Save for the earlier WorkForce Pro WF-R4640 EcoTank, it's difficult to find a proper head-to-head competitor for the WorkForce Pro ET-8700 EcoTank All-in-One Supertank Printer ($999.99).
This big inkjet is different from most other Epson EcoTank printers in that it uses large ink bags, rather than reservoirs you refill from bottles.
It's a higher-end, higher-volume all-in-one (AIO) designed for midsize to large offices and workgroups.
It's a snappy-enough printer for an office inkjet, the output quality is quite good, and you can't beat its ultra-low running costs, making it a top-notch machine within its class.
It comes up just short on the oomph, in terms of speed and rated monthly volume, though, needed to nudge it into an Editors' Choice slot as a midsize business AIO.
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A Leaner, More Streamlined Supertanker
While the WorkForce Pro ET-8700 has many things in common with the WF-R4640 ($2,248.88 at Amazon) , this latest model really is an all-new design, starting with the deployment of the ink bags.
The previous iteration, a big beast of a machine, comes with large, saddlebag-like attachments on each side.
The left side holds a large bag full of black ink, and the right side holds three slightly smaller cyan, magenta, and yellow ink bags.
(Think of those foil juice bags that kids take to school in their lunch kits.)
The older model's bags hold significantly more ink than the ET-8700's, but the overall design is wholly different.
The newer bags have been deployed at the bottom front of the chassis in a much tidier, more compact space, using drawers.
That said, the ET-8700 delivers the same low running cost, which is a more important factor for most users than where the ink bags reside.
With this more streamlined configuration, the ET-8700 measures 17.7 by 22.8 by 16.7 inches (HWD) and weighs 40.6 pounds.
That's several inches smaller in all directions than the WF-R4640, and 12 pounds lighter.
It's difficult to find direct competitors to the ET-8700, but some higher-end, higher-volume models come close, including a few midrange to high-volume color laser AIOs, such as the Editors' Choice Dell Color Smart Multifunction Printer S3845cdn.
Compared with the ET-8700, though, it's several inches taller and wider, and it weighs more than twice as much.
Another key competitor, the HP PageWide Pro 577dw Multifunction Printer, is a high-end inkjet AIO much closer in size to the ET-8700.
(It weighs only 8 pounds more.)
Also close in size (but about 11 pounds heavier) is the Brother MFC-J6935DW ($1,081.06 at Amazon) , a formidable top pick among inkjet AIOs that delivers a key advantage over these aforementioned models: It can print, scan, and copy tabloid-size (11-by-17-inch) pages.
While the ET-8700's 30,000-page maximum monthly duty cycle (and much lower 1,500-page recommended print volume) is a bit meager for a higher-end, business-centric AIO like this one, the printer does feature impressive paper handling.
Out of the box, it holds 330 sheets, split between a 250-sheet drawer and an 80-sheet tray that pulls out from the back of the chassis.
If that's not enough, you can add a 500-sheet cassette for $199.99, for a total of 830 sheets, which makes that duty cycle and recommended print volume seem even smaller still.
In addition, the ET-8700 comes with a 50-sheet auto-duplexing automatic document feeder (ADF), although the duplexer is not single-pass.
The WF-R4640's initial paper capacity right out of the box, in contrast, is 580 sheets from two 250-sheet drawers and an 80-sheet rear tray.
But bear in mind that that printer is not expandable, and its ADF holds only 35 pages.
In a bit of seeming irony, its duty cycle is 15,000 pages higher than the ET-8700's.
Dell's color-laser competitor, meanwhile, is in a whole other league.
The S3845cdn's ($1,499.99 at Amazon) duty cycle is 50,000 pages higher than the ET-8700's, and its standard paper capacity is about double, expandable to 1,250 sheets.
It, too, has a 50-page ADF, though it supports single-pass duplexing (scanning both sides of a page in one stroke).
Likewise, the HP PageWide 577dw's ($899.89 at Amazon) duty cycle is also 50,000 pages higher than that of the ET-8700, and its out-of-the-box paper capacity is 220 sheets higher and is expandable to 1,550 sheets; its 50-sheet ADF is also single-pass.
And in the case of the the Brother MFC-J6935DW, you get a 50-sheet wide-format ADF that does single-pass, too.
(Its duty cycle is the same as the ET-8700's, and its paper capacity is 270 sheets greater.) In sum, the ET-8700's deep paper capacity and long-between-swaps ink arrangement aren't matched by its low suggested monthly printing specs.
Finally, there's the ET-8700's spacious, easy-to-use control panel, which consists of a handful of buttons and an alphanumeric keypad.
All of this is anchored by a 4.2-inch color touch screen.
These buttons constitute a new configuration I've seen on a few recent business-oriented AIOs from Epson, and it seems quite practical.
Setup and Connectivity
Normally, I don't dote much on printer setup, unless it is somehow unusual.
Setting up the Epson ET-8700 is, in a few ways.
First, it comes out of the box strapped down with loads of tape and other packing material, mostly cardboard and foam.
It takes a while to get all of that removed, and between that and the packaging for the ink bags, you end up with a big pile of trash.
But what is particularly different is installing the ink packs.
The ink bags themselves come packaged inside heavy cardboard boxes and two heavy plastic bags.
Once you've extracted them from all of that, to install them you open a compartment at the bottom front of the chassis, where you'll find four drawers, one for each color.
To open each drawer, you push it in slightly, and it pops out; then, you lay the ink bag in the drawer and slide the drawer back into the printer.
This is completely different from the WF-R4640's saddlebags, which hang vertically.
The lying-in-drawers method seems to work fine, and it does, after all, shave a lot of width from the chassis.
Connectivity consists of five primary means: gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi, connecting to a single PC via USB, Wi-Fi Direct, and Near-Field Communication (NFC).
NFC, of course, is touch-to-print technology where you simply touch your smartphone or tablet to a hotspot to connect to the printer.
On this printer, the spot is to the left of the display.
You also get support for Google Cloud Print, Android printing, Fire OS printing, Mopria Print Service, and Epson Connect.
The last consists of the following mobile apps: Epson Email Print, Epson Remote Print, Epson Scan to Cloud, and Epson iPrint (iOS and Android).
And you can print from and scan to a USB thumb drive via the port located on the left side of the chassis.
Speedy Enough for Office Work
Given the Epson ET-8700's price, its rated print speed of 24 pages per minute (ppm) is a little slow, but it's passable.
I tested it over Ethernet from our standard Intel Core i5-equipped testbed PC running Windows 10 Professional.
It printed our 12-page Microsoft Word text document at 23.7ppm, essentially tying its rating.
Unfortunately, both the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-R4640 and HP PageWide 577dw were tested under a previous testing methodology and therefore impossible for us to compare here.
The Dell S3845cdn, however, printed the same pages at 34.7ppm, and Brother's MFC-J6935DW managed 16.5ppm.
See How We Test Printers
When I combined the results from the previous 12-page Word document test with those from printing our color PDF, Excel, and PowerPoint documents heavily laden with business graphics and photos, the ET-8700's print speed dropped to 15.9ppm, which isn't bad for this portion of our test.
The much more robust S38545cdn, for example, slowed down to 15.3ppm, and the MFC-J6935DW managed 12.2ppm.
While this isn't a photo printer, I also timed it as it printed my colorful and detailed 4-by-6-inch test snapshots.
On average, it managed a brisk 11 seconds, or 1 second faster than the S3845cdn and 3 seconds slower than the MFC-J6935DW.
Smart-Looking Output
Like other Epson WorkForce and WorkForce Pro AIOs, the ET-8700 uses the company's PrecisionCore print chips in its printhead, meaning that the ink nozzles are smaller and more tightly spaced than the nozzles on most other inkjet printers (except HP's PageWide models).
It prints laser-quality text consisting of tight, well-shaped characters at all sizes.
Graphics, too, are terrific-looking, with no banding in dark fills and backgrounds.
Gradients in the test graphics appeared very well delineated, too.
I also liked the ET-8700's brilliantly colored and detailed photo output, except in one aspect: This printer can't print borderless photos or documents.
That's unusual for an inkjet, even an Epson WorkForce Pro AIO.
(Laser printers, as well as HP's PageWide models, are similarly unable.) Hence, all your photos and documents must have at least a quarter-inch margin around them, which, in this case, is a shame.
Why? Because this AIO prints well enough to create keeper-quality photos and stellar marketing material.
Both types of output often look much better—and appear more professional and refined—when printed in borderless fashion.
Including borderless printing would have been a nice touch.
Low, Low Running Costs
EcoTank printers, of course, have very low running costs; that's much of the point of bulk-ink-delivery arrangements like this.
When you buy and use Epson's highest-yield black-ink bag, your cost per page comes out to 0.9 cent per monochrome page and 2.4 cents each for color pages, which is among the lowest in the business.
(In contrast to the black ink, Epson offers the three color bags in only one size.) In addition, the ET-8700 comes with what Epson estimates is two years' worth of ink in the box—three sets of the standard-capacity ink bags, for a total of 16,000 monochrome pages or 11,000 color pages.
That comes out to 667 black pages per month, which, frankly, is barely enough to make this AIO a good value.
Actually, the closer you get to its 1,500-page recommended monthly volume (and the further you shoot beyond it), the better a deal it is.
The good news is that, compared to the ones for the WorkForce Pro WF-R4640, the ink bags themselves aren't that expensive: $24.99 each for the color 5,000-page bags (you'll need three) and $89.99 for the high-yield (10,000-page) black bag; a half-size 5,000-page black bag costs $49.99.
Again, keep in mind that with EcoTank printers, the more you print, the better the value, taken against its competitors.
Speaking of which, the Dell S3845cdn's running costs are half a cent higher than the ET-8700's for monochrome pages and 6.5 cents higher for color, and the HP PageWide 577dw's cost per page is a tenth of a cent lower than the Dell model's for both black and color pages.
The Brother MFC-J6935DW's running costs, on the other hand, are a tenth of a cent higher than the ET-8700's for black pages and 2.3 cents higher for color.
But, again, remember that that model can print wide-format pages, whereas the others here do not.
If that matters to your office, that may be the deal-maker or deal-breaker.
A Quality Pro With Low TCO
I have only two quibbles with the WorkForce Pro ET-8700.
The first is that it needs a higher monthly duty cycle and recommended print volume to match the hardware and the ink scheme.
That would allow you to take better advantage of its bargain-basement running costs.
And second, it would be a more versatile machine if it supported borderless printing, allowing you to print a wider range of documents.
The latter, in fact, would give it a leg up on all laser printers, as well as HP's PageWide inkjets.
Otherwise, this Epson machine is a superb higher-end business printer that is more than suitable for mid-volume printing in a medium-size to large office or workgroup—especially if you push it to its limit month after month, taking full advantage of its two-year warranty.
(You get the second year with product registration.) This printer gets better the more that you use it.
