The B-510DN is a business printer, A4 or letter sized and very useful for photographers as well.
This is a four-colour printer, so it is not one that photographers would naturally consider. However a photography studio or even a hobbyist at home has need for the following:
- A fast printer for general printing tasks;
- Good enough photo printing;
- Reduced ink costs.
Let’s be honest, all the printer manufacturers punish you senseless on printer running costs, and the cheaper the printer the more you know you are going to be bled for ink down the track.
This is one area where the B-510DN is different. Aimed at businesses with high volumes of use, it is certainly not a cheap printer to buy, but the ink cartridges are huge and last a truly amazing period of time. Ink costs can be as low as 4.2 cents per colour page, which is excellent and seemingly about half that of the nearest competition.
It is also a phenomenally fast printer, whether doing normal documents or photo printing. It is quiet while running and has no odour, unlike some laser printers. Colour pages print at up to 18ppm for text and draft BW printing at 37ppm. I didn’t time the full-page photo printing but it was faster than anything else I have ever seen in my studio.
The print quality is nothing less than amazing. Sure photos show the dots but it is far from objectionable, rather giving a very fine texture to an image and is really only noticeable in comparison with images printed on a high end dedicated photo printer with six or eight inks. We printed on all types of paper and loved the results on heavy fine art matt papers. Colour was spot on.
Paper handling is excellent. We experienced no paper jams and the combination of a huge capacity tray for 500 sheets and a top slot that holds 150 plain paper or less in thick photo paper is perfect for a studio situation. I saved two configurations in the printer driver of choosing paper source and type of paper and this allowed quick and error free printing on the right type of paper.
To be honest there is nothing not to like about this printer. It handled thick art papers well (up to 256gsm) and had excellent print quality on a range of plain papers.
This printer is very highly recommended and will be up for consideration for purchase as a general studio printer. It uses DURABrite Ultra pigment inks.
It would suit any photographer or designer who needs to print A4 paper and wants to keep their running costs down. It would also suit event photographers, as its speed of printing would solve a lot of problems for them.
Very highly recommended.