Epson EcoTank ET-2950 Review

Design and Features

• Smart and uncluttered design
• Fairly basic features
• Wonderfully cheap to run

Epson has sprinkled a little bit of design magic over the EcoTank ET-2950. It’s not gorgeous, but with the output tray closed it’s an impressively uncluttered design; all black, plain panels with a couple of details to liven things up. Whereas the similar ET-4950, launched at the same time, comes with a large ADF on top, the Epson EcoTank ET-2950’s more straightforward scan lid helps keep it fairly compact.

However, where the ET-4950 has an enclosed paper tray in its base, the EcoTank ET-2950 I’m reviewing here has a more basic feed at the rear. That’s not quite as neat, and it leaves plain paper exposed to dust if you don’t print very often.

Printed paper emerges onto a retractable paper output just under the front panel.

If you’re new to refillable inkjet printers, you’d be forgiven for thinking the Epson EcoTank ET-2950 seems basic for the price. Spend this much money on a regular cartridge-based alternative and you’d expect bells and whistles, or exceptional performance and durability, but you get neither here.

I’ll explain why shortly, but it’s worth being clear about what you do get: a fairly basic MFP, supporting wireless networks and automatic duplex (double-sided) printing. While this MFP’s colour screen is handy, and easy to navigate, it’s not a touch-screen. There’s also no fax modem and, as I mentioned, no ADF.

Back to the price. While you can pick up an equivalent cartridge-based inkjet for less than a quarter of the asking price here, its supplied cartridges would likely run dry within about 200 pages. Each new set would cost £40-60, and you’d probably need eight or more to print a box (2,500) of paper. In total, that’s around £400 in ink to cover a couple of years’ moderate printing.

The Epson EcoTank ET-2950 arrives with ink bottles rated for around 6,600 black and 5,500 pages, so if you’re likely to print more than a box of paper during its lifetime, it’s better value from day one. If you print a lot, further bottles of ink work out at around 0.2p per black page, or 0.6p for one in full colour – less than a tenth of what you’d pay to run the typical cartridge inkjet or laser printer alternative.

There is a caveat. Refillable inkjets only become better value after you’ve printed a couple of thousand pages, which might take a few years. If the printer breaks before then you’ve wasted money. I don’t think this printer’s standard one-year warranty is sufficient, but until March 2026 it qualifies for an excellent free upgrade covering five years or 50,000 pages.

The EcoTank system is easy to live with, although it does rely on users to visually check remaining ink levels, as the printer itself can’t sense them. It’s easy to set up, too; you simply upend the bottles over the tanks and wait for the ink to glug out.

Print speed and quality

• Fair speeds, but slow photos
• Good print, scan and copy quality

Send your first print job and this unremarkable looking MFP reveals a neat trick; its paper output tray is motorised, powering out just when it’s needed. It will also power itself away if you want when you turn the MFP off. You might also notice one slight oddity to the way the Epson EcoTank ET-2950 prints on longer text jobs: it starts quite slowly, then accelerates noticeably after the first two pages are done.

That said, this isn’t an especially quick printer. It delivered a first page of black text in 15 seconds, and could reach only a modest 8.6ppm over our five-page test. It was much quicker in draft mode, reaching 17.9ppm – at this quality the results were rather faint. Although slower on more demanding colour jobs, it was slightly more competitive, managing a best of 5.3ppm over 20 pages of graphics.

I wouldn’t recommend this MFP if you need to print photos in a hurry. It laboured for more than five minutes over a single borderless A4 print, but at least the end quality was fairly good. It was even better on plain paper, with quite dark text and strong colours, although if you have sharp eyes you might spot a bit of grain in graphics.

The Epson EcoTank ET-2950 could make a black A4 copy in 11 seconds, but it needed 25 seconds in colour. Its scanner was fast enough, completing a preview image in 13 seconds, and capturing an A4 document at 150 or 300 dots per inch (dpi) in 24 seconds. Again, the results were strong, with sharp focus and an impressive dynamic range – basically a fancy way of saying it captured a wide range of shades.

At this point, it’s worth returning to the Brother DCP-T580DW. The ET-2950 has it beat for print quality, particularly on plain paper. The Epson is also narrowly faster in colour, and when duplex printing – it managed a rate of 7.9 images (sides) per minute compared to the Brother’s 6.7ipm. The Epson’s scanner is also better, producing images with more faithful colour reproduction. However, the Brother is a little cheaper to buy and run, even if it doesn’t come with the protection of a five-year warranty.

Should you buy it?