Epson EcoTank ET-4956 review: Refillable and fully featured, this inkjet MFP is spot-on for home and micro offices

Epson's EcoTank ET-4956 is an inkjet multifunction peripheral (MFP) aimed at busy home workers and micro offices. It's a refillable device, meaning that instead of messing about with short-lived cartridges, it uses bottled ink that should last for several thousand pages. That's one less hassle in your own office, and a lot less if you're rolling out a fleet of printers to home workers. We're testing the ET-4956, which is white, but the ET-4950 is essentially an identical black version.

This is a compact and fairly attractive device, helped by its comparatively uncluttered control panel. Here you'll find a 2.4" (6.1cm) color touchscreen that looks after most of the day-to-day functionality. It's also where you'll encounter just about the only missing feature: this MFP has no USB host port, which limits what you can do without a computer. There's no wired Ethernet port either, just support for dual-band Wi-Fi, but this opens up various print-from and scan-to-cloud opportunities – arguably more flexible than USB host functionality anyway.

Regardless, the ET-4956 has just about everything else covered. In its base, there's an enclosed 250-sheet paper cassette, while on top, it has a 30-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF). Both this and the printer itself support duplex (double-sided) operation, so you can use them together to make double-sided copies of double-sided originals, or just for duplex prints, scans or faxes. The only thing missing here is a second paper tray, but it's not a major misstep.

As a refillable printer, the EcoTank ET-4956 has tanks to hold its black, cyan, magenta, and yellow inks. These arrive in a set of bottles that Epson says will last for around 5,500 color pages, and a huge 15,100 in black-only. In theory, that could last the lifetime of a lightly-used home device, in which case you'll have paid around 5.6p ex VAT for every full-color page, or 2p per black page. With the MFP itself thrown in.

Finish the bundled ink and replacement bottles work out at 0.5p per full-color page. That's about as cheap as printing gets. As with all ink tank printers, the major caveat is that the device costs more to buy in the first place: occasional users who wouldn't get through all the included ink may get a lower cost of ownership with a cartridge-based device. It's also important to note that the standard warranty is only one year – while we've no doubts about Epson's build quality, we prefer the reassurance of a long warranty on ink tank printers, which gives users reassurance they'll have time to recover the higher up-front cost. Fortunately, this MFP is currently available with a five-year warranty upgrade from some retailers.

Epson EcoTank ET-4956 review: Setting up

Epson has been making refillable inkjets for long enough that it's arrived at a painless setup process. We backed out of the prompts on the control panel to view the online setup guides: getting started is basically as simple as removing some tape and emptying the bottles into each tank. You can't misfuel the wrong colors, and you can't spill any ink – provided you're not tempted to squeeze the bottles.

Inkjets – and especially refillable ones – often have a one-off priming process before they're ready for first use. The ET-4956 inflicts a common irritation on you: there's no opportunity to join it to a wireless network before starting. That means 10 minutes spent twiddling your thumbs before the control panel finally lets you get on Wi-Fi and start installing any software on your computers. It's perhaps not a big issue on a single device, but potentially a major frustration if you're getting a whole department's worth ready to go.

One possible block here is that Epson's latest installer requires location permissions to search for and add new printers. If you've turned it off, and your remote users only have standard user accounts, you might need to change the setting temporarily for them to complete the install.

Fortunately, there are no other problems. This is a compact, home-oriented MFP, so it's light, and easy to find a home for in the typical home office. Freshly installed and loaded up with ink, it could be months before a user needs to even think about maintenance. Windows in the tanks give a quick reckoner on the remaining ink, and the driver issues regular reminders to check the level.

Epson EcoTank ET-4956 review: Printing, scanning, and copying

If you're expecting blistering performance, prepare to be gently let down: the Epson EcoTank ET-4956 prints at a fairly relaxed pace, and its photocopies are strictly casual. It could wake up and deliver a first page of text in just 11 seconds, before going on to reach 16.0 pages per minute (ppm) over 25 pages – not too far off its rated 18.0ppm, and certainly not bad for this class. In Draft print quality it managed to nudge 18.1ppm, but here faint print quality means the results are strictly for your eyes only.

As you'd expect, the ET-4956 was much slower on our graphics-intensive 24-page color test, but it still reached a respectable 5.1ppm over 24 pages. Printing in duplex, it managed 3.4 images (sides) per minute on the same document.

Single copies weren't too slow, with a black page completed in 11 seconds, and a color copy over in 24 seconds. However, with its ADF loaded with 10 sheets, the ET-4956 needed more than two minutes for a black copy, and more than three in color. We timed a 10 page, 20-sided colour duplex photocopy, which took just under seven minutes to complete. In part, that's down to this MFP's ADF, which duplexes by reclaiming originals for a second pass like a printer, rather than having two sensors for a single pass. It's a slower option, but at least it's good to have the feature – duplex multi-page copying is surprisingly rare.

Happily, the EcoTank ET-4956 gets more of a shift on when it comes to scanning. It completed a preview in nine seconds, and needed 21 seconds to capture an A4 page at either 150 or 300 dots per inch (dpi). In higher resolution work, it captured a 6x4" (15x10cm) photo in 35 seconds at 600dpi, and in 57 seconds at 1,200dpi.

There's no real weakness in any of the output from this MFP, but it's not exactly class-leading. Black text was crisp enough for formal and professional use, but while color graphics were fairly bold and authoritative on the page, they didn't exactly 'pop'. As is common on inkjets, duplexed prints were less strong, as by default the printer cuts back on density to help avoid smearing – you can tweak settings for this in the driver. Graphical prints had almost no banding or other imperfections, although those with sharper eyes might notice a trace of grain in some color fills.

This isn't a photo printer, but with dye-based inks it's capable of making a decent effort on coated papers. Prints lacked the definition and impact you'd get from a more creative-focused device, but they were still fine for casual and general-purpose use – such as running off a couple of family photos in between the usual diet of emails or documents. The exception to this was black and white shots, which lacked contrast, leaving them looking muddy and underwhelming. The ET-4956 is a competent copier, reproducing originals quite faithfully, but a little too dark by default.

Again, the best news comes from the scanner, which did a brilliant job of capturing both office documents and photos. In the former, effective exposure control enhanced the white of the paper, while capturing punchy colors and crisp text. Photos were also perfectly exposed, with highly accurate colors, and a wide dynamic range that saw detail preserved in the extremes of exposure.

Epson EcoTank ET-4956 review: Is it worth it?

Like other ink tank printers, Epson's EcoTank ET-4956 isn't really worth it if you print in very small volumes. With a higher up-front cost than a comparable cartridge-based inkjet, you'll only enjoy a lower cost of ownership if you'll print several thousand pages. However, many home printers will ease through that milestone during their lifetime, and one or two workers together in a micro office might comfortably print off a box or two of paper within a year.

This MFP is for them. Get through the bundled ink and it offers lower running costs than any comparable cartridge-based device. Print more still and it will prove incredible value. It's fortunate, then, that it doesn't have any real weaknesses: it's a decent printer, copier and scanner across the board, and it's well equipped for any home or micro office. Just be sure to buy it from a reseller offering the five-year warranty promotion.

Epson EcoTank ET-4956 specifications