Epson B-510DN Ink Jet Printer Review

Setup & Hardware

The B-510DN is a capable professional printer. As such, you will immediately see that the design emphasis is on efficiency rather than good looks. As you can see in Figure 5, the printer is a large two-tone rectangular device. The front and part of the top are in black while the top and sides are very light gray. The paper tray juts out in the front, so the printer itself requires quite a bit of desk or table space. The ink-cartridge bay which can be seen on the left also protrudes from the face of the printer, making it look a bit awkward.

Figure 5: The Epson B-510DN

Setting up the printer through a USB connection is easy, all you need to do is follow the instructions. The ink cartridges slide into slots behind the door on the left front of the printer and lock into place, as shown in Figure 6. The software disk includes drivers and utilities for all versions of Windows and Mac. The User’s Guide is available in the software disk or online.

Figure 6: The ink cartridge bay

This printer can also be setup through Ethernet and the network setup instructions were included. You will have to supply your own cable for use with this printer, as neither a USB nor Ethernet cable is included. We tested the printer on a network as well as on several computers with different Windows versions and it worked well in all cases.

If you don’t want to be constantly bothered by having to add paper to your printer, this Epson will be perfect. The main input tray holds an entire ream (500 sheets) of paper. The tray at the top of the printer, shown in Figure 7, holds another 150 sheets or can be used to feed in envelopes or labels.

Figure 7: Top paper tray

The back of the printer is shown in Figure 8. This is where you see the useful duplexing unit that is included with the printer, and allows you to automatically print on both sides of each paper sheet. The duplexer can be easily removed to clear paper jams and there are pictorial stickers that will walk you through that process. In our testing, we had no paper jams of any type.

Figure 8: The back of the printer

Just to the left of the duplexing unit you can see the Ethernet and the USB ports, and the power cable connection is near the bottom of the rear of the unit (see Figure 8).