Xerox Phaser 6010
The LED print engine in Dell’s 1250c is made by Xerox and this is its maker’s own take on an entry-level model. It looks petite in its rounded white and deep blue case and boasts a similar pull-down paper tray with slide-out cover. The printer includes a network port, as well as USB and prints at 10.3ppm in black and 7.7ppm in colour, so faster than its Dell cousin. It produces good prints very quietly, though photos have a slight blue cast. Trouble is, it costs more to run than any other colour laser we’ve tested (3.0p black and 20.7p colour) and at Internet rates is nearly twice the price of the Dell. May be OK if you only print occasionally.
Reg Rating 60%
Price £203
More info Xerox
Xerox Phaser 6280
A big printer for a little price, if you're inclined to go on-line shopping that is. This Xerox model is a tall, but comparatively small footprint colour laser. Controls are easy to work through and functions like secure print and network connection are included. There’s only a 250-sheet paper tray, but the multi-purpose tray adds an extra 150-sheets. Speeds of 23.5ppm for black, 13.6ppm for colour and 16.9spm duplex have it punching well above its weight. Print quality is particularly good, with solid blacks and vibrant colours. Even photos, traditionally hard to do on a laser, are smooth and with good shadow detail. Running costs, at 1.7p for black and 8.6p for colour, are also low. ®
Reg Rating 90%
Price £426
More info Xerox
Ten... colour laser printers
COMMENTS
Solid ink, right...
While the Xerox solid ink printers produce nice looking printouts, they also produce a bad smell and need to placed in a well ventilated area. Also, if you only occasionally print with them, they waste a lot of ink on start-up and it's a slow printer anyway, especially if the printer was off.
The whole roundup is stupid anyway. The prices range from 139 to 634, and the blurb on the first page states "Here are ten, capable colour lasers you should consider for a short list" but the reviewer has given 60% verdict to two printers. Why would I put the Xerox 6010 on my short list if the reviewer states that "it may be OK". That HP is noisy, slow and the previous cheap HP carousel models were also prone to break.
Clearly the reviewer works in a retailer or distributor and reviews whatever he has handy there. And that's just fine. But these reviews should be more consistent. Comparing a £200 laptop to a £2000 model makes no sense, why do it with printers?
No mention of OS compatibility.
Even the ones running on Ethernet are not necessarily postscript compatible, and some Linux drivers are crap (or non-existant)
Noise
It's all well & good listing the running costs for the printers, but of equal importance for a small office is noise.
I've found that many colour laser printers can be incredibly noisy, especially the carousel models that rotate the toner cartridges between passes.
Any chance of adding a noise level next time you review printers?
Add to review..
Theres several important factors that are missing from the printer reviews on thereg lately, and i feel they would make the reviews far more useful.
1, Standards support - does the printer require proprietary drivers (and if so for what platforms are drivers made available), or can it work with postscript or pcl? I would always prefer a postscript printer simply because it works with everything and will continue working even long after the manufacturer has given up making drivers... Some devices (eg hp touchpad) only support pcl, some things only support postscript.
2, Airprint - lots of people want to print from iOS devices, would be good to know which printers support it.. Worth noting tho that with a small linux box you can make an airprint server for any printer that linux supports (i do this with my old laserjet)..
3, Noise - for home or small office use noise is important... some printers are even noisy when idle!
4, Startup time - from cold, and from going into powersave mode (assuming it has one)
5, Available prints in the default toners - for some people not wanting to print a lot, the default toners may last a long time... Especially true with lasers which don't dry out like inkjets, it may be more economical for some people to buy cheaper printers with generally higher running costs for very occasional use.
6, power consumption and heat output
Also a table at the end summing things up...
10,100,500,1000 pages per month
that's way beyond the duty cycle of all these printers put together...
