- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 15 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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7 out of 7 people found this review helpful
5.0 stars
"Fantastic, fast color printer, cheap to maintain"
Pros: Affordable, high-quality, glossy color printing
Cons: "Printer ink too low" appears to soon
Summary: I have had this printer for approximately 3 months and I love it. It has done an excellent job. I researched the purchase heavily both on cnet and elsewhere before pulling the trigger to buy it.
The printer has impressed me on several fronts: 1) it is very fast - faster than I need for my purposes 2) the quality is excellent - better than I need: when I take printouts to clients, they are more than sufficient from a quality standpoint (while I work from home, I work for a Fortune 500 company that is very serious about maintaining a "professional look and feel" for our sales collateral), 3) it gives every indication that it is "built to last" with high quality materials and solid construction, 4) set-up was uneventful, 5) the ability to print information about the use of the computer to date is very impressive - clearly geared more to a network/printer/LAN administrator than a home user, but cool and useful nonetheless.
Other printers considered and passed on:
I almost got a Dell but the noise issue scared me off. I almost got a Dell 3100 or 5100 but was scared off by user reviews saying there was a significant issue that slowed print jobs dramatically on a regular basis - automatic color calibration that could not be turned off. I called Dell to ask whether that problem had been fixed in July and was very unimpressed with the answer: they said "yes, you can go to our web site and download a software update that will fix the problem... but we can't show you where to do so or tell you what that bug fix is until you actually buy the printer... our systems are just set up that way..." I considered several HP's but they were more expensive to maintain because several users noted that they were extremely noisy and/or had expensive consumables. The Xerox Phaser is very cost competitive to maintain.
I use the Phaser for my home office and consider it a fun but practical luxury. I am a consultant and see dozens of PowerPoint presentations day after day. It is great to be able to print off a 20 page deck a couple minutes before a call starts and have the deck in my hands for conference calls.
The only real (minor) annoyance is that the "printer ink too low" appears too soon, which will no doubt leave some to ignore it out of habit - resulting in people running out of ink. Mine has been on for 500+ pages.
A couple "style" points to note: the color printing (especially if you have a picture taking up a space of, say, more than 1 inch by 1 inch) is noticeably different than most color printers. That is because of the special ink used in these printers. It may not be fair to Xerox to call them crayons but that is what it feels like when you are inserting them into the printer: large rectangular crayons that get melted onto pages. It leaves a glossy effect (that looks like it would be water-proof) which I like. If you are in doubt about this, you would be well-advised to see some actual printouts before you buy. Some people may not like this effect. And, as another reviewer noted, you can smell a very faint "melted crayon" smell when the computer is first turned on.
In short, I highly recommend it.
Xerox Phaser 8500N:
