Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4630 review: For $300, small-office inkjet offers better output and value than a color laser

Epson’s new $300 WorkForce Pro WF-4630 is just the kind of affordable, capable multifunction printer most small offices could use—even if they think they need a laser. A laser MFP may offer better text output (barely), but everything else lines up in an inkjet’s favor: purchase price, supply costs, and graphics output. Epson’s WF-4630 is the avatar for the breed: easily fast enough for small office work and packed with features. It also produces outstandingly sharp text, thanks to Epson’s new PrecisionCore print head.

The ethernet/USB/Wi-Fi-connectable WF-4630 stands approximately 13.5 inches high by 18 inches wide. It’s not the massive unit you’ll see in a printer room, but the size that sits on a table closer to the action. Output arrives in a fold-out catch above the bottom 250-sheet paper tray. A second, 80-sheet vertical rear feed will handle paper up to 8.5 by 47.2 inches (banners, anyone?) and provides a straighter path for envelopes and photo paper.

Image: Michael Homnick

The Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4630's output tray extends out from the front of the unit to catch printed pages.

The WF-4630 is managed via a 3.5-inch color touchscreen and a well thought-out set of buttons, including a keypad for fax duties. Epson's on-display interface is super-easy to navigate, and there’s now a preview of scanned documents. Sweet.

The driver dialog is typical Epson, logically and cleanly rendered. Epson also provides the standard set of now commonplace Web, Wi-Fi direct, remote, and email printing features with the WF-4630.

Copying, faxing, and scanning are facilitated by a letter/A4-size flatbed scanner for single-page documents and an automatic document feeder (ADF) for longer documents. The scanner lid telescopes slightly for magazines and the like, while the ADF scans both sides of documents automatically. Nice. The only thing nicer would be duplex scanning via dual scanner elements rather than re-feeds.

Image: Michael Homnick

The 3.5-inch color touchscreen on Epson's WorkForce Pro WF-4630 sports large, easy-to-understand icons for all the main functions.

The output from the WF-4630 is outstanding, and I mean outstanding for any type of printer, inkjet or laser. Text is extremely sharp, as are the focus and edges of both monochrome and color graphics. Color graphics, while a bit sharper, still offer the usual Epson palette—warm but not overly so.

We did run into one issue with our first test unit, where occasionally lines were offset to the right about four times per page. Our second unit exhibited this flaw in the first run, but rarely after that. 

Image: Michael Homnick

All functions are accessible via the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4630's 3.5-inch color touchscreen.

The Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4630 not only produces great-looking documents, it’s a very good performer. Standard, letter-sized, monochrome business documents arrived at 14.9 pages per minute on the PC, and 13.4 pages per minute on the Mac. Even better, there’s little to no wait time before pages start arriving as with laser printers that need to power down to keep cool.

Full-page photos on plain paper issue forth at approximately 5.5 per minute, while the same photo prints to glossy stock in about 40 seconds. Scans complete at a moderate but workable pace: 10 seconds for a preview, 32 seconds at 600 dpi and just over a minute at 1200 dpi.

Image: Michael Homnick

The Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4630's ink cartridges fit into spring-loaded bays behind a front panel.

Supply costs are up a hair from previous generations, but still very cheap. When using Epson’s standard 1,100-page cartridges ($35 black, $30 for cyan, magenta, and yellow), ink costs for the WF-4630 are well below normal: 3.2 cents per black page, and 2.7 cents per page/per color for 11.3-cent four-color page—several cents lower than most consumer-grade inkjets and low-end lasers. The real savings begin with the $42, 2,600-page black (1.6 cents per page) and $44, 2,000-page color tanks (2.2 cents per page, per color). With those more capacious supplies, you’re paying a mere 8.2 cents for a four-color page.

Epson warranties the WF-4630 for one-year, with a recommended monthly page load of 2000 pages. You may extend the warranty to two years for $40 and three years for $60. The fact that extensions are available speaks to the overall quality of construction, which is generally quite sturdy.

The WorkForce Pro WF-4630 inkjet is a sweet little multifunction that does everything well. Supply costs are distinctly better than those of similarly-priced laser printers and low-end inkjets. If you want to spend less time adding paper, the functionally-equivalent $400 WorkForce Pro WF-4640 doubles the capacity of the bottom tray to 500 sheets.

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HP Color LaserJet Pro M177fw review: Great output, but little else

HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M177fw $350.00 This color laser multifunction printer offers the usual compromises for this bargain price range: slow performance, minimal features, and high toner costs. If you don't print much then you might not mind...

HP makes some very capable, feature-rich color laser multifunction printers. The HP Color LaserJet Pro M177fw isn't one of them. It actually has impressive output quality, however, its low purchase price brings compromises in speed, features, and toner costs. Unless you print very little, you will come to spend far more on this product than you'd probably like. 

The M177fw may be attached via USB, 10/100 Ethernet, or Wi-Fi. Setup was easy in my hands-on and the driver dialog is nicely laid out with the ability to create shortcuts for your most often used settings. The HTML management pages for checking on the printer across the network were also easy to use. HP provides capable software for all the MFP basics, as well as the now-usual array of remote and Internet printing options.

The M177fw has a 3-inch touchscreen display that makes it easy to operate. Paper capacity is limited (though in line with the low-volume, 250- to 950-page recommended monthly usage for this product). There's a 150-page, open-faced input tray, a 50-page output tray, and a 35-page automatic document feeder (which was very noisy on our test unit). There's no automatic duplex copying, printing, or scanning. HP provides assistance for manual-duplex printing, but none for two-sided scanning or copying.

The scanner lid doesn't telescope, even slightly. Even most non-telescoping lids have slight give in their hinges, but the M177fw's lid canted upward even when scanning a mere 100-page magazine.

The M177fw's overall output quality is a highlight. Photos are rendered exceptionally well for a laser printer, with little graininess and a cool, but still attractive palette. Text and monochrome graphics are equally outstanding—sharp and black. An econo-mode which saves a lot of toner, but still produces legible text. When you see the toner costs, you'll see the need for it.

The M177fw has the slower performance that's typical of low-cost color lasers. Text and monochrome pages exit at 9.9 pages per minute on the PC, and 7.7 pages per minute on the Mac. Snapshot-sized, 4-inch by 6-inch photos print at just under 2 per minute to plain paper, and 1.5 per minute to glossy laser stock. A full-page photo exits in about 55 seconds. Copies proceed at about 4 per minute, and scans speeds are equally acceptable.

With most office printers, higher-capacity cartridges can save you money. Not so with the M177fw. The only available supplies are the $55, 1300-page black and $58, 1000-page 130A series, forcing you to live with 4.2-cent black pages, and 21.6-cent four-color pages. The latter is a real ouch. The M177fw ships with 500-page starter cartridges, so you'll be feeling the pinch sooner, too.

By way of comparison, $500 color laser MFPs usually offer black pages for under 3 cents and four-color pages for under 15 cents with high-capacity supplies. Business-class Inkjet MFPs using high-capacity supplies—and costing about the same as the M177fw—run you less than 2 cents per page for black, and 7 cents per page for color.

The cartridges are mounted on a carousel inside the printer. To access a cartridge, you press an icon of the cartridge in the supplies menu on the control panel. It would be fun to watch, but unfortunately the hatch has to be closed while rotating.

There's no disparaging the LaserJet Pro M177fw's output—it's top notch. But as with all color-laser products at this price point, the toner is too expensive, and the features are just adequate. We suggest you start at the $500 level if you really want a color laser MFP. The toner will still be expensive, but at least there will be duplexing and more capacity.

If you're truly stuck shopping at the $300 level, a  business-class inkjet MFP is the better option, offering better speed, features, and output quality. 

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Review: Dell C1760nw color printer has great output quality but pricey toner

We’ve spent a lot of electronic ink telling you to avoid low-cost color laser printers, because they’re all slow, with sparse features, and worst of all, really expensive toner. We’d almost advise the same about the $280 (as of March 25, 2013) Dell C1760nw color laser-class printer (it uses LED technology), but it has one thing going for it: impressive graphics quality, which is challenging to find on any office color laser printer at any price point. Choose this one above the rest, if you must, but you might also want to check out the faster, far more economical, office-class inkjets that we’ve seen from Epson and HP.

The C1760nw's two-line LCD display and control buttons are minimal, but effective. The menu structure is nicely laid out, making options easy to find. A blue light directly above the controls indicates the status of Wi-Fi connections. You can also manage the printer via Wi-Fi or Ethernet using the unit's HTML configuration interface. In addition to the PC and Mac drivers, the C1760nw offers remote-printing features, including printing from mobile devices and via email.

As with most low-cost color lasers, paper-handling features on the C1760nw are sparse. The front face folds down to create a 150-sheet, open-faced input tray on the bottom of the unit. A 10-page, removable bypass tray sits directly on top of it. The bypass tray allows you to print envelopes and other one-offs without unloading and reloading that main tray, as required with the single-tray C1660w. The output bin integrated into the top of the unit holds 100 sheets. The C1760nw lacks automatic two-side printing (duplexing), however, onscreen prompts walk you through the manual process. You can easily reach most of the paper path for clearing paper jams by folding down the panel on the back of the unit, and the toner cartridges are accessed via a panel on the right side of the unit.

Though cheaper than the C1660w's, the C1760nw's toner is still no bargain. The 3.5 cents you'll pay per black page is around the average for entry-level inkjets, but the additional 5 cents for each additional color is high. Black toner is sold in $70, 2000-page units and the 1400-page cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges cost $70 each as well. Those are the high-capacity supplies. Dell also sells the 700-page cartridges the C1760nw ships with, but unless you want to pay over 7 cents per page (cpp) for black pages and over 8 cents per color, we recommend against them.

Melissa Riofrio

While adding color to a C1760nw page is expensive, it's definitely worth it. Color graphics and photos look far better than what we’ve normally seen from an inexpensive, laser-class printer. Text is outstandingly sharp, and black areas are smooth and uniform, if a tad lighter than we'd like.

The C1760nw posted average to slow time in our speed tests, using the ethernet connection. Full-page (letter-size) photos print to laser glossy paper at 1.5 pages per minute (ppm). Smaller, snapshot-sized (4- by-6-inch) photos print at 1.8 ppm to plain paper and just under 1.46 ppm to glossy laser stock. Black text and mixed pages of black text and monochrome graphics print at an aggregate 8 on the PC and 8.2 on the Mac.

The C1760w carries a one-year warranty with easy exchange. You can pump that up to five years with exchange for $80, and on-site service is also available. The drum/fuser is a lifetime unit, and those support options are reassuring when no replacement is readily available. Dell quotes a 30,000-page duty cycle, but in real life this is about a 500-page-a-month unit. Even if the unit can handle heavier use, print more than 500 pages and the price of the toner will start catching up to you.

Color laser devotees, we know you’re out there. If you must buy a low-cost color laser, the Dell C1760nw is one we’re willing to recommend--albeit with many reservations--because of its unusually good graphics quality.

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Julliard, and now he power mods his car for kicks.
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The daughter of a mechanical engineer, Melissa grew up playing with machine parts and still loves getting into the nuts and bolts of how things work. She is never happier than when she is on a factory tour.
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Dell V525W Review: Rough Edges, Nice Output

One look at the output of the $130 (as of August 21, 2012) Dell V525W color inkjet multifunction, and you'll willingly forgive some of its rough edges. Photos appear extremely vivid, and text looks sharp and black. This MFP also has an automatic duplexer to ease two-sided printing chores. Less forgivable is the need to buy the extra-high-yield supplies to keep ink costs even close to reasonable.

Overall, the V525W is a solid product, but its firmware and controls are slightly backward. For starters, since the operating panel overrides all other functions, our innocent attempt to browse a submenu prevented the unit from responding to the software setup or incoming jobs. Once we returned to the main menu, the setup process—as well as the print, copy, and scan jobs—commenced. Another example: In the printer driver, the ‘Automatic’ setting in the paper type drop-down menu doesn’t mean what we thought (namely, that the printer could sense the paper type loaded and adjust print quality automatically). Instead, you must set the printer for the type of paper being used, and the tray will "automatically" follow your lead. The unit also offers no manual setup for the Wi-Fi; you must use WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) or configure it while the MFP is attached via USB.

The rear vertical input tray on the V525W holds 150 sheets, and the output tray at the front holds 25 sheets. The automatic document feeder for the A4/letter-size scanner holds about 35 sheets. Although the unit can scan a single-sided document and make a two-sided copy, it cannot do the same for a two-sided document.

On the control panel, which tilts up from the front of the unit, you'll find a 2.4-inch color display that is generally easy to use. That said, the keypad buttons are a bit small, and you must select color or monochrome mode before copying. Dedicated buttons for color and monochrome jobs are more efficient and cause fewer mistakes.

In our tests, the V525W was decently fast on the PC, printing monochrome pages at 7.2 pages per minute. Printing the same documents on the Mac platform was significantly slower, operating at a rate of just 3.8 ppm. That's the widest gap we've seen in a while. Snapshot-size (4-by-6-inch) photos printed to plain paper at 2 ppm; printing to glossy paper was only slightly slower at 1.6 ppm. Printing a full-page photo took a little over 2 minutes, and copies exited at 2 ppm.

The output from the V525W is top-notch. Text and monochrome graphics appear black and sharp, though we noticed some defects in one solid-gray area on our formatted “newsletter” text sample. Photos look sharp and vivid, though just a tad oversaturated. All in all, the quality of the output is this MFP's major selling point.

If you purchase the standard-size (series 31) or high-yield (series 32) ink supplies for the V525W, the per-page color costs are exorbitant. The standard-size series 31 cartridges (a set of which ships with the printer) last for 200 pages apiece and cost $10 for the black and $15 per color. That works out to 5.0 cents per page for black, an average cost, but 7.5 cents per page per color, which is more than twice our current average. A four-color page would cost 27.5 cents—way above average. You get no relief with the high-yield series 32 color cartridges (no black): All priced at $25, they each last for 430 pages, or about 5.8 cents per page per color, which is still quite steep. One possible consolation: Our math has shown that if you don’t print much, the cost of the ink doesn’t matter as much.

The only reasonably priced inks are the extra-high-yield series 33 cartridges, which, at $28, are slightly more expensive than the series 32 tanks. The black cartridge lasts for 750 pages, which works out to a very reasonable 3.7 cents per page, while the colors last 700 pages each, translating to 4.0 cents per page. A four-color page would cost a very reasonable 15.7 cents. Regrettably, a full set of extra-high-yield inks for this $130 printer would cost $112—a tough psychological and budgetary hurdle.

The Dell V525W offers a lot to like, including good paper handling, nice print quality, and decent speed. However, the color-ink prices are a deal-killer unless you print enough to justify investing in the extra-high-yield inks. Other MFPs in this price range with similar features and cheaper ink include the Canon Pixma MX512 and Brother MFC-J825DW.

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Dell V525W Review: Rough Edges, Nice Output

One look at the output of the $130 (as of August 21, 2012) Dell V525W color inkjet multifunction, and you'll willingly forgive some of its rough edges. Photos appear extremely vivid, and text looks sharp and black. This MFP also has an automatic duplexer to ease two-sided printing chores. Less forgivable is the need to buy the extra-high-yield supplies to keep ink costs even close to reasonable.

Overall, the V525W is a solid product, but its firmware and controls are slightly backward. For starters, since the operating panel overrides all other functions, our innocent attempt to browse a submenu prevented the unit from responding to the software setup or incoming jobs. Once we returned to the main menu, the setup process—as well as the print, copy, and scan jobs—commenced. Another example: In the printer driver, the ‘Automatic’ setting in the paper type drop-down menu doesn’t mean what we thought (namely, that the printer could sense the paper type loaded and adjust print quality automatically). Instead, you must set the printer for the type of paper being used, and the tray will "automatically" follow your lead. The unit also offers no manual setup for the Wi-Fi; you must use WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) or configure it while the MFP is attached via USB.

The rear vertical input tray on the V525W holds 150 sheets, and the output tray at the front holds 25 sheets. The automatic document feeder for the A4/letter-size scanner holds about 35 sheets. Although the unit can scan a single-sided document and make a two-sided copy, it cannot do the same for a two-sided document.

On the control panel, which tilts up from the front of the unit, you'll find a 2.4-inch color display that is generally easy to use. That said, the keypad buttons are a bit small, and you must select color or monochrome mode before copying. Dedicated buttons for color and monochrome jobs are more efficient and cause fewer mistakes.

In our tests, the V525W was decently fast on the PC, printing monochrome pages at 7.2 pages per minute. Printing the same documents on the Mac platform was significantly slower, operating at a rate of just 3.8 ppm. That's the widest gap we've seen in a while. Snapshot-size (4-by-6-inch) photos printed to plain paper at 2 ppm; printing to glossy paper was only slightly slower at 1.6 ppm. Printing a full-page photo took a little over 2 minutes, and copies exited at 2 ppm.

The output from the V525W is top-notch. Text and monochrome graphics appear black and sharp, though we noticed some defects in one solid-gray area on our formatted “newsletter” text sample. Photos look sharp and vivid, though just a tad oversaturated. All in all, the quality of the output is this MFP's major selling point.

If you purchase the standard-size (series 31) or high-yield (series 32) ink supplies for the V525W, the per-page color costs are exorbitant. The standard-size series 31 cartridges (a set of which ships with the printer) last for 200 pages apiece and cost $10 for the black and $15 per color. That works out to 5.0 cents per page for black, an average cost, but 7.5 cents per page per color, which is more than twice our current average. A four-color page would cost 27.5 cents—way above average. You get no relief with the high-yield series 32 color cartridges (no black): All priced at $25, they each last for 430 pages, or about 5.8 cents per page per color, which is still quite steep. One possible consolation: Our math has shown that if you don’t print much, the cost of the ink doesn’t matter as much.

The only reasonably priced inks are the extra-high-yield series 33 cartridges, which, at $28, are slightly more expensive than the series 32 tanks. The black cartridge lasts for 750 pages, which works out to a very reasonable 3.7 cents per page, while the colors last 700 pages each, translating to 4.0 cents per page. A four-color page would cost a very reasonable 15.7 cents. Regrettably, a full set of extra-high-yield inks for this $130 printer would cost $112—a tough psychological and budgetary hurdle.

The Dell V525W offers a lot to like, including good paper handling, nice print quality, and decent speed. However, the color-ink prices are a deal-killer unless you print enough to justify investing in the extra-high-yield inks. Other MFPs in this price range with similar features and cheaper ink include the Canon Pixma MX512 and Brother MFC-J825DW.

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HP LaserJet Pro 400 Color Printer M451dn Review: Great Output, Pricey Toner

The $500 (as of April 2, 2012) HP LaserJet Pro 400 M451dn color laser printer produces extremely nice output--including photos--and is very speedy for a model in this price range. It also has an automatic duplexer, a feature missing from the $450 LaserJet Pro 400 M451nw that we recently reviewed. It sounds great--until you examine the toner costs, which are steep for a relatively high-volume printer.

The controls on the M451dn are minimal but adequate. A two-way rocker button lets you navigate the two-line LED; the panel also has a warning light, along with the usual OK, cancel, and back buttons. Software installation is easy via either USB or ethernet, and the printer dialog procedure is well thought-out.

Paper-handling features include a 250-sheet bottom main tray, an automatic duplexer, a 150-sheet output tray, and an optional ($143) bottom-mounted, 250-sheet auxiliary paper feeder. With a monthly duty cycle of 40,000 pages and a recommended actual monthly print volume of up to 2000 pages, the M451dn can handle a fair amount of printing.

In terms of access, the M451dn is extremely well designed. From the front you can fold out a small part of the panel to reveal the 50-sheet front multipurpose tray, or you can move a larger part of the panel to access the paper path and the slide-out toner tray. A pop-off panel on the right side of the printer makes it easy to upgrade the standard 128MB of memory to 384MB. Note: As of this writing, HP's website sells a 256MB DDR2 DIMM memory upgrade for $599. That exorbitant price comes with HP’s guarantee that the memory will work in the printer, but third-party memory is available for less than $30.

That brings me to the Achilles' heel of this printer: toner costs. The standard black toner cartridge costs $79 and lasts 2200 pages, or 3.6 cents per page. A high-yield black cartridge, available for $102, lasts for 4000 pages, reducing black costs to 2.5 cents per page. The costs are a little higher than average compared with those of other color lasers we’ve tested--and incidentally, some business inkjets have significantly cheaper consumables.

HP offers no high-yield option for the M451dn's cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges, so if you print a lot of color pages, this is not the printer for you. The standard sizes cost $114 each and last for 2600 pages, working out to just under 4.4 cents per page per color. Next to other standard-size cartridges, these costs are a little cheaper than average, but compared with high-yield toners, they are far more expensive than average. The starter-size cartridges that ship with the printer last approximately 1400 pages.

If you can hack the toner costs, the output of the M451dn is impressive and arrives quickly. Text is dark and sharp, and color photos are very good for a color laser at this price. Our full-page test photo showed a cool color palette and nice details. Text pages rendered at 11.4 pages per minute on the PC and 11.0 ppm on the Mac. Normal-size photos printed at 3.2 ppm to plain paper and 1.5 ppm on glossy paper. Full-page photos printed at about 0.8 ppm.

Output quality and speed are the HP LaserJet Pro 400 Color Printer M451dn's strong suits. If you need the Wi-Fi connectivity that it lacks, its otherwise identical cousin, the M451dw, is only $50 more, at $550. However, if you print in any sort of volume, the ongoing costs for any model in the M451 product line will hurt you eventually--especially if you print lots of color. Alternatives in this price range include the Dell 2150cdn and Brother HL-4570CDW; the latter's high-yield supplies are much less expensive than the M451dn's.

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Epson Workforce Pro WP-4020 Review: Great Price, Great Output, Cheap Ink

Why should your small office buy a low-end color laser for $400 to $500 when you could opt for the $150 (as of March 25, 2012) Epson Workforce Pro WP-4020 color inkjet printer instead? Good question, especially when you compare it to models like the $450 HP Laserjet Pro 400 Color M451nw. The Workforce Pro WP-4020 offers superior speed and color graphics, near-laser-quality text, and more features, plus a significantly lower price per page.

The Workforce Pro WP-4020 sports USB, ethernet, and Wi-Fi connections. Installation is straightforward, though the display-free, minimal control panel means that you must connect via USB or ethernet to set up the Wi-Fi. The control panel provides buttons for power, cancel, Wi-Fi off/on, and the cleaning routines for the black and color printheads. There are also low-ink warning lights. The print driver dialog is nicely laid out and easy to understand.

The Workforce Pro WP-4020's generous paper handling features include a 250-sheet letter/legal main input tray (which sticks out the front a bit if extended to accommodate legal-size paper) and an 80-sheet rear feed that has a gentler paper path of less than 90 degrees (compared to the 180-degree turn that the main tray requires) that works especially well for thicker media such as envelopes and photo paper. The WP-4020 automatically duplexes (prints on both sides of the page), saving money and trees.

The WorkForce WP-4540's output quality is first-class overall. Text is black, smooth, and precise, even with relatively intricate fonts. Color graphics have the usual (for an Epson inkjet) slightly pinkish cast, but the effect looks natural. Grayscale graphics are exceptionally good, with only the darkest areas rendered a tad muddy. Color scans are good, too, though a tad fuzzy.

You get plenty of speed with the Workforce Pro WP-4020. Documents consisting primarily of plain black text (with a few simple grayscale graphics) printed at 12.6 pages per minute on the PC, and only slightly slower (12.3 ppm) on the Mac. Snapshot-size, 4-by-6-inch photos flew out of the unit at 6.2 ppm on plain paper, but that rate slowed to 1.75 ppm on glossy paper. Full-page photos printed on glossy paper arrived a bit faster than average at 0.7 ppm.

Epson makes the Workforce Pro's replacement cartridges available only in high-yield versions. Black costs $38.49 and lasts for a whopping 2400 pages, which works out to a mere 1.6 cents per page. The separate cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges cost $24.49 each and last for 1200 pages. That's 2 cents per page for each color, and 7.6 cents per page for a four-color page--sweet for volume printing. Epson ships the unit with starter cartridges that last for 900 pages.

The one-year warranty accompanying the WorkForce Pro WP-4020 is one of our very few complaints about this model, and that's not enough to keep it off the growing list of color-laser killers in the new generation of business-minded inkjets. If you want all of the WorkForce Pro WP-4020's features and a scanner, too, check out its inkjet MFP cousin, the equally impressive WorkForce Pro WP-4540.

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HP Photosmart 6510 e-All-in-One Review: Good Looks, Good Output

The first thing you'll notice about the $150 (as of February 6, 2012) HP Photosmart 6510 e-All-in-One color inkjet multifunction printer is that it looks better than the competition. But it’s also a good printer, with first-rate output quality and better-than-average print speeds, though ink costs are just average.

The Photosmart 6510's good looks are partly due to its 3.45-inch touchscreen control panel. The screen is large enough to read and tap easily, too, making the unit as a whole very easy to use. Connectivity falls a bit short: You’ll find only SD and Memory Stick card slots behind a front panel, and the machine has no USB/PictBridge port--an unusual omission. The MFP does support USB and Wi-Fi, though, and the installation routine is concise.

HP's bundled software for the Photosmart 6510 is simple to use and supports all of the unit's capabilities, including scanning and copying. It also allows you to scan from the control panel to a PC or a Mac, even if you're using Wi-Fi; some competing models require a USB connection for this function. The Photosmart 6510 supports HP’s Web-based apps and remote Web printing, as well as local printing via Wi-Fi from Android and iOS devices.

Paper-handling features for the Photosmart 6510 are fine for low-volume printing and the occasional scan. The 80-page paper cassette has an integrated 20-sheet photo tray. The output tray holds 50 sheets, and the MFP offers automatic duplexing (two-sided printing). You don't get an automatic document feeder here, but you can find an ADF on a slightly higher-priced cousin, the Photosmart 7510. Unfortunately, HP seems to have abandoned the notion that users will ever scan anything thicker than a letter: None of the Photosmart units we’ve tested have a telescoping lid to facilitate the scanning of pages from magazines or books.

The Photosmart 6510’s ink costs are merely average. The standard black cartridge costs $12 and lasts for 250 pages (4.8 cents per page), while the standard cyan, magenta, and yellow color cartridges cost $10 each and last for 300 pages, or 3.33 cents per page. That's about 15 cents for a four-color page. You can reduce the color ink costs appreciably with the XL cartridges, which are $18 for 750 pages, or 2.4 cents per page--almost a cent per page cheaper per color. However, the $23 XL black lasts for only 550 pages, or 4.2 cents per page, only slightly less than the standard black.

In our tests, the Photosmart 6510 posted average to slightly above-average print and scan speeds. Text and monochrome graphics exited at a sprightly 7.7 pages per minute on the PC and 7.2 ppm on the Mac--nearly a page per minute faster than the median rate. A half-page photo printed at a slightly above-average rate of about 3.16 ppm, while the same image printed at a slightly below-average rate of about 1 ppm to glossy photo paper. Single-page copies came out around the norm at 3 ppm. Full-page photos printed on the Mac arrived at a rate of about 0.4 ppm--a bit slower than average.

Output from the Photosmart 6510 is very good. At standard settings, text appears sharp and black, though color graphics tend to be a little grainy on plain paper. The color palette overall has a slight lean toward yellow, giving graphics a warm and friendly, if not completely accurate, vibe. On glossy photo paper, color graphics show considerable detail in dark areas and are overall quite nice, with the same warm color scale.

There's no doubt that the HP Photosmart 6510 will look better on your desk than most competitors will. Beyond that, the output is quite good, and the MFP is easy to operate. If your scanning needs are minimal--meaning, the lack of an ADF and a telescoping scanner lid won't disturb you--the Photosmart 6510 is a good choice for the price.

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