Canon LaserCLASS 510 Printer

Hello eBay members, I have used the Canon LaserCLASS 510 for about a year now and have been pleased overall with its performance. I used to own a Brother fax machine which I was very happy with - they seem to make great fax machines but the printing and copying features are not as strong as the Canon's.

The 510 has a flat bed scanner for copying books or thick materials. This is a nice feature when you have something you don't want to go through the scanner like a magazine and get damaged or bent such as a photograph. The scanner is very fast as well - it does a quick one pass scan - your copy is out in just a few seconds. This is much improved technology over the Brother I used to own. A fast scanner is also helpful if you do a lot of faxing (I don't), it can pull the pages into the device quickly and give you your originals back sooner. The device supports Super G3 faxing.

When printing, the driver from Canon for the PC is fairly robust for a SOHO device. You can change Page Setup options such as portrait/landscape, multiple pages per sheet, scaling, etc. You also simple finishing options and Quality settings depending if you are printing web pages, Word documents, photos, etc. This is simple way to impact toner use, quality, speed, etc. The print quality of this engine compared to Brother and HP I have used is on par.

A few weaknesses of the machine in my opinion: low paper capacity (I think 250 sheets?), the paper cartridge is delicate - I have my machine up on a file cabinet and I think the paper cartridge isn't sturdy enough when sliding in and out of the device. Plus the design of this machine is such the paper cartridge protrudes fairly long from the right side instead of being further recessed inside the main body so it's easy to bang into if you don't have enough room. Also, if important to you, the printer only supports USB connection - no parallel ports here. I also wish there was also an option to install a network port into this device for network print sharing. It's plugged into my PC and when another user wants to print and my PC is off they cannot print without turning on my PC first.

Toner life seems pretty good. I tend to go through a least a case or more of paper (5,000 sheets) before the cartridge runs dry. If I recall, cartridge price/page is fairly competitive.

I hope this review has been helpful. Please feel free to contact me on eBay if you have any questions. Best regards, travantsystems.