Review of the Xerox Phaser 6130 Color Office Printer
The Phaser 6130 is a color laser printer designed for small workgroups or personal office use . The best part is that the 6130 costs less than $500. The Xerox 6130 is also semi-portable, 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 as a true desktop printer .
One detail you need to remember when buying any laser printer is not just how much it costs up front, but how much the ink or toner costs . The 6130 toner cartridges are rather expensive. You can save a lot by buying generic toner . Our testing on the 6130 using Phaser 6130 replacement color toner
Setting up the color laser is a piece of cake. Since the printer is so compact, you get it set up safely by yourself . Once you lock the toner cartridges in place , all you have to do is connect the printer via USB or Ethernet , power it up, and install the software and drivers .
Xerox’s network installation is also a snap . Complete network installation took under 2 minutes toatal .
The speed of Xerox’s 6130 over a 10/100 Base-T Ethernet connection was only average . It took more than 20 seconds to print a single-page Word document, about a minute to print ten pages, 2 minutes and 25 seconds to print a a 20 MB jpeg, and 1 minute to print four pages from a PDF.
One of it’s quirks is that if the printer driver is set for color, the 6130 will always 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 color output, the Phaser 6130 makes no special impressions. Our testers rate the Xerox’s color-photo output an average rating because colors appeared washed-out compared to our control photo. In graphical printing areas , the Phaser 6130 scored ahead of the pack. The color ratings printed identically whether we used the included OEM toner or in a printer where we installed replacement Xerox Phaser 6130 color toner cartridges .
The Phaser 6130 scored high in printing clean , clear grayscale text . Ultimately, the Phaser 6130 can handle any text it encounters and text quality was above average . Printed text was easy to read all the way down to 4 points. Most fonts needed no more than 6 points to be perfectly legible . Even a extremely cursive font printed easily-readable and well-formed at 12 points. We had no trouble producing the same textual clarity with the discount Xerox Phaser 6130 black cartridges.
We especially liked the Xerox Phaser 6130 as a smart choice for the frugal business owner , since it provides some advanced features at an affordable price. It is priced low in its category and prints average to above average quality . Unless you are trying to print high-quality full color graphics on a large scale, the Xerox Phaser 6130 should meet most of your needs .