Xerox Phaser 6280DN

It is seldom that a printer receives more than satisfactory reviews for print results, even the most expensive ones. In the case of the Xerox Phaser 6280DN, photos, graphics, and text prints have consistent quality that is rare even for a color laser like it. At 5 points, fonts are clear and well formed creating text prints that are crisp and easily readable. They can be used for important office documents, school projects, and at par with desktop publishing applications. In graphic prints, the same quality can be derived. For marketing materials such as brochures and handouts, the recipients will definitely be pleased. Some light shadings are lost in photo prints but they can be considered with near true photo quality. The Xerox printer seems to work very well with re-filled toner cartridges and you can certainly help your budget a lot if you are a large volume printer by simply using the re-filled toner cartridge models.

At first glance, this 18.6” x 15.7” x 19.3” white finish laser printer looks just like an entry level unit. By looking at it closely, it looks larger than expected and weighs 64.5 lbs. With this bulkiness comes an amazing paper handling capacity. The Phaser 6280DN can handle a staggering 400 sheets of paper which are broken down to 250 sheets for the main drawer and 150 sheets for the multi-purpose tray. Nonetheless, this is not the maximum capacity because an optional 550-sheet tray can elevate the capacity to 950 sheets. This makes the unit a printing workhorse suitable for large organizations. With print speeds of 26 pages per minute for color and 31 pages per minute for mono prints, it is at par with the fastest laser printers. However, photo printing speed is not really satisfactory at 53 seconds for each 4 x 6 specimen.

This busy printer utilizes 4 cartridges employing 4 colors. This set of cartridges is partly responsible for the excellent quality of prints from the Phaser 6280DN. Although Xerox ensures high quality original cartridges, they are sometimes too costly for a step up operation. For this application, replacement cartridges are the best option. They can be bought from online distributors like Peachtreeink.com.

Xerox seemed to have focused on the essentials of printing in designing this unit. They eliminated popular features like an LCD preview screen and the capability to print directly from digital cameras. However, an important set of innovation was integrated like being network ready, print duplexing, and a couple of connectivity options. The latter is highly critical because a heavy duty printer like this one must be readily accessible to more than one user. By eliminating specialized wireless features, Xerox were able to put emphasis on the quality of hardware. One drawback of high quality prints is the elevated cost of every printed page. The Phaser prints mono copies at 2.7 cents per page and 13.9 cents for color pages. This can be balanced by saving on paper via the unit’s duplexing capability.