Customer Reviews

Xerox Phaser 7300/DN Network Color Laser Printer with Duplexer

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The positives for this printer:
Multiple prints are lightning-fast.
Black and white text prints or line drawings are beautiful.

The negatives:
-Noisy, and heating element is smelly.
-Frequent long, slow warmup periods.
-Terrible color-management & color matching.
-Terrible software settings frequently overridden by panel default settings.
-Awful color image resolution for photos even at highest settings w/ Xerox supplied papers.
-Terrible customer service.
-DON'T belive economical 'consumables' data - this burns it's very expensive toner much faster than advertised, on even simple prints. This is EXPENSIVE to own.
-At 8x the price, NOT laser quality - this is an LED printer.
-NO WHERE NEAR inkjet quality for photos.
-Frustrating to operate. If you're prone to yelling at badly designed inanimate objects, you'll chew the ears off of this printer.
-Lacks color management features and plug-ins that come standard even on the lowest of low-end cosumer printers.

BOTTOM LINE:
-If you want black-and-white speed, get a good laser printer with a fair amount of memory in it - it will be a lot cheaper and every bit as good.
-If you want color quality, get a good $500 Photo inkjet (Epson or Canon). This printer is an embarrasment w/color, especially photos.

Never in my life have I ever experienced a printer such as this, but then maybe I haven't been around enough printers. This thing couldn't print "Hello World" without it skipping, jamming, smearing, not fusing, hesitating, whathaveyou. Granted, when this printer does work, it does give out excellent color but this is roughly 10% of the time. The rest of the 90% is trying to get the printer to actually print something. I now have a new fuser and all new toner cards in this printer and it still jams about ever 50 pages. Also once something goes low, all of this is multiplied by 10. That is, successful printing goes down drastically and most of the time or you either reseting the printer or just buying replacement items for the printer. When the fuser goes below 40%, best just to get a new fuser which is literally a ripoff! These fusers are supposed to get 70,000 pages, but in reality they get about 45,000, just a little over half. And nothing is cheap when it comes to these babies. Every item is between $170 to $200 dollars and includes the toner by the way. (well if you get high capacity, but why get anything else?) Bottom line, unless you are printer mechanic by trade and are Xerox Phaser certified, there is absolutely no reason to buy this Phaser, period! I cannot stress this point enough. Do not buy this unless you are know what you are getting into with it. You will be incredibly frustrated by it.

Oh by the way, in typing this, I have cleared 5 jams already, and I type fast too. :(

I purchased one of these printers brand new some years ago. It has been a flawless performer. The only trouble I had is when I tried some generic toner refills; as long as I use genuine Xerox refills it works great. Printing speed is fast. Registration is so good that I have printed business cards that are indistinguishable from offset printed ones.

We use it for all high volume and high quality printing purposes, from including brochures and full color postcards.

Setup was a breeze. I plugged in the power cord and the Cat-5 cable, and after a few minutes of whirring and clicking, it told me what my network was, what it registered itself as, and was in all respects ready to print. Quite a change from the HP 8500DN it replaced.

I give 4 stars instead of 5 because:

(1) Toner cartridges are expensive. They will last a long time, as long as you recognize that this is a workgroup printer. By that I mean it uses up some toner in "overhead" every time it powers up, so it's not something you fire off one sheet to every now and then like an inkjet. But when I want to crank out 10 sets of handouts for a presentation my 7300 is a champ.

(2) I get grey ghosting on what should be whitespace, when printing on shiny enamel papers. I'm told this is an outgrowth of exposing the transfer unit to light, and this is consistent with my experience as I've replaced transfer units over the years. Apparently light exposure, even though I'm careful to avoid it, leads to a slight static charge which on glossy paper puts a slight grey shadow on the paper. It's not a serious problem; someone who's not a professional printer probably wouldn't notice it.

In summary, it does everything I expect it to, and more, and if I had it to do over I would buy one again.