Xerox 6180. Is it the right choice for your office?

Add the Xerox Phaser 6180N ($500 street) to the small but growing list of relatively low-cost color lasers that can serve as workhorse printers in a small office or workgroup. Aside from a low price, entry into the club requires a combination of speed and paper handling that can smoothly handle relatively heavy-duty printing. The 6180N scores well on both counts and offers good-looking text and graphics as a bonus.

On the speed front, the 6180N offers a 26-pages-per-minute (ppm) rating for black-and-white printing and a 20-ppm rating for color—not to mention results on our tests that fully reflect those ratings. To get a significantly faster color laser you'd have to pay twice as much, for the Lexmark C534dn. For paper handling, the 6180N offers as standard both a 250-sheet input tray and a 150-sheet multipurpose tray, giving you the option of keeping two different kinds of paper—such as letterhead and plain paper—loaded at all times.

You can add a 550-sheet drawer ($400 street) if you need still more capacity. And you can add an optional duplexer ($200 street), although it's cheaper to buy the 6180DN model ($650 street) instead of upgrading the 6180N.

Network setup is a one-click operation. The program doesn't even ask how the printer is connected—it just looks for it, searching both USB ports and the network. It stops only for you to confirm that it found the right printer, and then again to announce that the installation is finished.

Text quality is one of the 6180N's strong points, with output that's good enough for most desktop publishing needs. Graphics output was typical for a color laser—easily good enough for any internal business need, including PowerPoint handouts, and arguably good enough for things like trifold brochures, depending on how much of a perfectionist you are. Photos were of typical laser quality, making them easily good enough for things like client newsletters, printing Web pages with photos, and printing photos as part of an advertising handout.

The total package adds up to make the printer a prime candidate if you need a small-office color-laser workhorse.

You can view the printer here:

http://www.tangerineofficesystems.com
http://www.xerox.xom