ICC profiles are a necessity when trying to achieve accurate colours with sublimation printing, and without their use the finished result will not be as desired. This has the added benefit of eliminating unsightly brown or orange tones on any of your sublimated items. Happily, the results were surprisingly good, with a lovely gloss finish on Epson’s own paper, and relatively decent shade control and colour accuracy. While I wouldn’t recommend this specifically as a photo printer, it’s more than capable of firing off great postcard-sized prints. They also offer the added ability to be used as a direct to garment ink in DTG printers making use of Epson Micro Piezo print head technology.

Canon’s system is much faster at printing photos, though. Printing six 10 x 15cm photos at high settings took more than 15 minutes on the ET-1810 and less than ten minutes on the G3501. HP’s photo printing is faster still, taking less than five minutes, but print quality isn’t as good.Due to the Ecotank that is built into the printer by Epson there is no need for any retrofitting of a CISS or RIC.

Included ink bottle yields based on the ISO/IEC 24712 pattern with Epson’s methodology. Actual ink yields will vary considerably for reasons including images printed, print settings, temperature and humidity. Yields may be lower when printing infrequently or predominantly with one ink colour. All ink colours are used for printing and printer maintenance, and all colours must be available for printing. For more information, visit www.epson.com/inkinfo Minimum Windows operating system required: Windows 10 (32/64 bit), 7 (32/64 bit), 8 (32/64 bit), 8.1 (32/64 bit), Server 2008 R2, Server 2012 R2, Server 2016, Vista (32/64 bit), XP Professional x64 Edition SP2 or later, XP SP3 or later (32-bit), Server 2003 R2, Server 2003 SP2 or later. Includes 4 x 65ml individual ink bottles (Bk, C, Y, M), Main unit, Power cable, Setup guide, Warranty document. It is also strongly recommended that all printers be used with the provided USB cable, even if the printer has a wireless function.

Printer

Manufactured for use in Epson printers, Sublinova Smart ink is designed to allow users to heat transfer images onto most synthetic materials. These include materials such as polyester, ceramic mugs, spandex, nylon, sublimation plates / slates, and a plethora of other sublimates.

Ink-tank printers don’t tend to be the fastest around and cheaper printers are generally slower than more expensive ones, so you might justifiably expect the Epson EcoTank ET-1810 to trail well behind the competition in terms of speed. On the other hand, if speed of printing is the most important thing on your list, consider the HP OfficeJet Pro 9022e. This doesn’t print such good-looking photos and is more expensive to run but it can churn out letters at twice the speed of the ET-1810.With no screen, this printer could be a fiddle to get onto a wireless network. I used a PC and the supplied drivers for the initial configuration, after which it was easy to find and install on other computers and smartphones. The only other thing of note is that, with big tanks at the front and paper trays front and rear, this printer requires about 40 x 70cm of desk space, which might be a little more than you’d expect from a basic, single-function device. Print Speed and Quality Compatible mobile device operating systems — for iOS: 11.0 or later; for iPadOS ®: OS 13.1 or later; for Android: 5.0 or later.

Making use of Ink Tec’s “dispersed technology” Sublinova Smart inks offer unrivalled print quality, also providing the added benefit of not clogging your printer head.

Ink Tec Sublinova Smart inks are one of the most renowned and high-quality sublimation inks available on the UK market. Happily, the EcoTank system isn’t just cheaper in the long-run. It seems to be idiot-proof, with safeguards against filling the wrong tanks. It also produces less plastic waste. My only criticism is that the ET-1810 comes with just a one-year warranty. It can take a couple of years for a refillable ink tank printer to prove better value – a longer warranty would provide the reassurance that you’ll get to that point. What you don’t get from the printer are many extras, with even scanning and copying falling by the wayside in Epson’s charge to a lower price. There’s no proper paper tray, with the rear feed being the only place you can store paper, and it won’t automatically flip a sheet and print on both sides, although it will help you do this manually.