Solid-ink printers have been around in one form or another for about 20 years, but a lot of people don't know much about them, if they've even heard of them. This is largely because the technology is, for all practical purposes, unique to Xerox, and thus there aren't many models to choose from. Such printers, however, are worth knowing about. Designed to go head-to-head with color lasers, they offer laser-like speed and output quality. The Xerox Phaser 8560MFP/D ($2,000 street) is the latest example of the breed, and one of the more impressive laser-class all-in-ones I've seen lately.

One of the key differences between color-laser and solid-ink technologies is their target user. Color lasers are just as appropriate for one person as they are for a larger office. Even a color laser AIO in the 8560MFP/D's price range could be a good fit for a one-person office if you have to print enough pages at high quality on a regular basis. Solid ink, on the other hand, is a poor choice for any home office or one-person shop.

Solid ink printers start with solid blocks of ink that the printers have to melt. Once the ink's melted, the printer can spray it on a drum; it then rolls the drum against a piece of paper to transfer the image, just as with an offset printing press. The problem is that keeping the ink melted takes power, which means you have to keep the printer on at all times. If you turn it off at the end of each day, you'll use up an unacceptable amount of ink in the power-on cleaning cycle, driving up the cost of printing.

The smaller your office, the less likely it is that you'll want to leave your printer on 24 hours a day. That makes solid-ink printers in general, and the 8560MFP/D in particular, most appropriate for small to medium-size offices or for workgroups in larger offices.

One thing the 8560MFP/D shares with most color laser AIOs is that it's large and heavy, at 24.4 by 20.9 by 26.2 inches (HWD) and 93 pounds. The hardest part of the installation is finding a spot for the unit and lifting it into place. Once in place, however, one of the advantages of solid-ink technology is how easy it is to set up. Simply plug it in and run the fully automated installation routine on your computer while the ink that ships in the AIO melts. Also worth mention is that adding blocks of solid ink is much easier than loading a toner cartridge into a laser printer.

Xerox rates the 8560MFP/D engine at 30 pages per minute for both monochrome and color. On our tests it turned in reasonably fast times, although not as fast as you would expect from a color laser with that rating. I timed it on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing, www.qualitylogic.com) at a total of 10 minutes 31 seconds—the same as the Brother HL-4040CN, a color laser printer rated at 21 ppm for monochrome and color. That said, the 8560MFP/D is still faster than the next fastest color laser AIO I've tested—the Dell Multifunction Color Laser Printer 3115cn, which took 11:27. The 8560MFP/D also did well on photo speed, averaging 23 seconds for a 4-by-6 and 36 seconds for an 8-by-10.

Output quality counts as another strong point. Its text is just a bit below ideal. More than half the fonts in our test suite, including all the standard fonts you might use in business documents, were easily readable, with well-formed characters at five points. One heavily stylized font with heavy strokes needed 20 points, but that's fairly common, even for a laser. Unless you have an unusual need for small font sizes, the 8560MFP/D can handle any text you throw at it.

Graphics were easily good enough for any internal business need, including printing eye-catching graphs and PowerPoint handouts. I saw visible dithering in the form of graininess, but even that wasn't a major problem. Depending on how much of a perfectionist you are, you may consider the quality good enough for things like advertising mailings and trifold brochures.

Photo quality is just short of the best I've seen from any laser. As with graphics, I saw some dithering in the form of graininess, but the output is good enough so you might mistake it for true photo quality at arm's length. The photos are more than good enough for things such as printing client newsletters, Web pages with photos, or even photos to hang up on a bulletin board or take home for your refrigerator door.

Not surprisingly, the 8560MFP/D offers paper handling aimed squarely at office use. The standard 625-sheet paper capacity, and 1,675-sheet maximum with two 525-sheet drawers added ($200 street each), means you won't have to constantly add paper. And the D in the model name indicates a built-in duplexer. (If you don't need duplexing, you can buy the 8560MFP/N instead, for $1,500 street.)

You'll also find all the functions you need in an office. The 8560MFP/D prints and scans over a network, works as a standalone copier and fax machine, and can fax from workstations over a network. My only complaint with the AIO functions is that the fax-from-PC feature is hidden in a drop-down list in the driver. If you don't know where to look for it, you might never find it. But that's a relatively minor issue. It certainly doesn't stop the Xerox Phaser 8560MFP/D from being a highly attractive package that offers a terrific balance of speed, output quality, and features for a small to midsize office.

Benchmark Test Results
Check out the Xerox Phaser 8560MFP/D's test scores.

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