Epson eco tank ET 18100 6 ink printer Generic equipment discussions · Peter · ... · 1 · 252 · 4

Hello all.

This is my first use thoughts on this amazing printer and i hope it is of some value to you if your looking for a new one.

A bit of history before we get to the ET18100 or the L18050 in certain countries.

This is not for sale in the USA for some reason 

Taking my printing to the next step after my trusty 11 year old Epson XP 960 printhead died.
It was a brilliant printer, though using genuine cartridges cost a fortune. I looked at the newer XP 970 which at £180.21 on Amazon. £199.99 direct from Epson is a bargain and i could use my ICC paper profiles as apart from a few improvements the printers are identical for printing. it's reduced from £249.99 at the moment of writing 26/1/2025 direct from Epson.

When you add in the cost of replacing the cartridges it again damages your wallet big time.
Standard 6 pack Black Cyan Magenta Yellow L-Magenta L-Cyan with a combined 29.1ml of ink is £71.99 and the XL pack with a combined 55.7ml of ink is £118.49 from Epson.
Your not going to get very many prints from either set. My average was 3x A3 and 10x A4 with XL set before i was looking at the empty ink warning.
So going with XL sets at my present rate I was using around 4-5 sets a year which with the purchase of the XP 970 printer is approximately £660-£778 plus the price of ink per following years.
That's huge amounts of cash which restricts the amount of prints you make. Which is why the cost of the 18100 makes more sense.

Epson ET 18100 is an Eco tank printer. It holds 70ml of Dye ink per colour which is Black Cyan Magenta Yellow L-Cyan L-Magenta. You get a full set of 6x 70ml bottles with the printer. Power lead CD/DVD and Identity/Business card print tray.

There is NO USB cable.

The price is £544.75 on Amazon and £649.99 direct from Epson reduced from £699.99 as of today 26/1/2025. Which as you can see is very cost effective considering you have 420ml of ink to start with which is 7.5 times as much as the XL set.

It's easy to fill. Each bottle is keyed to the specific ink filler so you can't use the wrong ink when filling. The price for each 70ml refill bottle is £9.99 or £59.94 for a full set direct from Epson. so a lot cheaper than a set of the standard cartridges on XP 960/970.
At the moment there is 10% off ink bottles until 31/1/2025 direct from Epson so I've bought 2 extra sets of ink.

The printer does not have a scanner. It does not have paper trays in the front. It only has a rear loader and can hold 80 sheets of standard paper and will take A3+ paper as well as the usual sizes. It can be used with A4 panoramic paper as well as 300mm x 300mm.

Epson states that 300gsm weight paper is the maximum you can use. There is a thick paper/envelope setting which i tried out on 350gsm Baryta paper for one of my ICC profiles and it came out fine. I use papers between 270gsm and 310gsm and as a rule of thumb I would stick to that range.

There is no roll paper attachment. The paper tray and back feed support are manual and if the paper out tray is not fully extended you get a orange warning light and you can't print. Just be aware of that.
The ink level is visible from the front of the printer and has 4 bar markers to show where the ink is but it's hard to see properly as it's not back lit.
The printer is made of plastic and the output tray and back feeder supports feel a bit flimsy but hold the paper solidly and at the moment don't slide in and out smoothly. That will change over time as i use it more. It's also a bit noisy when printing compared to my 960. Also be aware it can make clunking sounds when feeding the paper, It's a bit worrying the first few times but i got used to it.

The printer doesn't have a touch screen. That's not a big deal for me though it might be for you. You have a series of lights and 4 buttons on the front left panel. Once you have installed the drivers and software everything can then be done on screen. You must download drivers from Epson as it's not included with the printer. There is a piece of software that's not on the download page for some reason which is brilliant called Epson Print Layout. Download it from here.

https://www.epson.co.uk/apps-software/epson-print-layout

Another nice program is Epson Photo+ which is a handy print application. There are also mobile phone apps for iOS and Android 

Print speed using standard print or Bi-directional is about 10 seconds on A5. 20 ish on A4 depending on if your printing a photo or a document. I haven't tried A3 yet. Using high quality setting or single pass printing takes about a minute on A5 and around 90 seconds on A4 for a photo. I can't see much of a difference between either to be honest.

So far after initial setup which uses quite a bit of ink to fill the system, Does a nozzle check and a print test, plus me printing off 30 A5 test prints 14 A4 ICC profile targets and close to 30 A4 test prints of various images i have used 1 bar of ink and have 3 left before i need to fill it again. That's amazing.
I don't worry about printing now as the cost is down to pennies per print. Well not pennies but not much more for an A4 print.

This is a game changer for me. The print quality is stunning, I was so wound up with the Claria ink being superior on my XP 960 that i though the prints would be some how less vibrant. I can assure you they are amazing. I have included some scans at 800dpi to look at. They are printed on A5 and an A4 Lustre 300gms paper with icc profile through Epson Photo+ straight from a Jpeg or PNG  images that i have posted on here.

Thanks for reading this far.
Peter