You could make the case that the Xerox Phaser 6360DN ($1,599 direct) is one step beyond the level of color lasers we usually look at for letter- and legal-size printing. It's rated at an absurdly fast 42 pages per minute for both monochrome and color pages. Indeed, its test scores bore out its very fast print speeds, particularly on our business suite.

That said, I prefer to think of the 6360DN as bringing a new level of performance to a category that we've always covered. These are color printers meant for both large workgroups in an enterprise and the larger end of the small to medium-size office spectrum, but they are also appropriate for smaller offices that print a lot of pages, including a large percentage in color.

If you have any doubts, consider this: First, the 6360 is the next-generation successor to both the Phaser 6350 series and the 6300 series, from which the Xerox Phaser 6300DN earned an Editors' Choice for its category. Second, the 6360DN is only $100 more than the similarly equipped HP Color LaserJet CP4005dn, a color laser printer that's clearly in the small to medium-size office category. It's hard to argue that two printers so close in price shouldn't be considered as part of the same category.

As with both of the earlier series that Xerox has merged into one, the Phaser 6360 comes in several models. The two that are of most interest for a smaller office are the Phaser 6360N ($1,400 street) and the Phaser 6360DN. The 6360N offers networking and a 700-sheet capacity, divided into a 550-sheet tray and a 150-sheet multipurpose tray. The 6360DN adds a duplexer.

The other two models are the Phaser 6360DT ($2,350 street), which adds a second 550-sheet paper tray and more memory to the DN model, and the Phaser 6360DX ($2,950 street), which adds a hard drive and substitutes an 1,100-sheet, dual-tray stand for the extra paper tray in the DT model. Maximum paper capacity for any printer in the series is 2,350 sheets, with the 1,100-sheet dual tray stand ($600 street), two 550-sheet trays ($400 street each), and the multipurpose tray.

I tested the 6360DN, but since all the models are basically the same printer outfitted with different options, they should all have the same output quality, and Xerox says they all have similar performance.

Setting up the 6360DN on a network is easier than you might expect. The printer weighs 77.4 pounds, so you'll probably need some help lifting it into place. But once you move it to a spot suitable for the size—20.2 by 17.2 by 22.8 inches (HWD)—the actual setup is straightforward. You have to unpack and install the imaging unit, but the toner cartridges ship in place. All you have to do otherwise is remove the packing materials, load paper, connect the cables, and run the fully automated installation routine to install the software.

When it comes to speed, saying that the 6360DN stands out is an understatement. It took only 5 minutes 28 seconds for it to plow through our business applications suite (timed with QualityLogic's hardware and software, www.qualitylogic.com). That's about 2.5 minutes faster than either the HP CP4005dn, which took 7:51, or the similarly priced Konica Minolta magicolor 5570, 8:09.

The closest the 6360DN comes to having a flaw is its text quality, which isn't quite a match for most lasers. That makes the quality subpar by definition. But fortunately, unless you have a highly unusual need for small fonts, it's not subpar enough to matter in any practical sense. All of the fonts in our tests that you're likely to use in business documents were easily readable, with well-formed characters, at five points and some were easily readable at four points. The 5570 passed the easily readable test at four points with all of the standard business fonts we test with.

The 6360's graphics are easily good enough for any internal business use. But I saw visible dithering in the form of graininess and mild patterns; mild misregistration, with thin, but obvious, slices of white between blocks of colors; and mild posterization, with shading changing suddenly where it should change gradually. Depending on how much of a perfectionist you are, you may or may not consider the output suitable for handing to an important client or customer you want to impress with your professionalism. Photos are easily good enough for typical business needs, including printing Web pages with photos or printing out company newsletters.

I'd obviously like the 6360DN more if its output quality were as impressive as its speed. But even though the quality is less than ideal, it's still a close match overall with the 5570, and only a half-step below the CP4005dn. That may make the CP4005dn the preferred choice if you want the best quality above all else, but the 6360DN's combination of quality, speed, paper-handling, and price earns it the Editors' Choice slot for its category, as a worthy successor to the 6300DN.

Benchmark Test Results
Check out the Xerox Phaser 6360DN's test scores.

Compare the Xerox Phaser 6360DN with other laser printers side by side.