The good: The Dell V715w All-in-One Wireless Printer helps you reduce your environmental footprint with an integrated Eco Mode button that dims the 2.4-inch LCD display and enables double-sided printing with the 50-sheet autodocument feeder.

The bad: Lackluster image quality and ink-guzzling cartridges hold back a printer already outgunned by its faster, more full-featured competition.

The bottom line: The Dell V715w is the company’s flagship printer, but its mechanical missteps and quickly depleting cartridges keep us from recommending this device over more capable machines like the Lexmark Prevail Pro705.
Review:

The Dell V715w All-in-One Wireless Printer offers the standard array of print, fax, scan, and copy features with a useful 50-sheet autodocument feeder and an Eco Mode button that encourages you to cut down on consumables. Out of the box, the V715w shows physical flaws and a bulky design with frustrations that include frequent paper jams, unreliable wireless connectivity, and expensive ink cartridges. Placed next to the full-featured Lexmark Prevail Pro705, which flaunts a much easier installation process, top-tier image output quality, and a five-year warranty, we see little reason to recommend the Dell V715w.

Design and features
At 19. … Expand full review

The Dell V715w All-in-One Wireless Printer offers the standard array of print, fax, scan, and copy features with a useful 50-sheet autodocument feeder and an Eco Mode button that encourages you to cut down on consumables. Out of the box, the V715w shows physical flaws and a bulky design with frustrations that include frequent paper jams, unreliable wireless connectivity, and expensive ink cartridges. Placed next to the full-featured Lexmark Prevail Pro705, which flaunts a much easier installation process, top-tier image output quality, and a five-year warranty, we see little reason to recommend the Dell V715w.

Design and features
At 19.2 inches wide, 16.1 inches deep, and 9.9 inches tall, the Dell V715w will take command of your work space, so make sure you have room for the device before running out to make a purchase. You likely won’t move the V715w once you situate it in your work area. The hefty printer weighs 21 pounds, just 1 pound less than the Epson WorkForce 840, a $300 printer that can hold up to 500 sheets of paper in its dual paper input trays. The V715w tops out at 200 sheets total: 150 in the standard input tray and another 50 sheets in the ADF.

The V715w doesn’t feature a typical tiny two-line LCD display. Instead, you get a 2.4-inch color LCD that lets you preview imported photos from the accompanying computer, and you can also access files through the media card reader and PictBridge USB port on the lower right side of the machine. A shortcut feature buttons surround the display on three sides, and there’s also the standard array of buttons including a directional pad for scrolling through menus and a number pad for dialing numbers on the fax side.

The first problem we have with the V715w’s design is the control panel that sticks out of the middle of the unit. Prior to installing the driver, Dell instructed us to position a clear strip of plastic on top of the panel that adds text labels to the Copy, Scan, Fax, and Photo buttons. We’re unsure why those labels weren’t already printed there as on the rest of the buttons, but the extra layer and the cheap plastic finish take away from the otherwise streamlined design.

The flatbed scanner lives just underneath the V715w’s autodocument feeder and can handle up to 1,200×2,400-dpi resolution, another feature we normally see on multifunction devices. However, Dell deserves recognition for including a copy of ABBYY FineReader Sprint on the included driver installation disc that provides basic optical character recognition (OCR) and will do its best to “read” and import the text of a scanned document into a word processor of your choosing, typically Microsoft Word. In our testing the software was fairly accurate, although we definitely suggest you check for inaccuracies after the scan completes. Additionally, be sure to hold onto the driver installation disc, as ABBYY FineReader Sprint isn’t available for download on Dell.com.

We also like that Dell includes an Eco Mode button marked with a green leaf on the right side of the control panel that triggers two-sided printing, copying, and faxing using the duplexer on the back. The button dims the LCD if you leave the printer dormant for an extended period, and the printer has an Energy Star certification. We welcome those green-minded touches, but Lexmark goes a step further and in addition to these features saves you money by bundling XL-capacity black and color cartridges in the box. To our knowledge, Lexmark is the only printer vendor to do this, and we hope Dell and others will consider adding this incentive in the future.

The V715w uses four individual ink cartridges for black, magenta, cyan, and yellow colors. Dell also sells high-capacity ink cartridges on the company’s Web site, but the page yield numbers are no longer listed on the site so we can’t accurately calculate the cost per page. We can tell you that the standard cartridge didn’t even last long enough for us to finish our quality and speed test, and the customer complaints on our own CNET user reviews as well as the Amazon purchase page echo our experience.

Like many modern all-in-one printers, the Dell includes an 802.11b/g wireless card that’s supposed to help you cut the cord and free up USB ports you might otherwise use for connecting to the host computer. The wireless installation disc that comes in the bundle does an adequate job of walking you through the Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) using your wireless router’s SSID and WPA password, but our connection kept giving us an error message that said “Cannot Print over a Wireless Network” despite the green notification light that supposedly indicates a solid connection.
Performance

The Dell V715w registered average scores in our speed tests, in which we compared it with four other printers. That’s not to say it isn’t fast enough to keep up with the output of a small to midsize office. In fact, it did fine in the text speed and presentation speed tests, just edging out the Canon Pixma MG6120 for second place behind the quick-printing HP Photosmart Premium e-All-in-One C310a.

Source:http://reviews.cnet.com/multifunction-devices/dell-v715w-all-in/4505-3181_7-33810350.html?subj=fdba&part=rss&tag=rb_content%3Brb_mtx_Search+Results#reviewPage1

The good: The Dell P513w outputs professional-quality text prints, and a handy Eco Mode saves you money and helps the environment.

The bad: Its functionality is cut short by a missing auto document feeder, unreliable wireless networking, and dismal photo image quality, while limited paper storage capacity dampens the user experience.

The bottom line: The Dell P513w all-in-one printer produces adequate prints, but the cheap build, quick-depleting cartridges, and spotty wireless service aren’t worth the $150.
Review:

The $150 Dell P513w’s Eco Mode earns points for its environmental friendliness, and we’re fans of the general design, but missteps like a missing auto document feeder, spotty wireless coverage, and frequent paper jams push the overall rating down. Throw in a few overpriced ink cartridges and you’ll see why we recommend the equally priced Epson WorkForce 520 instead.

Design and features
The Dell P513w’s measurements (18.8 inches wide, 13.3 inches deep, and 9 inches tall) place it about average in terms of sizing compared with other multifunction printers we’ve tested, although at … Expand full review

The $150 Dell P513w’s Eco Mode earns points for its environmental friendliness, and we’re fans of the general design, but missteps like a missing auto document feeder, spotty wireless coverage, and frequent paper jams push the overall rating down. Throw in a few overpriced ink cartridges and you’ll see why we recommend the equally priced Epson WorkForce 520 instead.

Design and features
The Dell P513w’s measurements (18.8 inches wide, 13.3 inches deep, and 9 inches tall) place it about average in terms of sizing compared with other multifunction printers we’ve tested, although at 15.3 pounds it weighs slightly above the baseline. The top of the printer features a flatbed scanner and can handle up to 1,200×2,400 dpi resolution, a standard feature we expect to see on multifunction devices.

However, Dell omits an auto document feeder (ADF) from the feature set that would normally prove useful for businesses and anyone else who doesn’t care to feed individual documents into the scanner and copier. We’re especially confused by the absence of an ADF in the P513w, since Dell offers one with the V515w that costs $30 less.

On the other hand, Dell deserves recognition for including a copy of the ABBYY FineReader Sprint software on the driver installation disc in the box. It provides you with basic optical character recognition functionality that will do its best to “read” a scanned document and import the text into a word processor of your choosing, typically Microsoft Word.

In our testing experience, the software is fairly accurate, although we still suggest you check for inaccuracies after the scan completes. Additionally, be sure to hold onto the driver installation disc, as the ABBY FineReader Sprint software isn’t available for download on Dell’s Web site.

The paper path of the P513w starts at the standard 100-sheet paper input tray that folds out of the rear and guides the paper through the printer until it eventually spits out underneath the control panel. There, a plastic arm can only corral up to 25 sheets of plain 20-pound paper. The printer has no problem stacking individual print jobs in the output tray at a time, but we experienced multiple paper jams down there once we approached the 25-sheet limit. In comparison, the Epson WorkForce 310 can hold double the amount and it costs the same as the Dell.

Regardless, we actually prefer the paper handling on the $200 HP Photosmart c6380, which employs two output trays to keep photos 4-inch-by-6-inch photos separate from 8.5-inch-by-11-inch documents.

Like many modern all-in-one printers, the Dell P513w includes 802.11b/g wireless networking, freeing up the USB ports that would otherwise be used for a hardwired connection to the host computer. The installation disc that comes in the bundle does an adequate job of walking you through the Wi-Fi protected setup (WPS) using your wireless router’s SSID and WPA password, but our connection kept giving us an error message that said “Cannot Print over a Wireless Network,” despite the green notification light that supposedly indicates a solid connection.

The error message seemed to resolve itself after we cycled the power on both the printer and the computer, but it still came back intermittently. We saw on the Amazon product page that users reported similar errors, but Dell’s support page doesn’t have an answer yet. We always default to a hardwired USB connection for our speed tests so the printer doesn’t waste time pinging the router before sending a job through, but we can’t imagine the average consumer having an easier time establishing a network connection.

The P513w uses two separate cartridges for tricolor and black/white inks and ships with standard-capacity cartridges in the box. Alternatively, Dell also sells high-capacity ink cartridges on the company’s Web site, but the page yield numbers are no longer listed on the site so we can’t accurately calculate the cost per page. We can report, however, that the standard cartridge didn’t even last long enough for us to finish our quality and speed test, and the customer complains on Amazon and the Dell purchase pages echo our experience.

Performance
The Dell P513w made quick work of all four speed document tests compared with the competition, producing text pages at 7.67 pages per minute to best HP, Kodak, and Canon units. The presentation and color graphics page tests yielded average results at 3.6 ppm and 3.5 ppm, respectively, but the printer lagged while printing single 4-inch-by-6-inch snapshot photos because of a significant pause between prints to allow for the ink to dry on the page before picking up the next sheet.

We weren’t quite as impressed with the image quality put out by the Dell. While our full sheet of plain black text looked presentable at first, a closer inspection showed several jagged lines at the corners of text in small fonts, specifically in italicized text; white text on a colored background was unreadable at less than a 5-point font.

Even at the high-quality setting, we wouldn’t recommend using this printer for printing PowerPoint presentations or any other professional documents. Furthermore, the color graphics page is marred with an overall faded look and a slightly yellow overcast that significantly departs from the color palette of the original image.

We can’t find any positive things to say about the image quality here, and despite several ink head cleanings and calibrations, the image just doesn’t come out as sharp, or as accurate, as we’d expect from a $150 printer.

Service and support
Dell backs the P513w with a one-year warranty, though you can pay to upgrade to two or three years of coverage. Toll-free phone support is available 24-7, and Dell’s site offers e-mail support and user forums. Dell’s Web site also has product-specific support in the form of online user guides, drivers and software downloads, and a troubleshooting tool.

Source:http://reviews.cnet.com/multifunction-devices/dell-p513w-printer/4505-3181_7-34453024.html?subj=fdba&part=rss&tag=rb_content%3Brb_mtx_Search+Results#reviewPage1