I'm looking to buy a new printer... I have 3 kids so i guess i'll be printing some sheets with both text and images for school and recreational usage. Also my wife is an high school teacher so again some text documents with occasional graphics and images... and then there's me :), i'm getting a bit into amateur photography, so i would like to print some family photos here and there (Lots of activities with the kids...) and also some paperwork for work but mostly for personal uses.
So at first i was looking at an Epson Ecotank ET-3850 but i wasn't convinced by the photo quality... placing the price tag a bit higher i'm now looking at Epson Ecotank ET-5800 price difference to 5850) and Epson Ecotank ET-8550 (ET-8500 is also an option but it's only 50€ less).
ADF scanning is a nice gadget addon but i don't think it would be of much use, looking at our current usage i find myself using my phone camera as a "doc scanner" more than my now dead printer scanner. (It's faster and good enough for the purpose). Scanner was mostly used to make a copy or print/scan a document which needed to be physical signed.
I appreciate having auto double side printing and we use it a lot since it helps saving both paper and space.
I've read that the double side printing in the ET-8550 is often subject to smudges and imperfections, anyone can confirm these? What about regular text and graphics on the ET-8550 is it much worse than the ET-5800? I've looked at the tests, but since those are magnified i'm not sure how good/bad it look in real use case.
Based on these what would be your advice?
Thanks a lot and sorry my bad english :)