Epson EcoTank L3260 Printer Review: High Quality, Low Cost per Page, and More

2024-02-06 09:51:46

God-EcoTank L3260 is a wireless all-in-one printer from Epson that promises “High-quality prints with an incredibly low cost per page“, according to the manufacturer. The printer includes a rear paper tray with a capacity of 100 sheets, borderless photo printing (up to 10×15 cm) and a printing speed of up to 10 pages per minute. More in the specification: a promise of significant savings in printing costs, a dedicated app with Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Direct connectivity.

convenience of use

Let’s start with the dimensions of the printer: height 17 cm, depth 34 cm and width 37 cm, or in other words, a home printer in every square meter, with data that will fit easily on most standard tables, without standing out too much. The weight of the printer is about 4.1 kg, certainly not a terrible weight compared to competitors in its category, certainly one that also incorporates additional functions beyond printing. In the center of the printer is a 1.4-inch color screen placed over an adjustable shelf and next to it are several buttons for operating the screen. As for the available connections, the printer offers a wired connection to the computer via a standard USB cable and also a Wi-Fi connection integrated into the case that allows you to print and scan wirelessly directly from a supporting device, whether it’s a laptop, smartphone or tablet, for example.

The Epson EcoTank L3260 printer. Photography: Liran Abdi

We installed the app on our smartphone Epson Smart Panel And we went to work. The initial synchronization between the cell phone and the printer was excellent and within a few minutes, not before installing a firmware update, we got down to business and started sending scan, copy and print commands. The responsiveness is also noteworthy; There are no excessive waiting times and orders usually arrive from the smartphone to the printer in a few seconds. With a wired connection, of course, the response times are much faster – but the matter is quite self-explanatory, how much more so if you sent a bulky PDF file for printing, for example, and at the same time the internet bandwidth is being used by other devices.

Epson EcoTank L3260 printer data. Photography: Liran Abdi

Although its outdated menus are reminiscent of user interfaces introduced about a decade ago, the application is still “operational”, responds well and includes the most common uses: quick access to printing, scanning and copying tasks, selection of page format and exported file format, and there is also the option of professional photocopying of documents. In terms of maintenance, you can also run an ink head cleaning and Nozzle Check operation directly from the application to make sure there are no clogged nozzles in the print head.

The Epson EcoTank L3260 printer. Photography: Liran Abdi

The Epson EcoTank L3260 printer. Photography: Liran Abdi

In terms of page compatibility, the L3260 supports several popular sizes such as A4, A5, A6, envelope, number 10 and also B5 – but there is no mention of A3, not even when manually feeding directly into the automatic feeder. The capacity of the paper tray is 30 sheets and the storage compartment has room for about 100 A4 pages. All in all, this is data that corresponds to the requirements of the standard house that prints pages from time to time, such as accounts, certificates, official pages, color booklets, etc. – but not beyond. The maximum paper weight that can be put into the printer is 300 grams, which is much more than the standard 64-80 grams that you probably put into the printer every day – and it’s always nice to find out that the printer can put unusual pages like Photo paperglossy/matte chrome, etc.

Switch to ink cartridges. In the Epson case, ink is provided in an amount that should be enough for up to 3 years, expressed in the printing of 8,100 pages in black and 6,500 pages in color – a significant amount at all, certainly if the printer will serve you with not too demanding use. During the review period we printed about 100 pages of text in black and white, another 50 pages of coloring books for children and another 20 color photos that filled most of the A4 pages. We were happy to find out that we were not able to use even 5% of the cartridges’ capacity, an excellent result that should indicate a long cartridge life, certainly if the printer was not under test and we would not squeeze more out of it than we actually wanted to print.

Print and scan quality

Let’s start with what the printer is capable of: the color and black printing quality stands at a resolution of 1440X5760DPI and the scanning quality supports a resolution of 2400X1200 pixels. First we printed a test page that reflects the print quality in several parameters; Printing texts up to 10pt has proven to be possible and very easy to read. When printing individual letters there were no color misses and in the Gradient test the color transitions were subtle, with a careful and elegant transition. In the Rainbow test, the printer demonstrated good isolation of colors, without colors spilling into adjacent stripes – and overall the basic test passed well.

The Epson EcoTank L3260 printer. Photography: Liran Abdi

We moved on to a slightly more challenging test and started printing full color images that claimed most of the A4 page space. We chose images with saturated tones; Jungle and space backgrounds, sports cars and screenshots captured while watching series. The results were far from perfect and most of our comments concerned a kind of slight “turbidity” that enveloped many of the images, a kind of pale effect that gives the images a more anemic appearance and one that reflects 70-80% of the true color that we viewed earlier on the screen, just before printing. It is also fair to return to reality and mention that the L3260 is not a photo printer or pretends to be one, so its capabilities in producing images with vivid colors that match the original should also be taken with a limited guarantee.

The Epson EcoTank L3260 printer. Photography: Liran Abdi

Print and scan speed

The manufacturer guarantees that the L3260 is able to print up to 33 A4 pages per minute and up to 15 colored A4 pages, of course all with 5% coverage, meaning a page that mainly reflects text on three quarters of the page. In other words, the guaranteed lab results do not reflect full color image printing, which can be assumed to take much longer. The manufacturer also guarantees that scanning an A4 page in black at a resolution of 200DPI will take about 11 seconds on average and scanning an A4 page in color at a resolution of 200DPI will take about 28 seconds on average.

In practice, the printing speed is not close enough to the promises and we managed to print 22-23 A4 pages with 5% text coverage – and we still came out very satisfied, certainly considering the home purpose of the printer and most probably the basic user will not need a higher speed than that. Regarding the scanning, since it is a manual scan, the speed of the scan depends largely on the user, apparently, although an average scan of a single A4 page usually takes 8-12 seconds and no more. In conclusion, even if they did not match Epson’s statement, the print, copy and scan times are quick and useful for a user who periodically prints or scans a few pages in their daily routine.

The Epson EcoTank L3260 printer. Photography: Liran Abdi

In conclusion

The EcoTank L3260 printer has a price tag of approx. 1,200 shekels, which may alienate users who are threatened by such a high price for a seemingly only “home printer”. But behind the EcoTank printer was revealed a super-efficient and economical ink system, easy and simple ease of use, support for an efficient application and Wi-Fi connectivity for printing from any device connected to the same wireless network. As mentioned, the one-time cost of the printer is indeed quite a bit higher than the competition, but if in the next three years you will not have to renew the ink supply, as our future promises, you will find that the deal is quite the same, if not even more profitable.

• join us on the Facebook page our or in the Telegram group For updates on everything new in technology, leisure and culinary.
• Looking to purchase something technological at sale prices? Welcome to follow the section “The deals of the giraffe״ here on the site, on the Facebook page andin the Telegram group.
• Full disclosure – some of the links posted above are sponsored links. Full disclosure and detailed explanation can be read Here
• The TV section is published according to the updates received from the content and broadcasting entities. Sometimes mistakes occur due to changes in the transmitter boards – we would be happy if you updated us for the benefit of the readers. The writer of the section rates only the contents he has watched, some of which can even be found a broad and detailed review by clicking on the name of the movie. For the list of streaming content in Israel: tinyurl.com/streaming-schedule
• T.L.H

Booking.com

we loved

• Relatively compact dimensions for the versatile usability it offers
• Prints quickly
• Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Direct support
• A practical application, even if it looks outdated
• Huge amount of ink for the home user

We liked less

• Faded color print quality for chapters
• Cannot scan using the automatic feeder
• Does not print on A3