Xerox Phaser 6180N Review

Almost exactly a year ago, we reviewed a Xerox color laser printer priced at $499, with a rebate trimming that to $449. The Phaser 6120's standard Ethernet as well as USB 2.0 interfaces made it suitable for a small business or workgroup as well as a single desktop, while its print shop- or graphics studio-worthy PostScript 3 and Pantone color as well as PCL support put it a cut above basic office models.

Today, the new Xerox Phaser 6180 is priced at $499, with a rebate trimming that to $449. Its standard Ethernet as well as USB make it et cetera, while PostScript as well as PCL put it ditto. In other words, it's déjà vu as far as the printer's position or market niche is concerned -- an affordable color laser with capabilities that justify its price a step above bare-bones models (or above the Phaser 6120, now discounted to $299).

So what's the difference from a year ago? The 6180's color printing is four times faster. Isn't progress wonderful?

One Pass = Finished Fast

Like other vendors, Xerox is letting single-pass printing trickle down to replace four-pass technology in all but its cheapest color lasers. With no need to loop a page through separate applications of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black toner, the Phaser 6180's color throughput is rated at 20 pages per minute, though monochrome jobs are still a tick faster at an advertised 26 ppm.

Xerox also boasts that the new printer can deliver the first page of a job in as little as 10 seconds, which we almost confirmed: Our one-page business letter with a spot-color company logo printed in 12 seconds, putting the 6180 among the fastest printers we've tested (i.e., matching many inkjet models' pale and slapdash draft modes).

And though none scored a perfect 10, several black-and-white sheets arrived in a tenth or two under 11 seconds by our stopwatch. A 20-page monochrome Microsoft Word document printed in 57 seconds. Some other speed tests, however, were puzzling; we'll get to them a bit later.

Weighing in at 54 pounds -- a little less than some competitors, but bend your knees and lift with your legs when taking it out of the box -- the Phaser 6180 is about half again as big as the 6120: It occupies a 16- by 20-inch (plus ventilation space) footprint and stands 19 inches high.

It's more or less as noisy as it is bulky -- by which we mean not outrageously so, but definitely happier on a separate stand or table instead of crowding your PC and drowning out phone conversations on your desk. Xerox says the unit draws 450 watts of power when printing, 70 watts on standby, and just 7 watts when left to sleep overnight.

Setup is straightforward. About one-third of the job is removing the usual dozen pieces of tape and plastic spacers that hold components in place during shipping. Another third is popping in the provided CD to install the software driver, which helpfully scans for and locates the printer on a network; an included PrintingScout utility offers status and toner-level information. In addition to 10/100Mbps Ethernet and USB connectors, there's a parallel port for old-schoolers; a WiFi adapter is a pricey $219 option.

The final third of the process is installing the four toner cartridges. Though not preinstalled as some lasers' are, the cartridges won't take you more than three or four minutes -- remove the foil wrapping, shake the plastic pod a few times to distribute the toner, pull a ripcord to make the cartridge open for business, and slide it into its properly labeled slot (black, cyan, magenta, or yellow) in the rack behind the front panel. We had a daunting moment when we broke one of the ripcords, but the front panel made up for it by the cute way it flips open halfway and then gradually lowers itself to the horizontal.

The 6180 has two paper trays: a 250-sheet drawer at the bottom and a 150-sheet tray that folds down from the front -- it took us a minute to realize there was a second way to open the front panel in addition to accessing the toner cartridges. An additional 550-sheet drawer that fits beneath the main one is $399. Printed pages exit face down in a 300-sheet (we'd say closer to 200-sheet) bin on top of the printer.

A duplex unit is a $199 option for the $449-after-rebate Phaser 6180N base model we tested. If you need automatic double-sided printing, you can save a few sawbucks by buying the $599-after-rebate model 6180DN, which has duplexing as standard equipment.