Xerox Phaser 7300 Review

Editor's Review
by Mel Meyers

(3.00/5)

Customer Reviews
based on 0 votes

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Editor's Review
by Mel Meyers 08/31/2010

(3.00/5)

Xerox Phaser 7300

OVERVIEW:

For oversized color printing the Xerox Phaser 7300 offers printing up to 11 x 17 inches, with advanced sensors to keep print quality consistent regardless of paper weight. It’s no slouch with single-pass color speeds up to 30 ppm, and B&W at 37 ppm. And if that isn’t enough, you can add options to the base model to increase it’s usefulness for any medium size business or small publishing office.

Editor's Pros & Cons

PROS:

There comes a time when you have to “work outside of the box”. And in the case of printers, that “box” is the paper tray. When you have a great color printer that can expand to meet any office’s needs, why limit yourself to legal-size, 20-pound bond paper?

The 7300 comes with a 550-sheet cassette tray that supports papers from recycled 17# to 60# cardstock, sizes ranging from up to the ledger (aka “tabloid” aka “ANSI B-size”). The front panel hides a 100-sheet multi-purpose flip tray for labels, 4” x 6” post cards, envelopes, paper bond weights up to 110 pounds, transparencies, and banner-size 12” x 36” sheets (for the 7300DT and DX models only). For more capacity, a second 550-sheet tray can be attached, or a 1,650-sheet rolling paper tray, for those who need various paper types on-demand. To keep print quality consistent regardless of paper weight, the Phaser 7300 automatically adjusts the fuser temperature with a thickness sensor.

After the 16 second delay, the Phaser 7300 prints at speeds up to 37 ppm in black-and-white. Using single-pass color printing is at an impressive 30 pages per minute at 600 x 600 dpi. The 7300N and higher models offer 2,400 x 600 resolutions for sharp text and graphics.

The base-model 7300 comes standard with parallel and hi-speed USB. 128MB of expandable memory enables the Phaser to handle any size print request. For multiple computers to use this printer, it will either need to upgrade to 7300N, or connect it to a computer to become a shared printer to other computers in the same workgroup.

Understanding the printing needs of today’s businesses in providing support for the major software applications, Xerox has included HP PCL5c and Adobe PostScript3 print emulators to satisfy the most office demands. For color matching in publication, the Phaser 7300 can be set for Apple ColorSync, CIE, PANTONE, and Adobe PostScript color standards.

The intuitive control panel on the Phaser 7300 has a 6-line animated LCD Display that defaults to show toner levels and information. The buttons are set up to make understanding what each one does pretty intuitive. The control panel, toner levels, printer information, configuration, errors, and network settings can be performed directly through the control panel (or using Xerox’s CentreWare IS web application if you have the Ethernet option).

The Phaser 7300 is available in 4 more models: the 7300N has built-in Ethernet and 2,400 dpi resolution, the 7300DN adds 2-sided printing to the 7300N, the 7300DT has those features and a second 550-sheet tray and an additional 256MB of RAM, and finally the 7300DX which has all the features of its siblings plus a 1,100-sheet wheeled paper tray platform, and a 20GB hard drive. All of the extra features are also available for this base model as options.

CONS:

Considering Xerox touts the 2,400dpi resolution as one of the standard items in the 7300 series and how any features in the other models can be added to the base model, I find it a tease and a cheat that they would strip the resolution on the 7300B down to 600 x 600 dpi. If this was some accountant’s way of saving Xerox some money or thinking to coerce buyers into buying the more expensive 7300N, they are doing a disservice to consumers.

The printer produces up to 54dB of sound printing, and idles at 47dB. To give you an idea of what that means: 60 decibels is the level of normal conversations and 40 decibels is the level of low conversations. If you have the base model that requires direct computer connection, the noise will become annoying if you have the printer sitting next to your desk.

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INK/TONER NEEDS:

The top of the Phaser lifts up to gain easy access to the toner units. Xerox provides you will full standard-yield toner for all four colors. The each cartridge is good for 7,500 pages (providing you’re not printing full-spread photographic images or graphics). For offices that do color prints that exceed the 5% area coverage used for measuring yield, consider going with the double-capacity high-yield cartridges. Toner combo-packages are available to save on costs.

Other consumables to consider are replacement of the imaging units (drums) after every 30,000 pages, the fuser and transfer roller after every 80,000 pages

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