Customer Reviews

Xerox Phaser 6250/N Network Color Laser Printer

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

 

 

A few months ago, I got tired of USB color inkjet printers. I was starting to need 100-200 color flyers at a time, maybe 1000 sheets a month, and the USBs were sinking under those kinds of demands. So, I started looking around for my first color laser printer.

Not so easy, given that they world of color laser jets is rapidly changing. Unlike inkjets, where "they're all the same", companies like Xerox, HP, and Canon are wanting to capture the growing market of home-owned CLJs, and are each experimenting with new technologies, ranging from solid wax ink, to new internal engines, etc. It's not an easy choice to navigate.

I basically searched the Net for customer reviews, using Amazon and the other places where end users post their likes and rants. In the end, it was a flip of the coin that made me choose the Xerox Phaser 6250N. I was able to get an open box from some company in Colorado, and paid just under two thousand.

I've now had the 6250N for a full month of usage. I've printed over 1500 copies. Some thoughts:

** The thing rocks. You know those pieces of technology you own that make you want to clap each time you use them? This is how it is with this guy.

** 26 pages per minute. I've timed it. I've actually had friends come over to just watch it churn out that many pages in a minute. This is with ANY page I throw at it, be it strictly text, or a full color flyer that doesn't have a speck of white paper left on it. No more waiting.

** I was afraid of two things: the noise and the smell. Smell: none. Can't smell a thing, and I have a dog's nose regarding anything chemical (I can smell from 4 feet away if a women is using chemical-laden perfumes, vs essential oil). Noise: during printing, it's not bad, it's actually kind of a pleasant noise, churning out each sheet. For awhile after each job, though, it makes an unpleasant ennnngggghhhh noise. Eventually, it turns itself off (10 to 30 minutes), but I haven't figured out how to get it to sleep quicker. I almost think there's some kind of internal heat sensor, just like a Mac: if it's hot, it turns on the ennngggh fan. If it's cool, it goes quiet. My only fix is to walk over and turn it off.

** It's big, not as small or lightweight as the old USB inkjets. It's 25" long, by 17x17". It's also heavy, probably 75 pounds. Not a big deal, but it's a shock the first time you pull it out of the box. No more tucking the thing under a desk.

** It holds 650 sheets. This means you can put an entire ream of paper in it. Holy moly, why didn't someone else think of this before? No more guessing how much it'll hold. Just grab a ream and stuff it in there.

** The ink system is a sight to behold. Located right there on top, under an opaque plastic cover, four round cylinders sit locked in with a 1/4 twist. Once they're empty, you twist in the opposite direction, lift it out, pop in a new cylinder, give it the 1/4 twist, and THAT's IT. No opening a door, no guessing whether you did it right, etc. It's one of the features that get an audible wow from friends. (side note: I have two friends who are really close to dumping their USBs and getting this thing, just by watching it work).

** Ethernet cable connection!!! Ahh, man. I think I would buy this for no other reason than to dump one more USB connection. For a mouse, fine, but my experience with USB is that it's really not that great, at least for the amt of data that a printer needs. When I click a "PRINT" button, I hear the 6250 wind up well under 1 second. That's amazing to me. Even on pretty large posters and flyers (with heavy graphics), the first flyer starts printing within 5-10 seconds. If it's straight text, it'll start printing within 3 seconds. 26 pages per minute.

** Speaking of Ethernet cable: wireless printing, from anywhere in the house. This has been a godsend to my wife, who used to always bug me about printing files from her iBook. Last night, she printed 20 flyers from the kitchen, wirelessly to the 6250 about 60 feet away. Is this a great time to be alive or what.

** About once every 3 days or 20 print jobs, the 6250N doesn't see my print job. I have yet to figure out what the deal is, but I use the idiot's version of tech knowledge: I power down and power up the printer. So far, that always fixes the problem. This may not be a printer thing, but an End User Thing. I may be doing something wrong.

** I haven't figure out how to get it to stop printing its internal Welcome/Startup page every time I turn the printer back on. Not a big deal, but who needs to waste paper and ink. Perhaps its a setting I can turn off.

** Ink prices: the first time you buy a set of 4 high capacity ink cylinders and fork out $650, you have to remind yourself of the "price-per-page" thing. Otherwise, it's a shock. In the Xerox Phaser's case, high capacity says 8,000 pages. Given that that is probably not an accurate number, I'm guessing more like 4,000 pages. That turns out to be about 16¢ a page. That's a number that I can live with.

** Software works seamlessly with Panther 10.3.3.

To wrap this up: I love this thing. I can't say enough good about it. After dealing with inkjets for 8 years, I am glad I bit the Visa bullet and spent the dough.

After much research, product samples, reading many reviews and correspondence with Xerox support staff, I decided to purchase the Xerox Phaser 6250 to use for printing greeting cards, postcards, business cards and similar items requiring a heavy card stock of 160 gsm or greater (approximately 65 lb. cover stock or greater). Xerox rates the capacity of the Phaser 6250 at 216 gsm (approximately 80 lb. cover stock). Unfortunately, after using this product, I learned from actual use, and had this confirmed by Xerox technical staff, that using "any paper that is 160 gsm or heavier may cause severe curling of the paper. We recommend changing the paper to a lighter paper-weight". I cannot over-emphasize the severity of the paper curling. This renders the product useless for printing items such as business cards, greeting cards, postcards and some of the other in-house printing jobs for which one would purchase this product.

This is a significant flaw which Xerox confirms. Do not purchase this product if it is to be used to print on heavy-weight card stock.

This printer is much more attractive than the hideously blocky or overly bulky HP printers. But thats not why you buy a printer. I've used mine for about 1.5 years now and the print quality is great for documents, graphic arts, and some simple cards, cd-labels, business cards. Its not a photo printer - no laser is to date - specialty inkjet is still the way to go there.

The achilles heal of this printer is the paper handling. The engineering design cut a corner somewhere when they went from the 6200 to the 6250 that impacts the paper feed path. If you use the cheapest copier paper, the thin stuff, there are no issues... though that could just be coincidence. The problem appears to be a motor that is part of the printer, that drives the registration rollers... to replace that part, the entire printer must be disassembled (ie its not a standard replacement part). When comming out of warmup, that motor cannot get the final transfer roll (on the front pivoting door) moving. Either the motor is cheaper (has a dead spot without enough torque) or the gearing has such a spot, or the rollers have issues, but the combination of parts results in that last roller not getting moving when it should - it just sticks. The result, when the sheet gets there it jams. The tech, who was out twice to work the problem over 7 months, indicated it was an issue he has seen a lot with the 6250, but not the 6200. THe two are practically identical printers, design and mechanically.

If the paper handling were not a concern (maybe it only happens if the room is cold - as my instances of problems occur in January-March), then I'd almost give this a 5 star rating - but the annoyance of getting paper jams so often, when there is a problem, are a HUGE issue for a $2000 printer.

I have the N version - network - which is great. I picked up the expanded paper tray - so with 3 full trays you have plenty of paper options (legal, + letter, + heavy-letter). If I needed the hard drive, dropping it in would be easy - but you only need that for coallating. The coallating happens on the printer - so your computer can send the job and get back to do what you need it to do (rather than having to repeatedly send specific pages to the printer). As the Mac guy said, you could do collation on the computer with software - but thats what the low-end sub$1000 printers do and not why one buys this class of printers.

To the startup-page guy - don't turn off the printer. If you power it up, it gives you a page of status - thats what they do. Set the powersave mode to the right level and leave the printer on - it goes to powersave mode when not used - and is not drawing much power. THes are printers not designed to be turned on when you need them.

Too bad Xerox hosed up the paper handling. All that to save a few bucks - or because of a HUGE screwup in testing or design. Someone dropped the ball and it will take Xerox a long time to recover the reputation from this screw up!

As a side note, I would like to express my extreme disappointment in the Phaser 6250. Problems are almost continuous with this printer and hardly a week goes by that a toner cartridge, transfer roller, imagining unit or fuser doesn't need to be replaced. Xerox's advertising on this product is close to or is false. The rated printing speed is "up to 26ppm". While technically correct, Xerox fails to mention that if you are printing more than 26 pages, printing speed is likely to be considerably slower as you wait for a cleaning cycle to complete. The printer's driver for Mac OS X does NOT support collation, something that is unfathomable. When inquiring to Xerox why it did not collate I was told the printer needed a hard drive to accomplish this, which is simply a lie. If Xerox has engineered the printer to require a hard drive for collation, this is an engineer flaw as a result of either laziness or management's request so as to increase profits by selling more accessories. Even worse is that red toner leaks into the printer itself. The build-up eventually resulted in a red hue on the right margin of all color pages printed. Xerox's response to what is clearly a manufacturing defect was that I should try and clean out the inside of the printer as best as possible. I can not imagine how Xerox expects to retain customers if the Phaser 6250 is indicative of the quality of Xerox's other products. In summary this printer prints in color, but lacks all the benfits of a laser, speed and reliability.

I bought this as a "workgroup" printer for work - i.e. it prints about 750 pages per day, every day. Many problems.

1) Reliability. First few months, works fine - no paper jams. But after a few months, the paper handling mechanisms wear out, and are UNREPAIRABLE. "Registration Roller" jams become more and more frequent, and are a pain to clear. Xerox denies that this type of jam is even possible. They sent me a brand new replacement printer.

The new printer is having the SAME EXACT PROBLEMS. Xerox (to their credit) sent techs out 9 times, and promptly, and they replaced every part which COULD be replaced, but the Registration Roller jams continued. Xerox seemed stumped. My only guess is that they didn't TEST this printer for longevity.

2) Print quality is mediocre at best. Text looks awful - different colors bleeding outside each letter, unless you print in "Greyscale" mode, which sort of defeates the purpose of a color printer. Photographs print OK for a laser printer - there's some banding, but I've never seen photos printed from OTHER laser printers, to compare it to.

3) As another reviewer mentioned, it does indeed "not print" sometimes. I have it connected via Ethernet. Often, the print job just never gets through, and the computer displays "communication error".

To be fair, here are some pros:

-Very fast. So fast, in fact, I get paper cuts if other people are printing!

-Very quiet, for a color laser. The toners don't move, which helps.

-Loading toner is easy, and can be done in literally 8 seconds.

-Web-management tools and built-in email server (to send status emails) are useful.

This printer I think is fine for small-quantity printing (maybe 100 sheets per day), but I'd avoid it like the plague for workgroups or mission-critical uses.

-KM

Pro: this printer is fast, fairly quiet and has GREAT quality output. Colors are rich and solid, text is clear and crisp even at 6 pt on textured paper. Photos are so so, but this isn't supposed to be a photo printer.

Con: Paper curls BIG TIME, even with the front load bypass tray, the appropriate software settings and laser paper!!! If you're using anything higher than regular 20#, forget it. 24# paper, card stock, cover stock, labels, business cards, presentation paper, photo quality or heavy matte paper, etc. come out with a VERY bad curl that does not press out, even after being left under heavy weights overnight...and who's got time for that in a production envionment?

Bottom line: if you need color and clear text in documents printed exclusively on regluar weight paper in a single or networked environment, this printer is the best I've seen. If you print on ANYTHING besides standard paper, you will be VERY disappointed with the results.

Xerox Jam at Fuser. Google xerox jam at fuser and you will be shocked at all the bad reviews.
Do not buy this product. I own two and once you buy it Xerox could care less about you as a customer. One of mine has jammed EVERY three pages, wasting a ton of time, paper, ink, etc because it starts over each time. It has been sent in for repair once already, I have purchased new fusers as they recommended and still doesn't work correctly. Now I got the below response today from Xerox. Long and short....buy a HP so you will get better customer service.

Hello Craig,
We have received your request for support.
If you have tried on the online troubleshooting steps you will require a service call. Currently our records show you machine is not under contract, and our billable rates are $332.00 for the first 30 minutes and $61.00 for every 15 minutes there after plus applicable taxes. A credit card which would be preauthorized for $900 not billed until service completed and then would be billed the total amount of the service call only. I have also copied and pasted a link below where you can look for an Authorized Service Provider in your area as well.
Regards,
Tammy Field
North American E-mail Support Team
Xerox North America (XNA)

I've had this printer for about 2 years now. As noted in other reviews, the paper handling is very poor. About half the time the paper misfeeds. A printer is supposed to print, and when this one does, the print quality is very good, BUT it just doesn't print often enough - the paper gets jammed so often that I just end up expecting it to fail. DO NOT BUY ONE OF THESE PRINTERS. I had a service guy come out and he acknowledged there was a problem and said that he couldn't fix it.

I sent a letter to Xerox yesterday and they told me that it's out of warranty and that i could pay $322 for the first half hour and $61 for each additional fifteen minutes, plus the cost of the parts and any tax that applies.

RUN, DON'T WALK away from this printer. Mine is going in the trash.

I bought this printer 1 week ago and the printout is beautiful.
Before I bought the Xerox 6250N, I checked Lemark, HP, Okidata and many other brands, but I found Xerox gave you the best bang for your money. I paid $2069 and got free shipping, Xerox have a $300 rebate, so basically the 6250N only cost $1769. What a great deal.

I've owned a 6250DP for about a year. As mentioned in other reviews, when the printer comes out of power-saving mode, it often jams on the first printed page. I am currently experimenting with different kinds of paper to see if I can work around this problem. I do worry that with the number of times I've had to open this printer to take out a jammed page I will wear out the front latch.

The print quality is fine, and the cartridges last a surprisingly long time.