Review of the Phaser 6130 Color Network Printer

March 10th, 2010 | by hdtv |

Xerox’s Phaser 6130 is a color laser printer that packs a lot of printer into a small package. The best part is that the 6130 costs less than $500. The 6130 is also small and lightweight , weighing in at less than 40 lbs. with a footprint of about 15 inches all around . As small as it is, it is still a little large for a desk .

An important component of any color laser is not just the initial cost , but how much you’ll have to spend on ink or toner. The 6130 toner cartridges are rather expensive. You can save a lot by buying generic toner . All our tests were performed on the 6130 using Xerox Phaser 6130 replacement toner cartridges

Setting up the Phaser 6130 is easy even for a novice . Since the printer is small in comparison to most color lasers , you get it set up on your own. Just snap the toner cartridges in place. Then all you have to do is hook it up to your computer using the proper cable, power it up, and insert the included software CD to install the printer driver .

The installation of networking with the 6130 is as easy as it gets. Complete network installation took under 2 minutes toatal .

The printing speed of the 6130 over a standard CAT-10 network connection was only average . It took 22 seconds to print a single-page Word document, about a minute to print a ten-page Word document , 2 minutes and 25 seconds to print a a 20 MB jpeg, and 1 minute to print a four-page PDF .

One of of the idiosyncracies of the 6130 is that if the printer driver is set for color, the printer will print in the 12-ppm color mode even if all you’re printing is black-and-white text. If it’s set for black and white, it will print at 16 ppm, but it will print everything, including color documents, in black and white. I’d expect most people will simply leave the printer in the default color mode instead of checking the setting each time. I ran all my tests based on that assumption.

As far as print quality , the Phaser 6130 makes no special impressions. Our testers rate the 6130’s color-photo quality a 5 out of 10 rating because colors were subdued compared to our control photo. As for gradient fill and line printing, the Phaser 6130 scored a Good rating . The color ratings were the same whether we used the included OEM toner or in a printer where we installed discount Xerox Phaser 6130 toner cartridges.

The only outstanding printing feature was the crisp grayscale text the 6130 produced. Ultimately, the Phaser 6130 printer handles any text you give it and textual printing quality was very good. Printed text was readable all the way down to 4 points. No font had to be increased to larger than 6 points to be readable. Even a heavily stylized font printed easily-readable and well-formed at 12 points. We had no trouble producing the same textual clarity with the low-cost Xerox Phaser 6130 high yield black toner .

The Phaser 6130 is inexpensive , and while there may be better options in the same price range , the Phaser 6130 is a fine printer, and a good choice for any small to medium sized office .


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