Home > Consumer Reviews > Xerox Phaser 6250/DP Network Color Laser Printer with Duplexer

I needed to print some color materials... high quality... went to the local copy shop and the per page cost (2 sided) was over $2.50. Knowing I needed to print a thousand copies, I decided to look for printers! This printer does an excellent job for everyday printing, business graphics, and photographs. The consumables are about $0.15/page (Xerox says $0.08/page based on 7% coverage). The management tools bult in are top notch, and the power management keeps the machine ready without consuming too much power. The LAN connection makes it a perfect addition to our wireless household network.

I've owned this printer for 4 months now and it's broken down twice. The first time when the fuser broke down Xerox provided excellent service and talked me into purchasing the extended warrantee. Now the imaging unit is malfunctioning when it's only 1/2 used up, and it is impossible to get a new one anywhere, under warrantee or not, as they are backordered from the manufacturer until mid January. So I'm stuck with pink dots all up and down the side of every page I print until then. This is ridiculous with an expensive machine like this not to be able to obtain a basic consumable part for months. When it's working this printer does produce nice quality, but it's a pain because every time you want to change to a different paper type or size you have to push buttons on the panel on the printer as well as selecting your choices in the driver. Also the duplexer does not work out of Photoshop, which is what I do all my printing out of. If I had this to do over again I'd go with an HP instead - my old HP color laser which cost 1/4 of what this thing did is much more reliable.

I support two Phaser 6250s, networked, in use by 75 users. I've amazingly never really had a problem with either of them.

With all the advances in computers, graphics, software, and hardware... why can't anyone make a printer that works, is easy to use, and won't need every part replaced after a year? And could someone please explain why EVERY printer requires it's own type of toner? Is the 6350 really that much different than the 6250? Why can't I just buy another reliable 6250 instead of chancing a 6350 and having to buy different toner?

My belief is that printer technology has not changed in over 20 years, the market is moved by who can create a new toner cartridge that won't fit in anyone else's printer.

I have nothing but bad things to say about this printer. Out of the box the color was way off...I can accept this but it is very difficult to calibrate. I am very familiar with color management but this was really tough. Instead of using an rgb or cmyk slider, they use a 64 color pallete for each color. Thus, if it is too green, you need to make the magenta slightly more reddish. It is very unintuitive.

In addition, the print quality is not great. The pictures are not sharp.

But, the worst thing is, THE PRINTER DOESN'T COLLATE! That's right, the most basic printing function. We print 200 page pdfs and it will not collate. Customer Service says that it is a software problem so they won't help. Not the software that opens the pdf, the software on the actual machine. They won't service the software they install because it can still print and collating was (in his words) "a luxury"! His solution? Buy the $500 internal hard drive for the machine.

I am selling it in an online auction and getting something else.

I work in an area with a team of about 20 engineers, and our group 6250DP has been flawless for almost two years now. It's a mixed environment of Windows and Mac OSX. We print about 5000 pages/month consisting of spot-color documentation, presentations, LOTS of vugraphs, and photographs.The average cost has been around 5 cents a page for consumables. Reliability: perfect. Installation: effortless. In fact, on my floor, there are now no less than eight of these machines, and again, no trouble. I have no idea why the other reviewers have had such difficulties. We do feed our printer only top-quality paper and Xerox transparency materials; I'm sure that helps a little in avoiding paper path troubles. The fundamental design is quite clever, especially compared with its HP competition. And here's my final opinion: After so many years suffering with inkjets at home, I just went out and bought a 6250DP for my wife, who's a technical illustrator. Installation with Mac OS9 and X was quick and easy, and the $600 rebate sure helped... Tip: if you visit the Xerox website and run the little flash animated printer tour, you can get another $50 rebate. Cool.