Which ink does the Epson EcoTank ET-4850 use?

The EcoTank ET-4850 prints from bottles, so the answer to what ink it uses is Epson 502 rather than any cartridge number. Four tanks sit behind a window on the front, one each for black, cyan, magenta and yellow.

Not every EcoTank shares the 502. The older ET-4500 in our catalogue runs on Epson 664, and pouring the wrong family into a tank is not a mistake you can undo, so check the number against your own machine before ordering.

A 502 black bottle is $15.99 for 4500 pages, or 0.36c, and each colour bottle is $12.99 for 6000 pages, or 0.22c. The full set of four comes to $54.96. That is a little more than the $52.00 the older ET-4500 set costs, and the 664 black in that machine works out marginally cheaper per page at 0.33c despite carrying a lower page rating. The difference is too small to choose between the two printers on, and both run far below anything with cartridges in it.

Nothing on this printer can refuse a third party bottle, and on the tank side of Epson's range that comes from Epson rather than from us failing to find a lock. The footnote to its own Ink Yields page says EcoTank printers have been designed as an open system that does not prevent the use of non-OEM inkjet bottles. Epson writes no such sentence about its cartridge models. The same footnote does tie warranty cover to genuine ink, warning that non-genuine ink could cause damage the printer's limited warranty will not pay for. So the decision here is about carrying that risk on a print head built into the machine, and with genuine 502 already costing little, the saving on offer is small. Fill each tank to its upper line and keep one ink brand per tank.

Most complaints about this printer turn out to be about ink flow rather than the ink itself. Run the ink charging or cleaning cycle after a refill or a long idle spell before you judge the print quality, because air in the lines looks exactly like a bad bottle of ink. A nozzle check identifies which channel is blocked, and one or two cleans with a rest in between clear most of them. A printer that gets used every week or two rarely reaches the point of needing any of it.

A counter that has nothing to do with ink levels can still stop this printer. The ET-4850 carries a maintenance box, a replaceable cartridge of absorbent material that catches the ink spent on head cleaning, and Epson's guide for the model says that once it is full you cannot print or clean the print head until you replace it, though scanning still works. It is an owner swap on this model rather than a service visit, so keep a spare on the shelf beside the bottles. Every cleaning cycle fills it a little further, which is the argument for reading a nozzle check before you clean rather than after.