Has Epson produced a laser-beater for offices? The reliance on inkjet rather than laser printing tech here looks like a gamble that’s paid-off. The B-510DN  has excellent quality colour printing, making it a rather rare appearance on an office printer that otherwise sticks to the basics – and delivers these abilities in a speedy and good value manner. 

Core features

There's a lot to like about the B-510DN, not least its features that large offices will insist upon. A total of 650 sheets of A4 paper can be stored within the B-510DN (150 in a rear tray, which also takes photo paper, and 500 in the lower front tray). This in turn cuts down on maintenance, while a maximum monthly cycle of 20,000 pages ought to go down well at work. An automatic duplexing feature also adds to the efficiency and the eco credentials of the B-510DN, which in itself has a high 5760x440dpi print resolution. Quality, not versatility, is the B-510DN’s brief. 

Measuring 480x489x312mm, the hefty B-510DN weighs in at a mighty 10.7kg and isn't designed to have the sleek requirements of a consumer printer. Far from it, as well as a paper tray that protrudes from the product's bottom just a little too far, the B-510DN's ink cartridges are stored in a compartment that also protrudes a little too much.

Missing in action

There are plenty of features that make the B-510DN a real one-of-a-kind, but online antics aren't one of them. Epson's 2011 crop of printers allow cloud printing, with smartphone and tablet apps with remote printing via email. The B-510DN's only online dimension is its ability to be networked via Ethernet LAN. There’s no Wi-Fi, although the B-510DN was instantly accessible on our iMac after being attached to a broadband router – with the necessary software being automatically downloaded, prior to the first print job commencing. 

As well as the missing online apps and Wi-Fi – the latter almost expected, especially on a printer of this price – the B-510DN doesn't have a multimedia card reader or USB slot, a scanner/copier or a touchscreen. Instead of the latter, is a two-line LCD mono screen that is rudimentary and thoroughly old fashioned. We're surprised to see such convenience features left off the B-510DN, but we're also aware that many of them will not be welcome in a lot of workplaces, and particularly in the kind of big corporate environments this printer is designed for. 

Speed & print quality

The B-510DN is fast. In our tests, after around nine seconds of communication between an iMac and the B-510DN, a four-page mono document took just 17 seconds to produce – a touch over four seconds per page. Text is sharp and well defined, but it's not a quiet process. The B-510DN will behave fine in a large open plan office, but we wouldn't want it near a workstation. 

A mixed four-page document of text and colour graphics took 01:38, so it's with high-volume mono that the B-510DN excels in terms of speed, but the quality of colour is not in doubt. A 6x4 photo, was issued in 19 seconds, lacked ultimate detail, but for an office printer it was remarkably good. However, all is not well with duplex printing; despite – and probably because of – its high speed, we experienced several paper jams during our test. Density and drying times can be manually tweaked. 

Ink & costs

The B-510DN uses Epson's DURABrite Ultra inks, and if you stick to the highest yield cartridges there's an opportunity to create a good value performance. Opting for the 8,000 page-capable extra-high-capacity black (T6181) calculates to a puny cost of just 0.7p per mono page, with full colour costing 2.5p (these figures don't include paper costs). 

Verdict
It may lack new features such as remote printing, smartphone integration, even 'basics' like a card reader, copier/scanner or even Wi-Fi – but the networkable B-510DN proves a wise investment in terms of core efficiency. Producing great quality print-outs in both mono and colour in record time, with some tempting price-per-page results making this an excellent, if slightly not old fashioned choice for big offices, despite its high operating noise. 

Company: Epson

Website: http://www.epson.co.uk/

Contact: 0871 4237766

Tags: printer epson office home office injket