The Xerox Phaser 6180 / DN is a color optical maser printer made for small to mid - sized businesses . The machine ’s fast photographic print stop number , crisp , fair mark , and user friendliness are among the many timber that should make it popular in the office . Additionally , the printer features 10/100BaseTX Ethernet networking capability , automatonlike duplexing , and Adobe PostScript 3 compatibility . Overall , Xerox offers an telling , worthful package in the Phaser 6180 / DN for a pocket-size price .
Setup
Setting up the Phaser 6180 / DN is easy , but at a goodish 62 pounds , the printer requires at least two multitude to unpack safely . Xerox include an instruction manual of arms with exemplification and clearly written management that should make set up this printing machine a smooth operation ; you may also watch an installation video include with the package candela . The Phaser 6180 / DN ’s box - shape design is a minuscule bulky , but at 18.5 inches , it ’s just short enough to meet under the ledge of a distinctive stall desk .
The included software is well design and user - friendly . The printer ’s driver includes a virtual ruler for you to adjust brightness of your prints , which can help oneself save you some ink when printing draft documents . Using CentreWare IS , the printing machine ’s internet public-service corporation , a substance abuser with administrative access can manage the printer from any computer link up to the meshing . For example , you could adjust the printer to alarm a specified listing of drug user to receive e - mail alarm whenever the Phaser is out of paper or low on toner .
Speed
With PostScript compatibility and 128 MB of RAM ( expandable to up to 1 GB ) , the Phaser ’s mark speeds were , in universal , only slimly slower than our Top Product in the laser pressman family , the Oki C6100dn ( ) , which cost $ 455 more . In my testing over Ethernet , the Phaser 6180 / DN was very fast when impress text edition document , taking only 14 seconds for a one - pageboy Word document and 34 seconds for a ten - Thomas Nelson Page Word written document . The pressman also turn in speedy results when publish a four - page colour PDF test document , taking only 42 minute . The printer ’s speed when print a 22 MB Photoshop image , however , was the least impressive — select 2 minutes and 3 seconds .
Quality
The Phaser 6180 / DN ’s print resolution is 600 x 600 x 4 dpi ; that last number means that each pixel uses an additional 4 bits for color identification . According to Xerox , this technology give up the printer to produce semblance written document or exposure that reckon more pleasing to the eye than some other laser printers that print at a 2,400 - dpi resolution . However , our panel of experts gave the Phaser 6180 / DN ’s image quality only a Good rating : some of the colors looked dull , reds were too loose , and tail detail was lacking . The printer earned another Good rating in the graphics , fine lines , and gradients test : swerve lines appeared jaggy and gradients were n’t very still . The printer do very well , however , when print text . font appeared crisp , exculpated , and placid , even with very minor text . Our panel yield the printer ’s text quality a Superior evaluation .
jury tests
Scale = Superior , Very Good , Good , Fair , Poor .
timed trials
Times are in second : seconds .
How we examine : We ran all the run with the optical maser printing machine connected via 10/100Base - TX Ethernet to a 2.66GHz Mac Pro , with Mac OS X 10.4.8 installed and with 1 GB of RAM . We memorialize the time it film the printing machine to print a one - varlet Word papers and a ten - pageboy Word document , as well as the time it took to print a 22 Mbit Photoshop image and a four - varlet PDF . A panel of expert examined samples of the printing machine ’s output to rate its print quality as either Superior , Very Good , Good , Fair , or Poor in comparison to the output of past laser printers we ’ve screen . Macworld Lab examination by Brian Chen .
specifications
Macworld’s buying advice
The Phaser 6180 / DN ’s quickness , exploiter friendliness , and superscript text quality add up to a ok color laser printing machine . Though you wo n’t get premium color or image quality , the 6180 / DN ’s generous set of features wo n’t leave you asking for much more from a sub-$1,000 color laser printer .
[ Brian Chen is an adjunct editor atMacworld . ]
