Xerox Phaser 6500N Laser Printer-Color-600x600dpi Print-Plain Paper

I like this printer. It is replacing a Laser Jet 2600n that is showing its 7 or 8 year age. The printing is great. The price was good ( caveat I haven''t had it long enough to buy toner which can be pricey ). However, ...

The setup process is awkward and not helped by the fact that the only documentation you get in the box is a large ( 19 inch x 25 inch ), multilingual ( 15 EU language ) two sided sheet of paper with diagrams that can be difficult to interpret. There simply isn''t enough text there to clarify what some of the diagrams are trying to tell me. Since I make my living supporting complex software on UNIX and Windows I have lots of experience with interpreting software manuals. Diagrams and hardware however are not my strong point. There are 12 short sentences to give you an idea of what these diagrams are intended to represent. After a lot of comparing diagram to printer, trying to figure out how to open some of the component or get at some of the ports, I was eventually successful. A bit more text and a bit less white space would have simplified this process significantly.

The print output is great. The text is crisp, clean and very true to the fonts that I have run through the printer. The graphics are spectacular. I printed a picture taken on my Panasonic Lumix FZ-40 on a regular sheet of paper. The color match was impressive. It looked more like a professionally developed photo than something printed on regular paper with a laser printer. I did not specifically measure the time taken to print either text or graphics. Text seemed satisfactorily fast and the graphics time was better than the LaserJet 2600n.

The bottom line is that this printer gives impressive performance at a bargain price. If the installation process were better documented, I would rate this at 5 stars. If that is not an impediment for you, consider it a 5 star printer. However, keep in mind that I have not attempted to buy supplies. You are looking at mail order since your average local store is not going to carry toner for your Xerox Phaser 6500N.