Is the Epson F170 sublimation printer any good?

Updated June 18, 2026

For a first sublimation printer, yes — the F170 is the safe pick. It ships with Comes with a full set of OEM Epson sublimation inks, certified ECO PASSPORT by OEKO-TEX and a warranty, and new owners report fantastic prints fast — Got the printer a week ago and have printed something every day so far and the quality of the prints have been fantastic. The limits are real: it is sublimation-only, prints 8.5 inches wide, and never touches documents or photos.

Start with what the machine actually is, because that decides whether it suits you. The SureColor F170 is a dedicated dye-sublimation printer, not an all-purpose inkjet — Epson certifies it certified ECO PASSPORT by OEKO-TEX for safe use on textiles, apparel, mugs, mousepads and nothing it prints is meant for plain paper. Sublimation is a phase change, not ink on a surface: heat turns the solid dye to gas, the gas bonds into polyester, and the colour becomes the material. The mechanics of dye sublimation printer ink and polyester bonding are why the F170 prints transfers a heat press finishes, never a document you read. We lay the whole method out — and the cheaper conversion route — in our guide to sublimation inkjet printers.

SureColor F170

Sublimation ink + tray

The case for it is reliability out of the box. New sublimators report it working from day one — one owner said The Epson F170 has been ideal for getting started with sublimation., and another, running it hard, called it perfect for the job: Using my printer almost everyday since Im starting on a sublimation project. It is sold clean too — Original Epson Manufactured product delivered in Epson’s factory-sealed packaging with the full warranty — and the bottle ink loads tidily: Includes ink bottles with auto-stop technology for clean, mess-free refills. For a side business, owners frame it plainly: It is an affordable and nice printer for those how wants to start a sublimation printer business.

The case against it is the ceiling, not the quality. It prints letter-width only, so a banner or a large jersey is out of reach, and it does one job — load it and it is a sublimation machine forever. A reviewer pressing transfers also has to budget for the heat press the F170 never includes: sublimation needs a held 385-400°F across the image, not a printer setting. The honest test is your project list: mugs, cases and polyester shirts, and the F170 is the right buy; a do-everything home printer, and it is the wrong one. If framed photos on paper are the real goal, a six-ink photo printer beats any sublimation rig — see our Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8500 review or the wider best photo inkjet printers roundup, both ranked on print quality and cost per print.

What is the Epson SureColor F170 used for?

Heat-press sublimation, and nothing else. It prints transfers a heat press then gasses into polyester apparel and poly-coated hard blanks — mugs, phone cases, mousepads, aluminium photo panels. It is not a document or photo printer, so it will not replace a home all-in-one. Buy it as a dedicated craft and small-business tool, not a do-everything machine.

Honestly, that single-purpose nature is the whole point — and the whole limit.

Epson aims it at one buyer and says so: Perfect for hobbyists, crafters, and small business owners. The output is the transfer, not the finished item — paper comes off the printer, the heat press turns it into the mug or shirt. Owners use it well past apparel, too: one bought it and reported Just grabbed a F170 myself and it’s been great so far! while sublimating onto aluminium plates. The design protects the print before pressing — it Includes a 150-sheet auto-feed tray for added efficiency. in a dust-resistant closed tray, so specks do not ruin a transfer. The point to hold onto: this prints onto polyester and poly-coatings, never plain paper, so it earns a place beside a regular printer, not instead of one.

Is the Epson F170 good for beginners?

It is the cleanest on-ramp into sublimation. The F170 arrives with genuine Epson sublimation ink, ICC profiles matched to its own hardware, and an intact warranty — the three things a converted EcoTank makes you supply or forfeit. One setup gotcha trips first-timers, but past that owners call it ideal for getting started.

Here’s the thing: a beginner’s real enemy in sublimation is colour management, and the F170 removes most of it. Its profiles are built in for its own ink and paper, so prints land close to right without hand-tuning — the unpaid work a converted machine forces on you. The one stumble owners report is a manual setup step: you download a current print driver from Epson SureColor sublimation printer support to expose every sublimation print setting, because the default install hides some. Miss it and the settings look thin; do it and the workflow opens up. We track this kind of setup-and-risk gotcha model by model in our safety and known-risks guidance.

What is the best Epson printer to use for sublimation printing?

For a first machine, the SureColor F170 — It will be fully warrantied and supported by Epson for Dye Sublimation. The DIY alternative is a converted Piezo-head EcoTank like the ET-2800, which one crafter rates higher on hard substrates. Sublimation tops out near 300 DPI, so match print width to your heat press, not the printhead spec.

There is no single right answer here — only a right answer for your budget and nerve.

So the answer splits by what you value. The F170’s edge is official support — it is the first desktop Epson warrantied for dye sublimation, which a converted machine forfeits the moment you load third-party ink. The conversion’s edge is price and hard-substrate output: a crafter who owns both put it bluntly — The ET2800 has better quality output on hard substrates and costs half as much. — while keeping the F170 as the safe pick for textiles. The base machine that conversion uses is the same one our Epson EcoTank ET-2800 review covers as a document supertank. The resolution spec is mostly a red herring, because you won't be going above 300 DPI, so any epson printer will do. — and sublimation only bonds onto fabric that is at least 60% polyester regardless of which printer lays the ink. The real decider is heat-press size and how much risk you want to own. We break the buy-it-purpose-built versus repurpose-it decision down across the catalog in our type-versus-type tradeoffs analysis.

Factory-warrantied

Compact footprint

What size print is the SureColor F170 dye-sublimation printer?

Letter-width — 8.5 inches wide. That covers mugs, phone cases, mousepads, and the odd polyester shirt, but caps you below the oversized transfers a banner or large jersey needs. The print width, not the printhead, is the ceiling that makes a busy shop step up to a wide-format model. Match it to your heat-press size before you buy.

Width is the F170’s honest constraint, and it is worth sizing up before you commit. An 8.5-inch transfer suits the bread-and-butter sublimation list — mugs, cases, mousepads, aluminium panels, single-front shirt designs — but a full-back jersey print or a banner runs wider than the machine can lay down in one pass. That is the line where a shop outgrows it and looks at a wide-format SureColor like the F570. For a starter, though, the smaller width is rarely the thing that bites first — running out of patience with volume usually comes before running out of width. Even a shop trading down from pricier gear has found the swap painless: We switched to F170s after using Sawgrass for years, no regrets.

Add it up and the F170 is good at exactly one thing, which is the right way to read it. For an entry sublimation crafter who wants factory ink, matched profiles, and a warranty that survives the first year, it is the safe buy — the owner record is full of fantastic-out-of-the-box prints and shops happy they switched. For anyone wanting a printer that also does homework, shipping labels, or framed photos, it is the wrong tool, because it does none of them. Match it to a polyester-and-poly-coating project list and an 8.5-inch heat press, and the F170 earns its place; mismatch it to a do-everything wish list, and the single-purpose design becomes the headline. That one question — is sublimation the actual job — settles whether this printer is any good for you.