“Given its reasonable cost, versatility, and ability to produce really nice looking output, the Epson WF-7510 deserves your consideration when you need to add or replace a printer.”
- Print size up to 13x19
- Good, fast output quality
- 11 x 17 inch scan bed
- Affordable to maintain
- No automatic duplexing
- Slower scans
- No creative software for general consumers
When it comes to printers, buyers generally don’t think about wide-format printing, since most consumer models only support up to the standard “letter” and “legal” size papers (smaller if it can handle photo prints). But if you can get a wide-format printer at a reasonable price, you’ll discover more uses for a device that can churn out large spreadsheets, drawings, and, with 13 x 19-inch output, even things like custom placemats for a party. That machine is the Epson WorkForce WF-7510 ($179), a multifunction (all-in-one) printer that can also scan or copy oversize pages, as large as 11 x 17 inches.
The WF-7510 is similar to the WF-7520 (a Digital Trends Editors’ Choice). It’s less expensive because it lacks the double paper cassettes, duplex printing, and scanning modes that the WF-7520 offers. But in all other respects, it’s just as feature packed, providing print, scan, copy, and fax modes along with the aforementioned media handling.
Features and design
There’s no getting around it: All wide-format printers are large, and the WF-7510, with its additional scanning/copying/faxing features, is no exception. The WF-7510 measures 22 x 16.5 x 11.3 inches (without the paper trays extended) and weighs in at a hefty 34.4 pounds. There is only a single paper path, with a 250-sheet-capacity tray located underneath the output tray.
With affordable XL cartridges, the WF-7510 is economical to maintain.
The input tray is very large, since it accommodates paper sizes that are up to 13 x 19 inches. The single paper path, however, limits how heavy of a paper you use can, since there’s no separate single-sheet feed. The non-duplexing automatic document feeder (ADF) has a capacity of 30 sheets. Many of Epson’s printers come with a special tray for printing on CDs and DVDs with printable surfaces, but unfortunately, the WF-7510 is not one of them; it isn’t a deal breaker if you don’t care about having this feature.
Controls are fairly standard for a full-featured MFP, with a tilt-out panel that includes a small color LCD and myriad buttons. There are card slots for SD, Compact Flash, or Memory Stick, as well as a PictBridge-compatible USB port (for direct connections to digital cameras). As for connectivity, you can use a direct USB or Ethernet cable, or go wireless with Wi-Fi. The printer supports Apple’s AirPrint and Google’s CloudPrint protocols, as well as Epson Connect for printing from a smartphone or tablet.
As with its sibling, the WF-7520, the WF-7510 accepts High-Capacity and even larger XL ink cartridges. The High-Capacity black is rated to yield about 385 pages, while the High-Capacity color cartridges are rated at about 470 pages each. The larger capacity XL cartridges are rated at about 945 pages for black and 755 pages for color. With XL cartridges costing only about $30 for the black and $21 for each color, the WF-7510 is economical to maintain.
What’s in the box
In addition to the printer, you’ll find a power cord; four starter ink cartridges (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black); a CD with Windows and Mac drivers, ABBYY OCR text-recognition software, and a TWAIN driver for the scanner; a phone cord for the fax, and quick-start guides (full documentation can be downloaded from Epson’s website, but unfortunately, it’s for both the WF-7510 and WF-7520, so a user who didn’t know there are a few differences between the two models might find some of the information [such as that on duplexing] misleading). And, while home users will find the WF-7510 great for crafts, it is technically classified as a “work” machine, so no creative software is included; it would have been nice to include the creative suite that Epson provides on its consumer models, or at least make it available for download.
Warranty
Epson offers a limited one-year warranty.
Setup and performance
Epson, like most vendors these days, has setup pretty much nailed. Put in the CD, follow along with the “Start Here” sheet, and you’ll be off and running in no time. We set up the WF-7510 on our wired Ethernet network, and the longest amount of time spent was the few minutes waiting for the printer to prime the ink on first startup.
Performance wise, the WF-7510 did very well. Epson printers all use a similar print driver, providing a choice of Epson papers (or “Plain”) and various combinations of speed, quality, and two-sided output. This particular model does not provide automatic duplexing on either the ADF or printer, so if you choose two-sided printing, it’s a manual process that involves reinserting the paper to print the second side.
Epson rates the printer’s speed at 15 pages per minute (ppm) in black and 8.4 ppm in color. In the Microsoft Word part of our Office Suite test, the printer achieved 13.3 ppm, a very respectable output speed.
All of our output – on a variety of paper types – was well saturated and printed with accurate color.
Epson doesn’t tout the WF-7510 as a photo printer, but as pointed out earlier, the MFP has slots for various memory cards and the color LCD panel can be used to select an image to print without a PC being connected. (Read our review of the WF-7520 for more on performance.)
Copy and scan features worked as expected. The WF-7510 is no speed demon when it comes to copying, but it did a good job of making several copies of a 10-page document. Scans are accurate, and we particularly like having the ability to copy oversized material on the 11 x 17-inch scanner platen.
Conclusion
Many consumers have probably never considered a wide-format printer. But given its reasonable cost, versatility, and ability to produce really nice looking output, the WF-7510 deserves your consideration when you need to add or replace an MFP or single-function printer. Don’t be too concerned that Epson designed this unit as a work machine: it costs a bit more than the typical consumer all-in-one, but you’re getting a lot more for your money. And, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the things you can do with wide-format printing and scanning functionality, once it’s at your disposal.
Highs
- Print size up to 13×19
- Good, fast output quality
- 11 x 17 inch scan bed
- Affordable to maintain
Lows
- No automatic duplexing
- Slower scans
- No creative software for general consumers
