Customer Reviews

Xerox Phaser 8560/DN Color Printer

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I bought one of these a couple months ago and I am completely amazed at the quality and speed of the prints. They look highly professional on any white paper and even some "card" like stock (have not tried transparencies). The print speed is much faster than laser and so far the print server and all prints have been flawless. We print several hundred pages per month, and I have owned several various models of HP printers, none of which have printed so many pages without some sort of jam or need to reset the print server. I absolutely love the solid ink. It involves so little packaging, its almost sickening to think about all the waste of laser or even inkjet! Yes, this printer is better to be left on. It sits and makes no noise whatsoever in standby (can't say that about laser), and when I am about to print I just touch any button on the front panel to get it out of standby so that by the time I send the document to the printer, its all ready to go.
This may not be the best printer for the casual user, but for those that don't mind leaving a printer turned on all the time, this is by far the best printer I have seen. The duplex printing is fantastic also.
Note that you may want to place this somewhere such that there is nothing above the printer for at least a foot or so. The top lifts up to load ink, and it is somewhat heavy - you don't want to have to move it or unplug it to load the ink, so keep that in mind.
The price was hard to digest initially but seems like a real bargain to me now.

This printer is simply AWESOME! I have been using OkiData color laser printers for several years. I finally got tired to spending a fortune on image drums and pricey toner cartridges. I heard about the solid ink color capabilities of the Xerox Phaser and did a bunch of research before buying. In short, this printer is amazing.

Color - First of all, the color reproduction of the printer is stellar. The color matching does an incredible job right out of the box. Using PHOTO mode creates rich, vibrant color on plain paper. Of course, this uses more ink, but that's okay. I have the printer set on STANDARD mode for everyday use. I'll only use ENHANCED or PHOTO mode when doing more important jobs.

Speed - This printer is MUCH faster than the OKI C6100 that I had previously. I leave this printer on all the time with a timeout setting of 240 minutes. It starts right up and spits out the page in about 7-9 seconds. I do mean SPIT. This printer almost literally shoots the paper out the tray. It's so fast that it is startling at first.

Noise - For anyone worried about noise, don't be. I can't hear the printer at all in a 20x16 office with 3 other computers. That either means that it is silent or my other computers are louder (and they are very quiet as well). When it is printing, there is no loud fan running or the print engine running. It is very quiet. If people think this printer is loud, they haven't really heard a loud printer before. It is near SILENT compared to my OKI.

I am a photo and computer enthusiast and have spent thousands of dollars on equipment. This is by far the best color (non-inkjet) printer I have used to date. I look forward to saving money compared to my OKI!

I bought this because I wanted good-quality color prints. Color lasers print photos poorly, and I use a printer at home too infrequently to justify an inkjet as ink would dry out between uses.

This works beautifully. However, EXPENSIVE ink refills. But so are color lasers' toner cartridges. Nonetheless, SUPER-FAST. And GORGEOUS output.

One note: if you print infrequently as well, make sure to set the printer to only warm up when jobs are coming in. Out of the box it is set to warm up daily--and that will simply eat up ink. And electricity.

One day, I had enough with tons of problem I have with HP Color Laser printers from toner dust, paper jam, and dirty drum. We have about 4 high volume $5000 Color Laserjet printers in our office and none of them are reliable.
My friend told me to try the solid ink technology. I tried and never looked back. This printer is SUPER CHEAP, FAST and RELIABLE. No single paper jam or quality problem for 150,000 pages printing in almost 2 YEARS! And the eye popping color! Solid ink is well known for the color quality.
I love it so much, make my job much easier.

PROS:
1. Very easy maintenance.
2. Low cost per page (Cheaper than ink jet but comparable to laser)
3. Very FAST 30ppm color.
4. Very nice color (better than laser, comparable to color inkjet with photo paper)

CONS:
1. I would say this printer only works for office setting and high volume printing since you should leave this on all the time. Otherwise, it will take forever to warm up and waste ink.
2. Pretty noisy, but it is still bearable.
3. The ink is a wax. So you can't write on top of it. Even Sharpie won't work.
4. There are some visible dithering in photo prints. But you can't tell the difference unless you see it pretty close.

I think my title says it all. This thing is noisy - there is no other way to decribe it. It takes over a minute to wake from sleep (you never want to turn it off - it would waste a lot of ink and takes about 5 minutes) and then it starts to print. If you only use it for text it is pretty fast. If you use it on best quality with a lot of color and photos then it chugs along. I bought it to print color so don't be fooled by the 22 pages per minute claim. The other issues is the cost of the inks, which are actually colored wax pellets - pretty cool thecnology. It uses twice as much yellow as the other colors and 50% more cyan. Even in stanby it uses ink as the machine turns itself on every few hours in order to keep the ink hot. Speaking of inks, you need to know that the output is very glossy and raised on the page. When you run your fingers across a page it feels waxy, which in fact it is. The one good think I will say is that photographs look fantastic. If you want to buy it let me know.

UPDATE: We have now used this printer extensively since my initial review. Twelve and a half months after buying the printer it died. Xerox sent two different service techs over a two week period and basically rebuilt the machine - new gear system, new print heads etc. Now it works like a charm although it is still noisy in a small office. Ink usage has been cut in half and now per page costs are less than a laser color copier. I highly recommend buying the Xerox service agreement - our rebuild repair would have cost over $2,000 by the time they were finished. If I could change my rating I would certainly give it four stars

I used to go to Kinkos and spend (roughly) $1.50 per page from a Xerox Phaser 7760 - a printer that retails for over $5000 or $6000. Obviously I really don't want to drop that kind of cash on a printer, and I really didn't think you could buy a printer of that quality without spending several thousands of dollars. I WAS WRONG! I happened to see a page from the Phaser 8560 one day and I was sold. It's hard to explain how beautiful the color is on this printer. It's bright, accurate, and extremely fast. Within a second of hearing the printer start, the page is done. The ink is expensive, but appears to be much cheaper than what you would pay for the equivalent color laser toner. That being said, the price of this printer is a bargain! I work in graphic design and do a lot of one-on-one meetings with clients... this printer makes all of my work so much more vibrant and beautiful.

I'm a graphic designer that works from home and needed a printer that would cut back those trips to the local print shop. I did a lot of research and decided on this printer based on image quality and price of use. Note: all Laser Printers will be initially costly in the Ink/Toner department. BUT I did the math: Our Canon Ink Jet, one set of ink will yield about 380+ prints for about $60 in Ink (about .16 cents per page). This printer yields 3,400+ prints for one set on ink at round about $450 (making it .13 cents per page). This may not seem like a lot, but when you multiply .03 cents by 3,000 thats $90. There is a large initial investment, but an overall cost saver, especially when you don't have to spend a $1.05 per print at Kinkos for a lesser quality print.

Pros:
-Beautiful Quality Prints < The solid ink is AMAZING!! It gives a raised sheen quality. Best print I've ever seen since using a DocuColor.
-Easy to make adjustments, lot's of options
-Ink is so simple to load, I think my 1 year old could do it.
-Low cost printing
-Prints up to 8.5 x 14

Cons:
-A small streak was in a few of my prints, I'll be calling Xerox to see if I can get that fixed. Looks like a roller issue.
-The duplex printing option would be great if there was a setting to align the both sides properly. I'm still working with it, but I've never had a printer that duplexed perfect...
-My biggest con would have been not ordering the additional paper tray. While Xerox claims that there are 2 trays, there is only 1 "tray" and then there is a door that folds down to load more paper. I would have liked to have an extra "tray" to load a different size of paper.

Some of the things that were said in other reviews, I tested:
-Writing on the prints: I could not easily write on the prints, however, I found that I could with a China Marker.
-The Ink easily scratching off the paper: Uh... I had to scratch REALLY hard to get it to flake. Now, I used the original Xerox brand solid ink, I cannot speak for generic ink.
-Loudness: Yea, it was a little loud. I expected it, but it wasn't much louder that any other printer that I've used.

Overall, I would recommend for this printer as the perfect low cost/high quality printer. I'm not sure that you can get much better than this for this price. It's perfect for designers starting out , or anyone who needs prints of this quality but can't drop tens of thousands of dollars on a printer.

I purchased an 8560DN with some hesitation as I'd heard stories about smearing and waxy ink issues. I've had mine about two weeks and am very happy with it, however. The ink is effectively indelible. Even with a page hot off the printer I can't intentionally smear the ink. Likewise, I'd read reports that you can't easily write on or over the ink on a printed page because of the waxy layer, but that provide to be untrue. It's fast -- very fast -- and the quality is excellent. Setup was extremely easy --- trivial in fact on a variety of systems (Mac,XP, Ubuntu). I'd certainly recommend it others. My only concern is that it's somewhat power-hungry as it needs to keep the ink warmed up to expedite printing. I suppose this offsets the eco-friendly properties of the ink itself (and lack of toner cartriges). I don't think I'll buy another laser printer.

This printer has cute little hard blocks of ink, so there is no excessive packaging or bulky waste to dispose of when a cartridge is used. I like this eco-friendly aspect. The colors are fantastic and sharply defined; my husband uses this model in his home office and it is professional quality.

We've had this model for several months and it has never jammed. I was surprised to see another comment say that this printer is noisy, as I feel it is much quieter than it's predecessor.

This is a real powerhouse for such a small machine. It's bigger than a breadbox but small enough to fit on a small tabletop. It does big jobs quickly and is a good investment for any small business.

Speaking from the perspective of a graphic designer . . . Colors are spectacular. Speed is blazing fast. Beyond my expectations.