printer and another guide

Xerox Phaser 6125

If you’re after a reasonably priced low use color laser printer, then the Xerox Phaser 6125 might be just what you need. Its relatively small footprint makes it ideal for space conscious users, or home workers.

The dimensions are small, but the printer is quite tall. The single-pass laser working over vertically mounted toner cartridges to save space. The paper tray is at the bottom, and can hold up to 250 sheets. It feeds the paper up and through the printer and deposits the on the top. While there is enough input space for a decent print job, there is no way that the output tray on the top could cope with the whole 250 sheets.

The standard is set high by this machine. Considering the low purchase price, built in networking and decent print quality, this little machine is going to be hard to beat. The control panel is basic to say the least, a simple two-line LCD screen and a couple of buttons. The menu us comprehensive and can provide access to just about all the features. If you don’t like it, the Xerox web interface can also control every aspect of the printer, while also giving information on fault codes and toner status.

Talking of toner, there is a starter cartridge included which is good for around 500 pages, replacements are good value, at around $29 for a 2000 page black, or a 1000 page color cartridge.

Print quality is good for the price. Monochrome prints appear black when they need to, and the grayscale is evenly spread and lacked any noticeable banding. Color images appeared a bit on the red side, but a quick adjustment using the printer web interface remedied that in seconds. Text was great, and images were good at the native 600 dpi. The print quality of the Phaser 6125 is good enough for most situations.

At a speed of up to 12 pages per minute for color and 16 pages for monochrome, the Phaser 6125 isn’t going to be breaking any speed records, but it is perfectly adequate for the low use market it is aimed at. Saying that, this printer has a monthly duty cycle of up to 40,000 pages per month, which is much more than the target market would ever use. I guess it’s nice to have that kind of flexibility, just in case a big print job comes along.

The Phaser 6125 offers solid performance and value for money. It doesn’t excel at anything, but if proficient enough to be a worthy contender in the color laser market.