Xerox Phaser 6022V
This Phaser printer isn’t set to stun
In Star Trek they’re always setting phasers to stun. Xerox’s Phaser is quite happy to mildly impress. The 6022V, like its stablemates, is a solidly unremarkable laser printer, in this case a budget A4 colour model that’s pleasantly compact. With its cheery blue lid and kitchen-appliance styling, it looks well suited to home as well as office use.
Xerox invented much of thehe technology behind laser printers, originally as a way of modernising its photocopiers. The output we got from the Phaser 6022V lived up to its heritage: black text was as crisply precise as you’d hope from a laser printer, and our colour documents looked detailed and vibrant, even if gradients and photos couldn’t escape a little of the banding effect we often see in this type of printing.
At an average of just under 12 pages per minute (ppm) for our 20-page text document, however, slowing to just over 9ppm in colour (so much for the promised ‘up to 18ppm’) it wasn’t quick, and the cramped 150-sheet paper tray is another clue that this isn’t a machine intended for high-volume users.
The question, then, is why you should choose it over an inkjet printer, especially at the relatively high price. Running costs aren’t persuasive either, working out at around 2.1p for a mono page and an exorbitant 15p for colour. That’s partly because the capacity is limited to 2,000 pages for black and 1,000 for each of the three colour cartridges. There’s no high-capacity option to make supplies better value for money. These prices will vary depending on what deals you can get on toner. Unofficial refills will be a lot cheaper.
One benefit of choosing Xerox – although they might not thank us for pointing this out – is that third-party compatible refills are widely available. You can find a full set of four toner cartridges for around £66, cheaper than Xerox’s prices of £70 for black and £55 for each colour.
While most inkjet printers now have a colour touchscreen and built-in scanner, the 6022V is more basic. It doesn’t even offer duplex (printing both sides of the paper), and although Wi-fi is built in, you can only print from mobile devices if you add the Xerox Wireless Print Solutions Adapter for a mindboggling £140 extra. If you were going to spend that much money, you’d have a very wide range of Wi-fi printers to consider.
Despite its quality prints, it’s just too slow and expensive to run to justify this price