Oversize monochrome printers from HP, Lexmark, and Xerox prove practical yet pricey

Xerox Phaser 5500DN

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For the Phaser 5500DN, Xerox started with the same printer as Lexmark did, then went its own way on the control panel, firmware, and software. As a result, it’s the same size and weight as the Lexmark and mechanically identical. It also offers the same specs and paper-handling capabilities that Lexmark does.

Like Lexmark’s printer, the Xerox Phaser 5500DN has an overflow sensor and rubber output sensors that hang down in the output tray, touching the completed prints to keep track of what is in the tray. Unlike Lexmark, however, Xerox takes advantage of the output sensors to give its driver the ability to offset print jobs -- that is, to push alternating copies of collated jobs, or whole jobs, to the left or right, making them easy to separate.

I prefer some aspects of the Xerox control panel to the Lexmark’s: Xerox’s LCD shows seven lines of type so you can really see where you’re navigating, and pushing the Info button displays a simple description of each menu item’s functions. With so much real estate, it can display the top-level menus as well as printer status, eliminating a step from management tasks, along with that “modal” feeling of most menu schemes.

Moreover, each submenu in Xerox’s control panel has its own “restore defaults” command, so you can roll back one mistake without wiping out all your settings. On the other hand, its control panel doesn’t have a numeric keypad, and its OK button performs two separate tasks, (drill down in the menus and select a setting) -- a stark interface-design error likely to confuse occasional users.

One useful tool: Xerox provides a special utility, called Walk-Up Printing Driver, designed for casual printing. If a visitor to your office needs to print, you can plug his or her notebook into your network, find the notebook from the printer’s control panel, and push over a driver. (That feature requires the optional hard drive.)

Like the other printers, you access most of Xerox’s printer management and security settings through the embedded Web server, or keep track of a whole fleet with Xerox’s free CentreWare. The server has exceptional feature depth, in particular a job-accounting module that requires users to enter accounting codes when they print and can export the data it collects.

The Phaser 5500DN’s speeds generally fall between the HP’s and Lexmark’s on the most important tasks I timed -- that is, on printing Word and Excel. It churned out multiple copies of my plain-text document at 46.4 ppm and of my Excel document at 29.4 ppm. However, for reasons that escape me, it tore past its rivals on PowerPoint slides, printing them in batches at better than 40 ppm, and printed stacks of grayscale photos at an impressive 21.6 ppm.

The Phaser 5500DN’s toner seemed slightly less black than I’m used to, but fonts printed clean and crisp in a wide range of sizes. My grayscale photos printed too dark, eliminating details in shadow areas and looking patchy or chunky in some other areas.

Xerox charges less for toner cartridges but more for photodeveloper units than Lexmark does, hitting a per-page price of a mere 1 cent, and a 250,000-print (roughly five-year) cumulative cost of $2,040.

Assuming you need tabloid-size printing and high performance, which of these three meets your needs? If overall performance is the key, look at Lexmark’s W840dn, especially if your users tend to print one-offs rather than stacks of copies; the Lexmark also costs a bit less and comes a bit better-equipped than the others. If text quality matters more, the HP is your best choice, or your only choice if a folding finisher must be part of the package.

The PC World Test Center contributed methodology and logistical support to this project.