Xerox Phaser 6510 DNI Review

Table of Contents

Goodbye, Old Friend
Samsung ML-2250
Selection Criteria
Candidates
Winner: Xerox Phaser 6510/DNI
Comparing Old to New
My Hopes and Expectations

Goodbye, Old Friend

Is it wrong to feel an emotional bond with an electronic component? Perhaps it’s my midwest upbringing or my attempt at being green, but I’ve always had a habit of making my electronics last for a very long time relative to most people. I’m typing this on a 3rd generation i5 laptop, and I was quite sad when my iPhone 4S died in 2017 (I’ll let you do the math!). This post starts with me choosing to say goodbye to our Samsung ML-2250 monochrome printer. The ML-2250 has been the workhorse of our family since late 2006 or early 2007; long enough ago that I search for when it was ordered and have no email trail to confirm. It’s the only printer my now-teenage children have ever known. It was my first foray into a home laser printer (ridding me of inkjet, which was the bane of my existence), and dedicating us to colorless printing since that time, surviving the objections from others in the household. “Choosing to replace, that doesn’t sound very green!” you might say. Well, it has come to that point where the printer is questionable on many fronts, including:

• Paper handling (it’s having issues picking up paper from the tray)
• Pieces have broken off from random places in the rollers, sometimes resulting in torn pages
• The toner seems to be running out, which is only be the second toner cartridge EVER in this printer (forcing the decision to buy another cartridge)
• Printing has seemingly gotten worse (not necessarily related to the toner potentially being low)
• People want color!
• I had been leveraging Google Print and my NAS for printer sharing, and Google Print is being EOL’d 2020-12-31, so switching printers at the same time as printing methods seemed like a good way to go

Samsung ML-2250

What I’ve Known

• 1200 dpi
• 22 ppm (although it’s more in the 15-16 ppm)
• 300 sheet paper tray
• 166 MHz Processor
• 144 MB RAM
• Idle Sound: 39 dBA
• Operating Sound: 53 dBA
• Size: 14.1″ W x 17.8″ D x 10.9″ H
• Interface: Parallel Port (remember those?) or USB

Overall the use of this printer hasn’t been heavy. Early on in its life people printed more than they do today (for various work-related purposes, usually). The last 6 years have been pretty light, which is obvious by my mentioned above of only being on the second toner cartridge EVER (the initial cartridge was rated at 5k pages, and the replacement/current one being rated at 10k pages). That being said, toner save is a feature I rarely turn off, as most printouts are view-and-toss. Connectivity being through parallel port or USB was never an issue, as I had been lucky enough to have an HP printer server from the get-go and always had network connectivity. In the last 6 years I switched to Google Print and my NAS, adding the ability to easily print from basically any mobile device.

Selection Criteria

So, what did I look for in a printer? I don’t consider myself incredibly picky, but would like a basic device that should hopefully be around for a while.

Requirements

• Laser/LED
  I rid myself of inkjet long ago, and plan to never go back
• Color
  Although I’d still argue it’s rarely necessary, at least having it provides options
• Decent Print Quality
  Almost everything is higher dpi than what I have
• Relatively Fast
  I rarely print books, but when I do I don’t want to wait
• Wireless and Ethernet Connectivity
  You just never know what your situation might be
• Duplexing
  I might as well save paper since most of it gets tossed anyway
• 3rd party toner options
  Sometimes the manufacturer supplies are insanely expensive

Nice-to-haves

• A multi-function device
  It would allow me to get rid of my Xerox Documate on my desk
• Large paper capacity
  Mainly because I hate refilling the tray, not because I print that much at a time
• Roughly the same size as the current Samsung
  I have a dedicated corner of my desk, so weight and size aren’t major contributing factors

Candidates

I had been looking around at several options, but they were grouped into three main categories:

1. A Brother printer (looked at the HL-L3270CDW and HL-L8260CDW, among others)
2. A Xerox printer (looked at the Phaser 6510/DN, Phaser 6510/DNI, and WorkCentre 6515/DNI, among others
3. A plethora of other printers (Canon, etc.) that have all become a blur

The only experience that I’ve had with any of these brands was Xerox, although it was probably more than 6 years ago in a work setting (a phaser model of some sort). That basically means that experience has nothing to do with it, and I’m starting with a clean slate.

Winner: Xerox Phase 6510/DNI

I won’t go through the entire decision process that I made but in my eyes, the Brother and Xerox lines seemed about the same regarding reviews. Each had both hideously-bad and amazingly-good comments being made about every feature. The Xerox seemed somewhat-better for images, both about equal for normal text, etc. In fact, I had been teetering on a decision for some amount of time, so it almost came down to a flip of a coin between the 3270 from Brother and the 6510 DNI (“I” adds wireless connectivity compared to just “DN”). When I went out to purchase, almost any Brother printer was out of stock, so the coin landed in favor of the Xerox (which was almost out of stock).

Comparing Old to New

So, how does this printer stack up spec-wise compared to what I’m used to?

Item	Samsung	Xerox
CPU	166 MHz	733 MHz
RAM	144 MB	1000 MB
Print Speed	22 ppm	30 ppm
Resolution	1200 dpi	1200 x 2400 dpi
Connectivity	USB/Parallel	USB/Ethernet/Wireless
Paper Tray	250 pages	250 pages
Technology	Laser	LED
Color	No	Yes
Size (WxDxH, in)	14.1 x 17.8 x 10.9	16.5 x 19.6 x 13.7
Sound, Idle	39 dBA	24.9 dBA
Sound, Operating	53 dBA	51.9 dBA
Weight	20.06 lbs	52.5 lbs
Price Paid:	$250 (2006/2007)	$260 (2020)

In short, it’s obvious that the Samsung is ~14 years older than the Xerox and not color. The price didn’t really go up at all, amazingly. Also, the corner of my desk will be a lot heavier from here on out.

My Hopes and Expectations

This part is being written about 3 days before the Phaser arrives from Amazon. I haven’t pre-read the installation or owners manual, only the spec sheet at this point. Based on reviews and research, I admittedly have some preconceived ideas and expectations regarding the new printer:

• It’s UGLY
  Sorry Xerox, this thing looks like it was born in the early 2000s. I didn’t even know they made LCD screens like that anymore. Do I care? Obviously not, but it has to be said that I don’t expect beauty when I open the box
• Easy-ish Setup
  I’m not sure if I should expect a separate wireless adapter or that it’s built-in. I’d hope that my 25+ years of IT experience will come in handy and not be a hindrance.
  Beyond plugging the actual unit in, I expect setup for mobile devices to be pretty straightforward with Mopria or similar.
• Solid Printing
  I don’t think I’m really needy. As long as text is crisp and photos/images are at least decent, I think I’m OK here.
• Toner that lasts at least a while
  I haven’t looked into what, if any, toner saver modes there may be. The price of color toner scares the hell out of me if I look at Xerox’s prices (easily double what I’m paying for the printer!), but I know there are 3rd party options that should make replacement doable. Are there reports of the toner screwing up the printer? Sure, there have been those reports with every printer I’ve ever owned, and I’ve never had an issue. Plus, what’s the worst that can happen?: Buying a new printer (less than the Xerox toner cartridges!).
• About the same noise level
  The specs are almost identical, although it would be nice if it were a little quieter when printing
• Duplexing that works
  I don’t have it now unless I remember how to re-insert the paper in the tray and print every other page, so as long as it doesn’t jam all of the time, I’m good!

The next sections will cover my experience as I unpack and set up the Phaser 6510/DNI when it arrives in a few days.

Printer Arrives!

It certainly doesn’t look like Christmas, but it sure feels like it! Today the Phaser 6510/DNI arrived. Not to shamelessly plug Amazon but, as usual, the item was delivered with no damage. Due to its heft, it was dropped in front of my garage instead of by my front door, but a small heart-attack later and I realized it hadn’t been delivered to the wrong address.

Definitely heavy, although I’m not sure if it deserves the “Very Heavy” note 🙂

Unpacking

Unpacking the printer was about as straightforward as it gets. More-or-less self-contained, all that is needed to be done is to take it out of the box and place it in the location where my Samsung used to be. The power cord for the Xerox was much nicer (it was delivered with a much heavier gauge than what I was using), so I swapped that out as well.

After placing the printer, I simply removed the plastic bag, removed the various tape strips used for shipping, and plugged the unit into the wall. So far, so good!

Wifi Adapter Installation

One of the things I hadn’t looked into was what the extra ~$30 US got me regarding a wireless adapter, at least regarding whether it is was a separate device or built-in. In reality, it’s a little bit of both: an external wireless module that plugs into the back of the printer. It was a piece of cake to install and, although external, sticks out from the back of the printer much less than the power cable does, so should be well protected if you have the printer up against a wall like I do.

Powering On

Once all the tape is removed and the wireless module installed, you’re ready to power on the printer. Simply long-pressing the power button on the control panel does the trick, which sends the printer through a fairly decent diagnostics startup, with nothing other than “Please Wait….” on the screen, and various noises coming from the printer.

Eventually, the display switches to read “Xerox”, and then you’re guided to the setup menu, the first option being language. I won’t bore you with all of the screens that you go through, and in reality there aren’t that many of them.

Wifi: Access Point Not Found

I chose to leverage the wireless connection for all of my printing for now, although I’ll switch to Ethernet if needed. Unfortunately, the wireless configuration in the admin menu wasn’t able to detect any SSID, which I found odd. The result was “Access Point Not Found” on the display.

I switched to entering the SSID manually, followed by the connection method (infrastructure, in my case, but ad hoc is also available), and finally the password. My password is relatively long with special characters, so entering it through the single-character display with the arrows on the keypad was a test of patience. For those of you old enough to remember back when cell phones weren’t smart and you texted without a keyboard, you have a general sense of what this was like.

First Print

After the wifi connection was complete and the setup was considered complete, a startup page was printed. It simply shows the various information for the printer, but does print the Xerox logo in the upper-right using color. Success!

Where’s the Toner Status?

Any picture that you see of this printer has the toner levels, in all the glory the LCD is capable of displaying. Well, that’s not what happened here. Instead, I was present with a “Check PrimaryNet” message. Everything worked, but it wasn’t what should have been displayed.

I assumed this was because I had chosen not to enter any information for the ethernet port. The following steps resolved the issue:

• Admin menu -> Network/Port -> TCP/IP Settings -> Ethernet -> Get IP Address
• Use up/down arrows to display “STATIC”
• Press OK
• Press back arrow once (now on Ethernet menu again)
• Use up/down arrows to choose “IP Address”
• Set the IP address to either a real or fictitious address (I just used 1.1.1.1)

After that, the error went away and the toner levels were displayed on the screen.

Installing Printer on Windows 10

Configuration on Windows 10 was easy, although the way I did it seemed like too many steps:

1. Go into control panel/printers
2. Add printer
3. It will search the network and find the Phaser 6510 (assuming you’re on the same network)
4. Select and add the printer
5. Next to the printer will be “Install App” or similar.
   When I clicked this on my laptop, the laptop was in an odd state, acting like there was a modal window over the top of everything when there wasn’t. I could get to task manager, but no process that I killed gave me the ability to do anything, so I just ended up logging out and back in again (no reboot required). This only happened on 1 out of 3 laptops in my house, so I think it was just a fluke.
6. This opened the Microsoft Store, and the “Xerox Print Experience” app installed automatically
7. When I went into the properties of the printer, it prompted me to install another Xerox product, “Xerox Desktop Print Experience”
8. An MSI was downloaded and I installed it. Whether I’ll regret doing this later is to be seen
9. At this point, I could go in and set defaults for the printer, such as:
   Duplex printing (oddly, this is off by default)
   Black and White Printing (I want to protect my color toner)

All-in-all, it appeared straightforward

No Such Paper Type

I ran a couple of print tests and received “No Such Paper Type” on the display. I could hit “OK” and it would print the document, but the document wouldn’t print automatically. Pretty annoying. At first, I thought it was because I was had chosen a document with A4 instead of 8.5 x 11 paper size, but after switching to 8.5 x 11 it still displayed the error.

Solution

Oddly, it would seem that the printer preferences on the Windows 10 configuration have the paper type as “Recycled”, while the default for the printer (and the type of paper I was using) was “Plain”. This was causing the printer job to ask the printer to print on recycled paper, but since the printer only had plain, it gave the “No Such Paper Type” error.

I fixed this by going into the printer preferences in Windows and changing the paper type to “Plain”, at which point no more errors were seen. Annoying, but not a major roadblock. Assuming someone had never dealt with a less-than-user-friendly keypad, perhaps it might have seemed that there was no way to get the pages printed (again, just hitting “OK” allowed it to continue).

Another option, I assume, would be to go into the printer’s configuration and set the paper type in tray 1 to “Recycled”, at which point the default driver configuration would have worked. Not sure why that would be the default for the driver!

Installation for Mobile Devices

My entire household has Samsung Android phones, so if you’re looking for something regarding Apple devices, unfortunately you’ll need to go somewhere else. Installation and configuration is crazy simple, and I may not have even needed to actually install Mopria (Samsung’s default is a stripped-down Mopria, I believe):

1. Hit up Google Play Store
2. Install “Mopria Print Service” from the Mopria Alliance
3. Flip through the initial screens to accept licensing terms (I know somewhere in there I have to give up my firstborn)
4. The Phaser should be detected (assuming you’re on the same network)
5. On the main screen that lists the printer, click the ellipsis (three dots) in the upper-right
6. Select “Settings/Legal”
7. Under print options, I selected “2-Sided Long” under “Two-sided”. Again, this was set to 1-sided by default and I’d prefer to use the duplexer

There are other settings here too, but I left them as the defaults

Printing Results

Don’t expect an exhaustive battery of tests here, because I didn’t do much. Again, I don’t think I’m needy here, so my tests were pretty straightforward:

Text Printing

It seems to do a splendid job on printing text and does it quickly. I’ve gone down to a 4 pt font and have no problems reading it. I haven’t done any ppm tests, but it will be more than enough for what I need.

Color Printing

Text color seems good. I printed a colorful fish photo and the color is muted, but that is to be expected with it being on standard paper.

First Print Out

This seems pretty darn snappy. From suspended to first print seems really fast (<20 seconds). If the printer is already up the jobs start after a couple of seconds of “Processing Data” displayed on the printer. I haven’t sent anything over a 20-page document to the printer, so if it’s a large multi-page color presentation or something, I’m sure it will chew on it for a little while.

Firmware Update

The techie in me always tries to screw up my new toy, so after initial configuration and printing, I went looking for a firmware update. There was one, so it sent me down the path of figuring out how to apply it. This was another oddity I found between what was said and what I saw, so maybe the following will help someone out:

Firmware Update Methods

There appears to be 2 methods of doing the firmware update:

1. Update via the internal admin site (web server) on the printer
   The manual seems to indicate this is for Ethernet-connected printers only
2. Update via a windows firmware update utility
   Again, unless I can’t read, it seems to indicate it has to be USB connected to do this

Via Admin Site

This was the method I attempted initially. I found that the web site responded through the wireless address, which is what I expected (read: Ethernet cable isn’t required). PLEASE NOTE: The instructions that come with the firmware update do not give you the proper instructions on how to log into the site. The firmware update instructions, both directly on the product site and the one included with the firmware update, say that you can log into the site using admin/1111 for the user/password, respectively. This never worked, and locked me out after 3-4 attempts. I powered off the printer and turned it back on (which I correctly assumed would clear the login failure counter), and then found the appropriate instructions in a support document. The proper username/password is: admin/<serial number>
It will force you to change the password or log out, so be ready to set a new one.

Have the startup page that initially printed handy, as it lists the serial number there. Otherwise, your box or the printer itself has it on the back.

However, none of this seems to make a dang bit of difference, as when I went to the system configuration screens that the instructions show, I never saw an option to upload the new firmware .bin file. It’s entirely possible that I’m dense and didn’t see the option, but I tried it using both Chrome and Firefox, with no success.

So, I figured this MUST be why they tell you to have the printer connected via Ethernet, right? Unfortunately, after hooking up the printer to my network physically, the results were the same: No option to upload the firmware file. Yes, I had firmware updates enabled on the printer (I even turned the option off/on to be sure).

Via Firmware Update Utility

So, since my former printer had a USB cable handy, I decided to hook that up and use the firmware update utility from my laptop. As it turns out, the firmware utility allows you to upload it via port 9100 on the network, so the USB cable wasn’t necessary after all (bonus!). The firmware update was easy from that point forward. It took a little while for the upload to occur, then the printer reboots itself and prints out a Software Upgrade Report when it’s done. Yay.

Other Handy Things on Admin Site

While I was in the admin site, I also set a few other options that are probably available through the front panel, but would appear way easier to do through the site:

• Set up the time zone (I prefer UTC)
• Set up NTP (my goal in life is for EVERYTHING to sync via NTP or atomic clock)
• Turn off USB (because I can)
• Set up email alerts so I know when someone has a paper jam
• Turn off auto printing of the startup page (which I had done through the panel earlier)

Expectations vs. Reality (Initial Impressions)

So, way back at the beginning of this novella, I stated some expectations. Let’s see how reality stacks up:

Item	Expectation	Reality	Notes
Aesthetics	Ugly	Kinda Ugly	I’m not going to say it’s pretty, but it isn’t as hideous as I thought it would be. It looks like a serious piece of office equipment, albeit from the early 2000s. Seriously, do something with the LCD screen, my HP LaserJet 4 wants it back.
Setup/Config	Easy-ish	Medium-ish	I think my background actually helped here (woohoo!), and someone without troubleshooting experience might have been a little lost. I think Xerox could make things easier, such as not throwing an error on the LCD if wireless is connected but ethernet isn’t. The printer driver configuration and defaulting to recycled paper has me scratching my head.
Print Quality	Solid	Solid	I’d say it has fully met my expectations here.
Toner Life	Decent	N/A	The jury is still out on this one. I’ve done a couple of image prints and the levels haven’t budged, so nothing to report so far.
Noise Level	Same	Same/Better	Although about the same level, the sound is different and probably less annoying
Duplexing	Works	Works	So far every job that is supposed to print this way does so flawlessly

Closing

I’ll attempt to post updates to the printer as I use it more and find any other oddities that might be there. Feel free to post any responses here in case I’m missing something or you’re wondering how the printer works under a particular scenario!