Xerox Phaser 3250D review

£155
Price when reviewed

Most Xerox printers are aimed at medium-to large-sized businesses, but the 3250D – which resides at the very bottom of the range – is definitely one for the smaller organisation.

Xerox Phaser 3250D review

That’s not to say it’s a low-capacity printer; far from it. This little Xerox is, in fact, capable of dealing with a large volume of output from even medium-sized workgroups. Its maximum duty cycle is an impressive 30,000 pages per month, and its speed of 28ppm is more than most small offices will need.

In our tests it nailed those claims, producing our 50-page text document in 1min 51secs after a two-second warm-up for a rate of 28ppm. The rate dropped to 23ppm for the more complex Excel spreadsheet, but the 400MHz processor was more than capable of coping with even the most demanding of tasks. It’s quite cheap to run too, costing £279 exc VAT after 10,000 pages.

But it isn’t quite good enough to live with the leaders this month. First, it isn’t that well specified for the money. Where the Brother HL-2035 offers a duplexer and the Samsung ML-1630W wireless and wired networking for less, this Xerox has neither. Paper input capacity is low for a printer this fast at 250 pages, and it’s disappointing to have only a single sheet feeder.

Output quality is also an issue. Text and black quality is fine, and among the best on test, but photos and graphics were produced with heavy banding.

All of which contribute to a printer with a split personality. It’s good for high-volume printing with low running costs and a decent turn of speed, but quality isn’t great and it can’t quite offer the value of the award winners.

Printer language & OS Support

PCL level6
PostScript level3

Basic Specifications

Colour?no
Resolution printer final600 x 600dpi
Rated/quoted print speed28PPM
Maximum paper sizeA4
Duplex functionno

Running costs

Cost per A4 mono page1.4p
Cost per A4 colour pageN/A

Consumables

Monthly duty cycle30,000 pages
Drum lifeN/A
Fuser lifeN/A
Transfer-belt lifeN/A
Standard mono toner life3,500 pages
High-yield mono toner life5,000 pages
Standard colour toner lifeN/A
High-yield colour toner lifeN/A
Supplied mono toner life2,000 pages
Supplied colour toner lifeN/A

Power and noise

Peak noise level54.0dB(A)
Dimensions364 x 370 x 239mm (WDH)
Peak power consumption242W
Idle power consumption11W

Performance tests

Mono print speed (measured)28ppm
Colour print speedN/A

Media Handling

Input tray capacity250 sheets
Output tray capacity150 sheets

Connectivity

USB connection?yes
Ethernet connection?no
Bluetooth connection?no
WiFi connection?no
PictBridge port?no
Other connectionsNone

OS Support

Operating system Windows 7 supported?no
Operating system Windows Vista supported?yes
Operating system Windows XP supported?yes
Operating system Windows 2000 supported?no
Operating system Windows 98SE supported?no
Other operating system supportMac OS X 10.3, SUSE, Red Hat Fedora Core, Mandrake

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