Phaser printers and LED printers

[Dwight Huffman]

I have need to purchase, for a small office environment, a printer for
color brochures. It needs to handle speeds in the 10-20 pages per
minute range and mainly for letter size paper. Target price is
$1000-1200.

I prefer something other than inkjet printers for this application, and
recent color laser printer output I've seen is quite good.

There seem to be several models from the major manufacturers available
for under a grand, but they seem to cluster around 4 pages per minute in
color, which is too slow. We will be printing runs of a few hundred
pages at a time, probably 2-3 times a month.

The Xerox Phaser 8200 looks good; it is not a laser printer, but it's
output is very nice, and consumables seem to have reasonable cost.

The Oki 5300 also seems to fill the bill, but I believe that it's an LED
printer, and I've been warned that LED printers can have registration
problems.

Would any kind soul care to share their views on this topic???

TIA, Dwight Huffman

 

[Timothy Lee]

The Xerox Phaser 8200 looks good; it is not a laser printer, but it's
output is very nice, and consumables seem to have reasonable cost.

I bought one of these nearly a month ago now, good output and pretty
simple for adding ink etc. I've seen reports that you need to leave it
on to avoid ink being used in cleaning cycles when powering on and off,
it has a power standby mode. If you are intending to laminate your
output you may need to fiddle with the settings on your laminate to
reduce the temperature right down otherwise the heat of the laminator
seems melts the ink a bit. There is also a part exchange sort of system
for these printers, you should find it on the main Xerox website, I've
been waiting for collection of my previous printer for about three weeks
now. Finally, don't install it in a really small room, when I come in
in the morning here there is a slight waxy smell in the air which would
doubtless be greater if you shoved it in a small office (here is about
170 sq ft)

 

[Peter]

The Xerox Phaser 8200 looks good; it is not a laser printer, but it's
output is very nice, and consumables seem to have reasonable cost.

The Oki 5300 also seems to fill the bill, but I believe that it's an LED
printer, and I've been warned that LED printers can have registration
problems.

The Xerox solid ink printers produce good output but:
You can't turn them off or else the melted ink will solidify and will be
dumped when the machine is turned on next wasting a lot of ink.
The output can not be hot laminated or put back through a conventional
laser printer as the fuser will mess up the wax on the page.

The Oki C5300's are good machines producing a nice output, probably not
quite as good as the 8200. I've not heard about any registration problems
the only slight problem I believe is that you may get slight banding if you
print a large area of solid colour.

With the 8200 the B and N version only print at 1000dpi where as the DP and
DX will print at 1200dpi Photo Mode, I don't know how much difference that
makes to the quality but just something to watch out for.

 

[Timothy Lee]

With the 8200 the B and N version only print at 1000dpi where as the DP and
DX will print at 1200dpi Photo Mode, I don't know how much difference that
makes to the quality but just something to watch out for.

When I bought mine they reseller printed out a sample for me both at
normal setting, like the B & N (the N I purchased since it was offered
at the same price I could get the B) and the photo 1200 dpi setting and
I couldn't tell the difference. My sample page included two photos at
1800x1200 which were 3.5" across (or thereabouts)

 

[Larry George]

I have a Xerox Phaser 860 which is the same solid ink (wax) technology and I
find it rediculous the amount of ink that printer wastes on startup. I just
have it sitting there and don't use it anymore.

 

[Jan Gregor]

Phaser 8200 works fine, but there's a maintenance kit (drum)
that lasts 15 months or 10000 (or 40000 for extended) pages.
As other said, printer is always on.

And one more "problem". When you have in printer only half of
solid ink cartridge (there are usually three for each color)
phaser tells you to insert new. You have to insert new or put
something to fill space for cartridges.

Jan