Xerox Phaser 7500 Review

I love the Xerox company, I really do. However, and this saddens me, I think they dropped the ball a little on the Phaser 7500. Don't get me wrong, it's an impressive machine with some really awesome functions and features. However, if this were up to me, I would be eyeing it's cheaper cousin, the Phaser 7400. At $200 less, with better speeds and a huge finishing tray, you'd be getting more out of it. But, before I go and make your mind up for you, let me explain what the 7500 offers, and what differentiates it from the 7400.

Speed wise, the 7500 has a PPM (pages per minute) rating of 35 for both color and black and white. These are impressive, and what's more, the first page out is about 7 seconds, so don't expect to sit by and wait for this printer to actually move, it will start up faster than lightning.

As for paper size, the highest page size it can fit into it's normal trays is 12x18. For small posters this is a great feature to have. What's more, it can actually do banner printing up to 12.6x47.25, if you load that sized paper into the bypass tray (which isn't very hard to do). With sizes like this, coupled with the low printing costs, you'll rarely have to run out to the print shop to get something copied.

Speaking of bypass tray, most printers that let you print 12x18 force you to do it from the bypass tray. While it is easy to load for a page or two, there are many problems with that. One, paper is easily jammed from the bypass. Two, you can normally only fit a few sheets. Three, since the printer is made to print from the normal trays, it will speed through that paper, but from the bypass you will notice a huge slow down in print time. So allowing you to load such a large sized paper into a normal tray makes the printing easier, faster, and more efficient.

The 7500 also allows you to print on 280gsm paper, or cardstock for the layman. This makes for great in-house business cards, menus, book covers, or anything you need that's thick.

The 7500 also offers booklet printing, scaling, watermarks, run black (meaning that if a color toner runs out, it will keep running and will replace it with black to the best of its ability), color by words (easily lets you modify color from a drop down menu), and great color calibration.

Now, all of this is impressive. But the 7400 does give you higher speeds, let's you do finishing (stapling and 3 or 4 hole punching), and while it lacks a few features will be better for offices. I think this is best for small print shops which are just beginning, or artists, considering all the color options you get. However, the two are very close in price and speeds, so it depends if you want better color, or better finishing.