best Epson Tank Printers of 2024

At Consumer Reports, we’re finding it hard to recommend many inkjet printers. Yes, they’re often really cheap. But our testing has shown that many of them don’t print text very well, they aren’t particularly reliable, and most of them use expensive ink cartridges that can cost up to $100 a year or even more. Furthermore, CR’s surveys show that owner satisfaction with inkjet printers is generally low.

But there’s a loophole. If you do need an inkjet printer—say, you frequently print in color and often have jobs that include graphics—a tank-style inkjet printer can save you money. Instead of expensive ink cartridges, tank models have reservoirs that can be refilled easily and very inexpensively with bottles of ink, often for under $20 a year.

Those differences in ink prices add up. For example, the Canon Pixma TR4720 cartridge inkjet printer currently costs $80. But according to the formula we use for estimating annual ink costs, the printer would go through $189 worth of ink in a year, which puts its five-year cost of ownership at a whopping $1,025. By comparison, the Epson Eco Tank 2400, which costs $180 up front, uses an estimated $5 worth of ink a year, which means its five-year cost of ownership is only $203.