Buying an ink refillable printer is probably the best way to save ink and kiss goodbye to fiddly small cartridges!
The Epson EcoTank ET-2711 is a new breed of ink filling system printers that eliminate the need of having to change cartridges during long print runs, meaning you can leave the EcoTank ET-2711 printer running for a while without baby-sitting it.
With the EcoTank ET-2711, Epson takes a more logical approach where the inkjet printer costs more than the actual ink so the user ends up paying appropriately. Printing with the EcoTank ET-2711 is more economical on cost per print so, the initial higher cost of buying the EcoTank ET-2711 printer is easily offset against much lower running costs.
As far as construction, the body of the EcoTank ET-2711 has a thermoplastic matte finish, compact design (37.5cm long by ‎34cm wide), and lighter weight (3.9kg) than even the XP-422 printer. Saying this, the EcoTank ET-2711 printer has a taller footprint at 18cm high.
Built-in to the EcoTank ET-2711 printer, you get a standard output tray, which can hold 30 sheets of A4 paper but, no input paper tray in the rear other than a paper feeder, which is undersized so paper warps backwards.
The rear paper feeder in in the EcoTank ET-2711 printer is nowhere as practical as having a proper paper tray like in the XP 15000 Expression, which can be used as a paper storage tray.
The printing speed of the Epson EcoTank ET-2711 is as fast as the XP-422 and XP-15000 inkjet printers, so you can produce 30 or so prints in black ink per minute and 15 color pages per minute, using 75 g/m2 plain A4 paper.
When printing using glossy paper, the EcoTank ET-2711 can produce 2 pages per minute. The overall speed may not be the fastest but the printing process is not too loud.
Speaking of photo printing, the EcoTank ET-2711 printer uses a drop-on-demand (DoD) piezoelectric printhead, which is the exact same print head found in all Epson inkjet printers, including the XP 15000 Expression and the Expression Home XP-422. The printer head is an integral part of any inkjet printer and responsible for delivering ink onto paper via tiny spray nozzles.
For volume photograph printing, it's worth considering a dedicated machine like the FastFoto FF-680W because the Epson EcoTank ET-2711 is better suited for home office and school project document printing than printing color photos. The overall print quality sharpness and the somewhat visible inkjet tracking dots doesn't make this printer ideal for professional photo printing.
As well as a printer, the Epson EcoTank ET-2711 is also a contact image sensor (CIS) flatbed scanner with a 90-degree lift-off lid. The scanner is capable of  2400x 1200 dpi single-sided A4 paper scans in both black ink (10 pages per minute) and color ink (2 pages per minute).
Scanning speed is decent, but nowhere the blistering speed you get from a dedicated scanner like the WorkForce DS-870, which can scan 65 pages per minute. The scan output formats supported by the EcoTank ET-2711 include BMP, JPEG, PICT, TIFF, multi-TIFF, PDF, and PNG.
Included in the box are a set of four 104 Ecotank ink bottles, including black (BK), magenta (M), cian (C) and yellow (Y). Each bottle contains 65ml of ink
The 104 EcoTank inks are compatible with any Epson printer that uses refillable ink cartridges or a continuous ink system.
The 104 Ecotank ink bottles have an easy to pour design with a funnel tip that fits precisely into the EcoTank's ink filling spout, preventing ink spillages. Once the funnel tip of the bottle is inserted, the ink naturally flows into the ink reservoir of the printer without having to squeeze the bottle.
Because of the ink tank design, you can't fill the ink tanks of the EcoTank ET-2711 with anything other than 104 EcoTank bottle inks, but the lid can be taken off so you can refill the bottles with more ink.

The 104 Ecotank ink bottles have a very impressive "page yield" estimate, which according to Epson can enable the EcoTank ET-2711 to print approximately 4,000 pages using black ink and 7,000 pages using color ink.
These are very impressive numbers compared to the average an inkjet printer ink cartridge and laser toner cartridge can produce which is 200 and 10,000 pages respectively.
It's worth keeping in mind though, that ink estimates by manufacturers are produced according to the ISO (the International Organisation for Standardisation) 5% standard.
The Epson EcoTank ET-2711 is an inkjet printer so it uses the 5% standard (ISO/IEC 24711:2006) by printing half a page of an A4 sheet of paper with 1 1/2-inch margins on each edge, using normal sized text and no borders.
Realistically, the average person will use more ink per sheet of paper especially when printing images on glossy paper, using bold fonts and borders which, believe it or not, nearly doubles the ink you use. The font you use also makes a difference to the amount of ink consumed and according to tests, the Calibri font is the most ink-friendly of fonts to use.

Another argument that can be made regarding ink yield is that a regular ink cartridge only holds 11ml of ink, which is true but, even  65ml worth of cartridge ink could technically manage 1320 pages, which is still far behind what the EcoTank ET-2711 can produce. Even then, as stated earlier the page yields quoted by manufacturers depends on your printing lifestyle.
Regardless of page yields, the Epson EcoTank ET-2711 does make volume printing and regular printing a lot easier because the ink tank reservoirs can hold dozens of cartridges worth of ink.
Also, because you don't actually have to replace cartridges, you won't have to deal with dreaded ink cartridge messages nor having to reach inside the printer since the ink tank reservoirs in the EcoTank ET-2711 are front-facing.
AirPrint is supported by the Epson EcoTank ET-2711, which means you can send documents wirelessly with an iOS device, as well as Windows computers running Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 7 (64-bit version), Windows 8 (32/64 bit), Windows 8.1, Windows 8.1 (64-bit Edition), Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012 R2.
To print using AirPrint, all you need is an Apple mobile device like an iPhone or iPad that is connected to the same Wifi network as the EcoTank ET-2711 printer. AirPrint does not require printer-specific drivers but your Apple device must be running Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later.
You can essentially print from a computer or mobile device (via Wifi Direct) that is connected to your home Wifi, as well as print via USB cable.
A USB AB cable is not included though, which is required when first setting up the wireless functionality of the Epson EcoTank ET-2711 printer. A software CD is included in the box, which  guides you through the setup process.
A mobile software app, called Epson iPrint, is also available to allow you to print (photos, documents) from your mobile device, as well as scan, print from cloud, and document capture which lets you quickly digitize physical documents. Buy it.