Product Reviews

Xerox's range of solid ink printers, of which the Phaser 8560MFP/N is the latest, employ a technology inherited from its purchase of Tektronix, where wax sticks akin to crayons are used to print pages. This may sound a bit kiddy, but is far from it, as these machines output higher quality pages than most lasers, with very little wastage and at impressive speeds.

The Phaser 8560MFP/N, as the suffix suggests, is a multi-function printer, and has a large flatbed scanner on top of its printer section. The scanner is bigger than most as it's designed to cope with US legal-sized paper, which is considerably longer than standard A4.

On the front of the scanner is a control panel, with a batch of buttons and indicators. On its left are typical photocopying-style controls for print darkness, enlargement, colour mode, document type, print quality and two-sided printing, though there's no duplex fitted to this model - it's an optional extra.

On the panel's right is a number pad for dialling fax numbers, starting and stopping a print, and scanning or copying a job. There are speed-dial numbers available, too. In the centre of the panel is a backlit, six-line status and menu display, behind which are mode buttons for scan, print, copy and fax modes.

The main printer section is rather differently designed from typical lasers. Although the consumables slot in through holes in the top cover, this is more like playing with an early learning tool than fitting a new toner cartridge. Solid ink is exactly what it says, small blocks of waxy, pigmented resins, shape-coded to fit only into the right colour loading channels.

When the printer is switched on, it takes around five minutes to melt the solid ink to a viscous liquid that can be applied to the paper. The printer uses a drum, which it coats with a light oil before

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printing to prevent the ink sticking to it, and transfers the ink to the paper using the drum as an intermediary. Here though, the ink cools and sticks to the paper naturally, requiring no fuser to bond it to the paper fibres, as a laser does.

Pages are fed from a 525-sheet paper tray, which is supplemented by a 100-sheet multi-purpose tray for special media. Two extra 525-sheet trays are available as options, as is a duplexer and a castered cabinet. Paper is fed to an angled output tray above, which has a tinted, acrylic surround to catch sheets that feed through quickly. Xerox claims a print speed of 30ppm, but we measured it at nearer 12ppm with our five-page test documents - still a good speed for this class of machine.

This is irrespective of whether you're printing text or graphics, and the Xerox is just as happy printing a full-page photo as it is a business letter, with any slight delay to the photo being just the rasterising time, which will depend on the processing power of your Mac. Software supplied with the Phaser 8560MFP/N is largely drivers, for both USB and network use. They cover all the standard functions of the printer, including ColorSync colour matching and poster printing. Full Adobe PostScript Level 3 is provided as standard.

Print quality is better than any laser printer we've looked at recently, from vivid business graphics to subtle shades in photographs, and is closer to inkjet reproduction. The printer is rated at 2400dpi and it's certainly difficult to see any dither patterns in the output samples we printed. Copying, while only 600dpi because of the resolution of the scanner, produced test copies we had trouble distinguishing from the originals.

Using multi-ink stick packs, the cheapest way to buy consumables, gives page costs of 2.4p for black pages and 6.2p for colour, with the colour cost being particularly impressive. Buying simple colour sticks in blister packs means there's a minimum of waste and no recycling to worry about. Each stick should give you about 1150 pages, so you won't be feeding the printer incessantly.

The 8560MFP/N is a smashing multi-function for anybody who wants high duty cycles, but with better print quality than a typical laser. The initial cost may seem high, at just over £1000, but low running costs mitigate this, and the printer is capable of everything from short-run marketing materials to low-end graphics proofing.