The Best Epson Printers for 2022

When it comes to inkjet printers, Epson is one of the first names that naturally comes to mind. And with good reason: The company offers every type of inkjet you’re likely interested in, from a dedicated photo printer for snapshot prints on up to much bigger output. Some models focus on photo quality, while some don’t (although most offer at least drugstore-quality prints); some offer low initial prices, while others offer low-cost ink instead. And although most are color printers, a few are strictly monochrome.

Whatever you need in an inkjet printer, in short, Epson probably has it in one of its lines. The challenge is to find the right one. In this overview, we’ll highlight both what application and what sort of user each of Epson’s family sub-brands is meant for, and discuss the key characteristics that define each.

Note that some categories are barely mentioned here. They range from floor-standing, enterprise-level inkjets that compete with lasers to commercial and production printers for graphics, signage (what you and I call “signs”), and high-volume label printing, and some of which cost more than your average car. Epson even offers point of sale (POS) printers and some (necessarily noisy) 9- and 24-pin dot matrix models. We’ll ignore those categories here, except to mention the family names where appropriate. Immediately below are our top tested Epson printers for a variety of applications, followed by our guide to the Epson family.

More About Our Picks

Epson Expression Premium XP-7100 Small-in-One Printer

Best Epson All-in-One Home Printer for Photos

Bottom Line:

The Epson Expression Premium XP-7100 is a small but capable photo-centric all-in-one inkjet for homes and small offices.

Pros

• Exceptional output quality.
• Single-pass duplexing ADF.
• Large, easy-to-use control panel.
• Robust connectivity.

Cons

• High running costs.
• Low paper capacity.

Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8550 All-in-One Wide-Format Supertank Printer

Best Epson All-in-One Home Printer for Photos (Wide Format)

Bottom Line:

The ET-8550 prints excellent photos and other high-definition images, from snapshot-size to supertabloid, with running costs of less than 1 cent per page.

Pros

• Prints borderless from 4 by 6 inches to 13 by 19 inches
• Exceptional output quality
• Relatively fast printing speeds for its class
• Low running costs
• First two years of ink are free

Cons

• Purchase price is a little steep

Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5850

Best Epson All-in-One Printer for Businesses

Bottom Line:

The Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5850 AIO prints well and inexpensively, and it offers generous input capacity, lofty volume ratings, and two years of unlimited free ink. It’s an incomparable value for small businesses and workgroups.

Pros

• Two years of unlimited ink
• Very low running costs
• Terrific print quality
• Auto-duplexing ADF
• PrecisionCore 4S printhead
• Excellent mobile connectivity options
• Two-year warranty with registration

Cons

• High initial purchase price

Epson EcoTank Pro ET-16650

Best Epson All-in-One Printer for Businesses (Wide-Format)

Bottom Line:

The Epson EcoTank Pro ET-16650 wide-format AIO prints well and inexpensively, and it comes with two years of unlimited free ink, making it an exceptional value for small businesses and workgroups.

Pros

• Two years of unlimited ink
• Excellent print quality
• Very low running costs
• Auto-duplexing ADF
• Thousands of pages worth of ink in the box
• Two-year warranty with registration
• Excellent mobile connectivity options

Cons

• High initial purchase price

Epson WorkForce Pro WF-7840 Wireless Wide-Format All-in-One Printer

Best Epson Supertabloid (13-by-19-inch) Office Printer

Bottom Line:

The WorkForce Pro WF-7840 wide-format multifunction printer produces beautiful prints up to 13 by 19 inches. Productivity features and three capacious paper input sources make it a great small-business choice, even with high ink costs.

Pros

• Fast and excellent PrecisionCore output
• Supertabloid and borderless tabloid printing
• USB thumb drive support
• Two large paper drawers and an input tray
• Relatively low purchase price

Epson WorkForce ST-M3000 Monochrome MFP Supertank Printer

Best Epson Monochrome All-in-One “Laser Alternative”

Bottom Line:

The Epson WorkForce ST-M3000 is an inkjet alternative to monochrome laser AIOs that prints well with ultra-low running costs, not to mention it comes with a ton of ink in the box, increasing its overall value.

Pros

• Very low running costs.
• Two 6,000-page ink bottles included in the box.
• Good print quality.
• Smart home voice activation.
• Two-year warranty with registration.

Cons

• Pricey.
• A little slower than laser counterparts.
• Low monthly print volume ratings.

Epson WorkForce Pro WF-C8690 A3 Color MFP with PCL/PostScript

Best Epson High-Volume Professional Prepress

Bottom Line:

The Epson WorkForce Pro WF-C8690 is a high-volume wide-format inkjet all-in-one that prints quickly and accurately for medium- to large-size offices and workgroups.

Pros

• Excellent print quality.
• Prints super-tabloid pages.
• Supports Wi-Fi Direct and NFC.
• Emulates PostScript and PCL printers.
• Supports massive high-volume ink cartridges.
• High duty cycle.
• Competitive price.

Cons

• Expansion accessories costly.
• No multipurpose tray or slot.
• Meager out-of-box paper capacity.
• Borderless photos and pages unsupported.

Epson SureColor P900 17-Inch Photo Printer

Best Epson Pro-Grade Photo Printer

Bottom Line:

Epson’s SureColor P900 produces exquisite photos and artwork on cut sheets and paper rolls up to 17 inches wide, making it an excellent choice for professional photographers and graphic artists.

Pros

• Excellent print quality
• Prints borderless banners and panoramas up to 17 inches wide
• Prints cut sheets up to 17 by 22 inches
• Uses UltraChrome PRO10 pigment inks for increased color gamut
• Switches from photo black to matte black ink automatically
• Competitive per-millimeter ink costs

Cons

• Paper roll adapter costs extra

Epson LabelWorks LW-PX300VP Full Printer Kit

Best Epson Low-Cost Label Printer

Bottom Line:

The Epson LabelWorks LW-PX300 Full Printer Kit delivers industrial-style labeling at low cost, making it attractive to small businesses and even hobbyists who want professional-looking labels.

Pros

• Affordable, industrial-style labeling
• Easy-to-use handheld design with QWERTY keyboard
• Tape choices include plastic, vinyl, magnetic, and fluorescent up to 18mm
• Saves up to 50 labels in memory for easy reprinting
• Lifetime warranty

Cons

• Noticeably slow print speed
• Doesn’t connect to a PC or mobile device for printing
• Batteries not included

Epson LabelWorks LW-PX900PCD Deluxe Kit

Best Epson Label Printer for General/Industrial Labeling

Bottom Line:

Working as a handheld printer or connected to a Windows PC, Epson’s rugged, able LabelWorks LW-PX900 creates plastic, vinyl, fluorescent, reflective, and cable labels up to 36mm (1.42 inches) wide to meet most industrial labeling needs.

Pros

• Has a keypad and memory for standalone printing, plus label app for Windows PCs
• Supports many label types and materials, in sizes up to 1.42 inches wide
• Can cut labels without cutting the backing, leaving a continuous strip
• Lifetime warranty, and tested to 4-foot drops

Cons

• Too heavy for comfortable thumb typing
• No macOS print app or driver available

Epson Printers 101: How to Distinguish the Families

When we combed though Epson’s website, we found as many as 25 distinct printer category names, depending on how you parse them. But if you group related families together and leave out the ones were not covering here, there are just six that matter for most folks: Expression, EcoTank, WorkForce, PictureMate, SureColor, and LabelWorks.

Epson Expression: Designed for the Home

What the three Expression sub-brands have in common is that they use ink cartridges, offer a low initial price, and are aimed at home users with moderate print needs. For those who don’t print a lot, the total cost of ownership can be lower than for higher-priced tank printers with lower running costs.

Expression Home printers all print, scan, and copy; offer flatbed scanning only; and are meant primarily for everyday home printing needs. Expression Premium models are aimed at essentially the same sort of user, and are also three-function AIOs, but they offer a boost in photo quality by adding photo black ink to the usual cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK) inks. Some offer flatbed scanning only, as with the Expression Premium XP-6100 Small-in-One; others add an auto-duplexing automatic document feeder (ADF) for two-sided copying and scanning.

Epson Expression Photo XP-8700 Wireless All-in-One
(Credit: Epson)

Expression Photo printers like the XP-8700 Wireless All-in-One are aimed at crafters and photo enthusiasts as well as home users in general, and they use six-color ink systems for even better photo quality. This sub-family includes both letter-size and tabloid-size (11-by-17-inch) three-function AIOs plus one single-function printer, the XP-15000,  which prints at up to supertabloid size (13 by 19 inches).

Epson EcoTank: Low Running Costs for Homes and Small/Home Offices

EcoTank printers are designed to give home, home-office, and small-office users a low running cost, with inexpensive ink that comes by the bottle. For those who print enough pages over the printer’s lifetime, the lower running cost can give them a lower total cost of ownership than less-expensive printers with more-expensive ink. The possible sub-brand choices for EcoTank printers are EcoTank, EcoTank Photo, EcoTank Pro, and EcoTank Mono.

The first category, straight-up EcoTank, offers three-function AIOs at the low end, with flatbed scanning only, but adds faxing and an ADF as you move up the price scale. EcoTank Photo printers are aimed at scrapbookers, crafters, and creative professionals, and can handle printable optical discs. They offer six-color printing for better-quality photos and graphics, and can print at either up to letter-size, for the ET-8500, or up to supertabloid-size, for the ET-8550.

Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8550 All-in-One Wide-Format Supertank
(Credit: Epson)

EcoTank Pro models are designed for the range from home office to small businesses or workgroup. They all offer Ethernet as well as Wi-Fi for network connection; most can fax as well as print, copy, and scan; and the top models, including the ET-16650, can print at up to 13 by 19 inches, as well as scan at up to 11 by 17 inches.

The EcoTank Mono sub-brand, finally, is Epson’s answer to mono lasers. It’s designed for small and home offices that print lots of documents and don’t need color. The models in this category range from a single-function printer (the ET-M1170), to a four-function AIO with an auto-duplexing ADF (the ET-M3170). All come with two years of unlimited ink, with no subscription needed, and no fee.

Epson EcoTank ET-M3170 Wireless Monochrome All-in-One Supertank
(Credit: Epson)

Epson PictureMate and SureColor: Photos Small to Large

The PictureMate and SureColor sub-brands are at the two extremes of the Epson printing spectrum. PictureMate offers what Epson calls a “personal photo lab” and is limited at this writing to a single model, the PictureMate PM-400, which has been on the market for a long time now. It’s meant primarily to print small-format photos, up to 5 by 7 inches, and can print from a variety of sources, including memory cards.

In contrast, the SureColor moniker goes with several categories: The SureColor P-, F-, T-, S-, R-, and V-Series. These are mostly floor-standing, large-format printers, and each series is designed for a different application, from gallery-level photos, to architectural and engineering drawings, to commercial printing like outdoor signage.

Epson SureColor P700
(Credit: Epson)

The only SureColor models that matter for this overview are the least-expensive SureColor P-Series models, which are designed for printing professional-quality photos, fine art, and graphic design output, but are inexpensive enough that serious photo enthusiasts may want to consider them. The two of interest are the SureColor P700, which prints on paper up to 13 inches wide, and the SureColor P900, which prints at up to 17 inches wide. Both use a 10-color ink system with archival pigment ink.

Epson WorkForce Printers: Workaday Printing, From Home Office on Up

The WorkForce umbrella covers a lot of territory. In addition to the WorkForce and WorkForce Pro categories, which are sold through consumer channels and aimed at small and home offices, there are also WorkForce Supertank, WorkForce Enterprise, WorkForce Pro HC categories, and even some models in the WorkForce category, all of which are sold primarily though business channels, putting them outside the scope of this overview. Note that the Supertank category is the only one where the category name comes after the model number rather than before it.

Printers in the WorkForce category are identified as WorkForce WF, followed by a model number, as with the WorkForce WF-2930. (There are also some WorkForce CF printers, but the CF is reserved for models sold through business channels.) Both WorkForce and WorkForce Pro printers are aimed at small and home offices that are looking for a low initial price. As already mentioned, this can make good sense if you print little enough that the low printer price combined with relatively high cost ink in cartridges will give you a lower total cost of ownership than a higher-cost tank printer with lower-cost ink.

Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4830 Wireless All-in-One
(Credit: Epson)

Most WorkForce WF models are four-function AIOs (meaning they print, copy, scan, and fax). They all offer two-sided printing, an ADF that copies one side only, and the ability to copy single-sided originals to two-sided copies. The one print-only model is the WF-110 Wireless Mobile Printer, which is appropriate for anyone who needs a printer on the go.

WorkForce Pro printers, identified as WorkForce Pro WF plus a model number, are aimed at small offices that need somewhat heavier-duty printing or features like being able to print or scan a larger page size than the WorkForce models can handle. Most are four-function AIOs, but there’s also a print-only model in the mix, the WF-7310, which can handle paper up to 13 by 19 inches and offers two 250-sheet paper trays. Some of the AIO models offer similarly high paper capacities and maximum paper sizes, along with being able to scan at up to 11 by 17 inches. Others are limited to at most legal-size paper.

Epson WorkForce Pro WF-7310 Wireless Wide-Format
(Credit: Epson)

Epson LabelWorks: Industrial-Style Labels at Home or at Work

You’ll find the current set of Epson LabelWorks printers on their own site(Opens in a new window). All of the LabelWorks printers use industrial-style labels, meaning that most of the available tapes are plastic (polyester), though there are some other kinds as well, including vinyl and magnetic (similar to flexible refrigerator magnets), as well as some specifically for labeling cables.

Epson LabelWorks LW-PX400
(Credit: Epson)

The printers include models for both home use and work. They run all the way from the strictly standalone LW-PX300 (which requires typing label text on its own keyboard, and is limited to a maximum 0.71-inch-wide label tape) to the LW-Z5010PX, which can handle 2-inch-wide tapes and can create and print labels as a standalone printer or from a PC or mobile device. A nice touch for all of them is that Epson offers a lifetime warranty. Most offer a large choice of label types, which you’ll want to check before buying to make sure the printer can print the kinds of labels you need.

Epson LabelWorks LW-Z5010PX
(Credit: Epson)

Epson also offers two label-printer sub-brands that are outside the scope of this overview. ColorWorks printers deliver full-color labels on demand, for businesses that print enough to justify the printers’ prices, while the SurePress sub-brand covers the sort of digital label press that needs more floor space than a small family room.

So, What Is the Best Epson Printer to Buy?

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by all the Epson printers available, but you can cut the list down to a manageable size by finding the sub-brands most appropriate for your needs, before looking at details like paper handling or the copy and scan capabilities. We’ve picked the best Epson printers in multiple use cases, based on our tests and overall evaluations. For more options—from Epson and other manufacturers—check out our favorite inkjet printers and favorite printers overall, as well as our picks for the best photo printers, the best business printers, and the best wide-format printers.