Epson B-510DN Ink Jet Printer Review

Using the Epson B-510DN

A two-line monochrome LCD screen can be seen on the right side of the face of the printer, as you can see in Figure 9. The LCD screen is used for status updates, menu choices, and ink levels.

Figure 9: The screen and control buttons

The ink and paper status lights near the top of the front of the printer can also be seen in Figure 9. To the right of that is the power light. Under the screen are the power button and the cancel button. The cancel button can be used to stop a print job or to exit from a menu choice. Menus and settings can be accessed using the four-way keypad which has an OK button in the middle for confirming menu choices.

Under the cancel button is an unusual icon that looks like a white ink drop with a bracket under it. This signifies what Epson calls the “Maintenance Box.” Just under this icon is the door that opens for replacement of the maintenance box. The maintenance box collects stray ink during priming and printing and must be replaced every 35,000 pages.

In using this printer, three things stand out:

1. It is a heavy-duty printer rated for a monthly duty cycle of 20,000 pages. The size of the paper trays and print cartridges support this product
’s heavy-duty status.

2. It is a speedy printer. Its 32 MB of RAM and straightforward paper path combine to make it remarkably fast. Our plain text documents printed faster than 14 pages per minute. We were able to print three 4-by-6-inch color photos in about 1 minute. The printer is rated for a maximum of 37 ppm black and color, and ISO print speeds of 19 ISO (black) or 18 ISO (color).

3. The cost of consumables is one of the lowest we’ve seen for an ink jet printer. The duplexer saves on paper while ink costs are kept low by high-yield and extra-high-yield ink cartridges and an excellent draft mode.

The third point is especially impressive. The standard-capacity cartridges that come with the printer are good for approximately 3,000 pages for black and 3,500 for each color. Standard-capacity cartridges cost USD 40 for black and USD 50 apiece for the three colors. So using standard-size supplies, the cost comes out to about USD 0.013 per page for black and USD 0.014 for each color. That means that a full-color page would cost USD 0.056.

Higher-capacity cartridges have even higher yields. High-yield black ink comes in at USD 0.012 per page, high-yield color costs USD 0.009, and extra high-yield black costs USD 0.0087. Even if you factor in the cost of the “Maintenance Box” at USD 17.50 for each 35,000 pages, this printer offers ink costs that can rival color lasers with costs as low as USD 0.009 per black and USD 0.035 per color page.

The draft mode is especially speedy and cost-effective. Unlike the draft mode in some ink jets, the B510 DN produces readable text in black print with identifiable graphics.

We found the print quality of this Epson printer to be very good. However, it is not as good as some. A close inspection of the text shows it to be not quite as crisp as some of the other printers we have reviewed. Put under a magnifying glass next to the black text output from the Brother HL-2140 laser or the recently-reviewed HP Office Jet Pro 800, the B-510DN’s output looked a trifle fuzzy.

The same holds true for color documents and photos. While the color prints from this printer are good, you can find better. Although this printer is not advertised as a photo printer, it can do an adequate, but not perfect job, with photos on photo paper. One caveat is that it cannot produce borderless prints.

The B-510DN has all the functions that you would expect to find in a business-class printer including collating, reverse order printing, fit-to-page, and watermarking functions. The color palette can be either Epson Vivid or Adobe RGB. Although most people no longer use it, it may be worth mentioning that it has no PCL or PostScript emulation.