One word review - NICE

I've wanted a color laser for the house and been checking around for a couple months. A lot of the inexpensive color lasers($200 or less) are "win printers" that often do not have drivers for OS X. I'd seen refurbished real printers for $99 and up, but they didn't come with toner cartridges making them about as expensive as a brand new one that comes with toner.

I saw that Xerox had their $599 [link|http://www.office.xerox.com/printers/color-printers/phaser-6120/enus.html|Phaser 6120/N] with a $200 rebate last month, bringing the price down to $299. I ordered one through [link|http://www.cdw.com/|CDW] as they offered the printer at $299 with "instant savings" instead of me having to deal with sending off the rebate.

Specs:
20 ppm B&W
5 ppm color
2400 Enhanced, 600 DPI
PostScript 3 and PCL 6/5c/5e
Connections: Parallel, USB 2 and 10/100 ethernet
128MB (640 max)

I set the printer up and my Mac saw it right away via Rendezvous [link|http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/bonjour/|Bonjour]. I went ahead and installed the drivers anyway so that I could see toner levels and such on the computer. This info is also available via web browser if you use the network connection instead of USB or Parallel.

The [link|http://macworld.pricegrabber.com/rating_getprodrev.php/masterid=13291153/id_type=masterid|reviews] all seem to say the same thing "excellent output, but noisy". The print quality is excellent. The printer is no noisier than the color lasers we have in the office, so I imagine these reviewers have never used a color laser before. The noise is from the printing being a multi-pass printer where the toner rotates each color into position while the paper makes 4 passes through the printer(hence 1/4th the print speed of B&W).

I was planning to upgrade the RAM, but have been able to send full page photos(such as [link|http://spiceware.org/gallery/ShawnsVisit2007/DCP_0609?full=1|this one] 975KB @ 2160x1440) to the printer without any issues. I'd maxed out the RAM on my old B&W Brother HL-1440 laser printer and it would often choke on full page photos. I plan to replace my 3MP [link|http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/kodakdc4800/|Kodak DC4800] later this year, so I may need to upgrade the printers RAM at that point. (ooh - Canon announced their 8MP [link|http://www.dpreview.com/news/0705/07050703canons5is.asp|Powershot S5 IS] today - guess they skipped S4)

The rebates over, but it looks like they've dropped the price from $499 to $349.