The Epson EcoTank ET-3950 is arriving ahead of the back-to-school season with a single selling point: refillable ink tanks instead of cartridges, and enough factory-loaded ink to last roughly three years.
Rather than buying and discarding cartridges, users refill the printer’s built-in tanks from ink bottles. Epson says the ink in the box covers about 15,100 black pages and 5,500 color pages, which the company describes as roughly three years of home use, enough for multiple academic years of school printing without returning to the store.
Epson puts the saving at up to 95 percent less per page compared with cartridge printing, a figure that comes from the manufacturer. The printer is also currently discounted, an uncommon occurrence for a machine built to last years rather than months.
What Changed From the ET-3850
Compared with the ET-3850 it replaces, the ET-3950 prints at 18 pages per minute in black and 9 in color, measured under ISO standards. The more significant upgrade is in the document feeder. The 30-sheet automatic feeder now scans both sides of a page in a single pass, so a stack of double-sided documents can be digitized without manually turning each sheet.
Within the EcoTank lineup, lower models lack both the two-sided feeder and a wired Ethernet port. The ET-4956 above matches the factory ink supply and adds further features. The ET-3950 sits at the tier where most households stop needing extras. The nearest competitor is the HP Smart Tank 7307, which also uses refillable tanks, offers a 35-sheet feeder, and comes with three years of ink.
Connectivity
The ET-3950 connects via dual-band Wi-Fi compatible with mesh home networks and has an Ethernet port for a wired setup beside a router. iPhone users can print directly through AirPrint, and Epson’s app finds the printer on the home network for smartphone control. At least one current owner said the printer was simply the best they had used in a long time and that they found it wonderful.
For a home with students printing from September through June, the practical appeal is less about speed and more about not needing to run out for a replacement cartridge the night before an assignment is due. The ET-3950 is designed to be bought once and used across several school years.
