Xerox Phaser 6700/DN

The Xerox Phaser 6700/DN ($1,550 street) is ready to step up as a heavy-duty color laser printer for a small to mid-sized office or a busy workgroup. Though not the fastest printer in its class, it can churn out prodigious volumes of beautiful text. Its color photos and graphics aren?t as elegant, but they?re fine for internal business uses.

The hulking, two-toned (blue and white) 6700/DN measures 22 by 20.3 by 16.9 inches and weighs 93 pounds, so you?ll need preferably three people to move it into place. The 6700/DN has generous paper capacity, between a 550-sheet main tray and a 150-sheet secondary tray; an automatic duplexer is standard. Additional 550-sheet ($399) and 1,100-sheet trays ($799) are available as options; the printer?s maximum capacity is 2,900 sheets. The other option available is a finisher with stacker and stapler ($899). The 6700/DN has a rated monthly duty cycle of 120,000 pages. The Xerox Phaser 6700/DN has Ethernet and USB connectivity. I tested the Phaser over an Ethernet connection with a PC running Windows Vista.

Print Speed

I timed the Xerox Phaser 6700/DN on the latest version of our business applications suite at 7.1 effective pages per minute (ppm). That?s relatively slow considering its rated print speed?based on text-only printing?of 47 ppm. (Our test suite combines text pages, graphics pages, and pages with mixed content.) I clocked the Dell 5130CDN ($1,599 direct), with the same rated speed, at 8.9 ppm, while we timed the Editors? Choice Xerox Phaser 6360DN ($1,599 direct, 4 stars), with a rated speed of only 42 ppm, at 9.5 ppm on the same tests in 2007. (At the end of 2011, Xerox officially discontinued the 6360DN and is currently selling its remaining stock at a 50% rebate.) I timed the Lexmark C792de ($1,599 direct, 4 stars), rated at 50 pages per minute for both color and monochrome, at 8.5 ppm.

Output Quality

The Phaser 6700/DN?s text was a touch above par for lasers, which is to say it?s very good. It should be fine for any business use, even elegant documents like resumes or applicaitons requiring very small fonts, such as some demanding desktop publishing uses.

Graphics quality was a touch below par for a color laser. Colors were bright, though they didn?t always look quite accurate, and black backgrounds tended to look a bit faded and blotchy. One illustration showed significant posterization, the tendency for sudden shifts in color where they should be gradual. In a few cases, there were minor registration issues; graphic elements didn?t quite line up with their backgrounds, revealing a sliver of white between them. A spurious, fine streak of color appeared along one edge of each graphic. That said, the graphics quality is fine for internal business use up to and including PowerPoint handouts, though I?d be hesitant to give them to prospective clients who I was seeking to impress.

Photo quality was also slightly sub-par for a color laser. Colors were generally rich and well saturated, though at times they seemed a bit off. ?Several photos showed tints; for example, a blue sky appeared a bit green. Images showed dithering (visible dot patterns) and, in a couple of cases, posterization. Photo quality was a bit below par for a color laser, good enough to print out recognizable images from files or Web pages, but not up to the level I?d expect for a client newsletter, let alone advertising handouts.

Other Issues

Xerox claims running costs of of 1.5 cents per monochrome page and 9.5 cents per color page for the 6700/DN, reasonably low for a color laser in its price range though not among the lowest we?ve seen. For example, the Dell 5130CDN?s claimed per-page costs are 1.0 cents per monochrome page and 7.7 cents per color page. The higher your printing volume (and these machines are geared to businesses churning out a lot of pages), the greater your savings would be with the Dell: after about 300,000 monochrome pages, or 100,000 color pages, the printer would pay for itself.

The 6700/DN can get the job done as a workhorse color laser printer for a small to mid-sized business. Its text quality was terrific, while both photo and graphics quality was sub-par. The 6700/DN has reasonable speed but isn?t the fastest printer on the block. The faster Editor?s Choice Xerox Phaser 6360DN, which is being phased out (pardon the pun), can be gotten for a deep discount. The Dell 5130CDN, also relatively zippy, has lower running costs than the 6700/DN.

The Xerox Phaser 6700/DN is a solid choice for a busy office with occasional internal use for color printing but which doesn?t require the highest quality in output other than text. If that?s what you?re looking for, it should be on your short list.

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