INK & TONER
Xerox Phaser 3250D Review
 
Editor's Review
Xerox Phaser 3250D by Mel Meyers 08/31/2010 OVERVIEW: One of Xerox’s most compact middle-weight B&W laser printers, the attractive Xerox Phaser 3250D provides high-resolution 2-sided printing at speeds up to 30 ppm.
Editor's Pros & Cons
PROS: In a stylish enclosure with footprint smaller than 14.5“ x 14.5“, the Xerox Phaser 3250D looks deceptively like an entry-level printer that would be given to a student. But don’t be fooled. In less than 20 seconds, the Xerox Phaser is ready to print from a cold boot, chugging 2-sided letter-size prints at 30 pages per minute.
This printer has some decent paper capacity. The 3250D comes standard with a 250-sheet cassette tray, capable of holding a half-ream of letter or legal-size paper. The tray has an adjustable rear lever to allow the Phaser to hold 11” x 14” legal-size paper, while maintaining the same footprint on your desk. There are other desktop laser printers with smaller footprints out there, but they often sacrifice having permanent legal-size paper support for desk space. The top-door in front reveals a single-sheet slot to handle your transparencies, labels, post cards, envelopes, 3” x 5” postcards up to 8.5” x 14” legal paper of various bond weights. And if you add a second 250-sheet tray, this printer can support a full ream of paper or allow users to print either in legal or letter size without having to manually reload paper.
Speaking of paper capacity, the little mechanical lever on the front of 3250D that indicates how much paper is in the tray is an easy, simple way to know when to refill at a glance.
At 1200 x 1200 dpi resolution, the Phaser 3250D keeps text sharp--even at 6-point font sizes--and does a great job with graphics. To keep from consuming too much toner and increase speeds up to 30 ppm, the Phaser offers a 600 dpi resolution with a text-enhance or image-enhance switch. The Toner Save feature allows for a 40% toner life increase while keeping images clear and readable.
This compact printer packs an impressive 32MB of memory. The 3250D can easily handle workloads from multiple print job requests. When connected to a network computer, the printer can be shared by other computers in the same domain or workgroup. A memory slot on the side of the Phaser can hold a 128MB DIMM to increase memory storage up to 160MB.
Understanding the printing needs of today’s businesses in providing support for the major software applications, Xerox has installed a complete set of print emulators that should satisfy the most diverse office. Emulators include HP PCL6, IBM ProPrinter, Samsung’s SPL, EPSON, and Adobe PostScript3. CONS: The printer produces 50dB of sound printing, while idling at 26dB. To give you an idea of what that means: 60 decibels is the level of typical conversations and 40 decibels is the level of whispering. You probably don’t want to have this printer stationed in a conference room printing away when a meeting is in progress. But when placed in the copy room or in the middle of a busy office floor, the noise will blend in with the background noises.
INK/TONER NEEDS:
The 3250D’s toner and drum are integrated in a single cartridge, making it easy to maintain. The toner that comes with the printer only has a 3,500-page yield, but still enough to do a fair amount of printing while you order the 5,000-page standard size toner. 
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