Brother DCP-1510 – Print Speeds

Brother rates the DCP-1510 at 20ppm, and we got quite close to this on with a 20-page text print test, which came in at 16.0ppm. This is pretty impressive for an all-in-one costing under £80 and it even managed the shorter, 5-page document with a speed of 11.1ppm. A full A4 scan took 12s.

Printing is noisy, with peaks of 67dBA at 0.5m, which may not seem much above average, but noise levels are measured on a logarithmic scale, so a 3dB increase is twice as loud as a printer registering 64dBA.

Brother DCP-1510 – Print Quality and Costs

Print quality from the Brother DCP-1510 is very good, crisper than from any equivalent inkjet. Text from the 600dpi engine is sharp and dense, though this very sharpness can work against it, since you can see slight jaggies with the naked eye on bold, heading text.

Greyscales are reasonable, though there’s a little blotchiness. There’s a wide enough range to distinguish between different colours in an original, though. Copies of printed originals are fine for text, but lose some of the smoothness in fills. Photo prints are reasonable, though again greys can look a little speckled.

The Brother toner cartridge for this machine is good for 1,000 pages, while the photoconductor drum should give 10,000. This gives a cost per page of 4.1p, which is a good rate for an inexpensive printer.

Should I buy a Brother DCP-1510?

This is a very economical all-in-one machine, with the three basic print, scan and copy functions. There are no laser all-in-ones that quite match it on price, with Samsung’s cheapest, the M2070 Xpress, costing £110 and HP’s low-end LaserJet Pros starting at about £170. Canon’s i-SENSYS MF3010 comes in at around £120.

There’s a common misconception that laser print is cheaper than inkjet, but at the entry level of the market, this isn’t true. The £60 https://www.trustedreviews.com/epson-workforce-wf-2530wf_Printer_review Epson Workforce WF-2530WF, for example, has a page cost of 3.3p, 0.8p per page cheaper than this machine. HP makes entry-level Deskjets with very similar running costs, too. Consider both technologies.

Verdict

If you’re after a laser all-in-one printer and have under £100 to spend, there is little choice but the Brother DCP-1510. We don’t normally recommend printers scoring under 9/10, but if one has a particular strength – in this case its very low asking price – we can make an exception. Print speed and quality are very serviceable and running costs are reasonable, too.

Check out our round-up of the best printers