Although a little on the large side, and certainly too big to share a desk with comfortably, the Xerox WorkCentre 6505DN ($749 direct) color laser MFP can be a great fit for a small office or workgroup. Slightly more expensive than, but directly competitive with, the current Editors Choice Canon imageClass MF8350Cdn ($700 street, 4 stars) it offers similar speed and equivalent output quality overall, with essentially the same quality for graphics, slightly lower-quality photos, and better-quality text.

The 6505DN delivers a full set of MFP functions and features, starting with printing, scanning, and faxing from a PC even over a network. It can also work as a standalone copier, fax machine, and email sender, and it offers both a letter-size flatbed and a 35-page automatic document feeder (ADF) for multi-page documents and legal size pages.

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Its paper-handling features should be enough for almost any small office, with a 250-sheet tray and a built in duplexer for printing on both sides of the page. If you need more capacity, you can get a second 250-sheet tray ($199 direct) for a total 500-sheet capacity. The printer lacks a multi-purpose tray for holding a second type of paper, but it makes up for that somewhat with a manual feed slot so you can at least feed individual sheets without having to swap out the paper in the tray. Most important, the 6505DN delivers reasonably fast speed and high-quality output.

Setup and Faxing
I installed the printer on a Windows Vista system and ran my tests over a wired network. Given the 6505DN's 65.1-pound weight and 23 by 16.9 by 21.4-inch (HWD) size, moving it into place is best treated as a two-person job. Beyond that, setup is mostly standard, although I ran into two minor issues related fax setup.

First, you can't fax from the front panel until you've set the phone country code. According to Xerox, a Power On wizard is supposed to let you choose from a list of countries the first time you turn the printer on, but the wizard didn't run in my tests, and I had to work through the menus later to set the code and get the fax to work. Second, instead of installing a separate fax driver, the 6505DN hides the fax option in the standard print driver, so you have to go through the extra step of changing the setting every time you want to fax.

Fortunately, neither of these is a serious issue, and you can eliminate the extra steps for faxing from your PC by installing a second instance of the driver and setting it to fax by default—assuming you know how to do that. It would be easier, however, if Xerox installed a separate fax driver for you.

Speed and Output Quality
The 6505DN driver installs set to print everything in duplex, which is a great way to save on paper. If you prefer simplex (one sided) printing, however, it's easy enough to change the setting, which I did for our standard tests (timed with QualityLogic's hardware and software).

Xerox rates the printer at 24 pages per minute (ppm) in simplex mode. On our business applications suite, I timed it at an effective 5.8 ppm, which is appropriate for the rating. To put that in context, the 6505DN was essentially tied with both the MF8350Cdn, at 6.3 ppm, and the still less expensive Editors' Choice Dell 2155cn ($549.99 direct, 4 stars), at 5.8 ppm. (Differences of .5 ppm on our tests aren't significant.) Because the 6505DN installs set to print in duplex by default, I also ran our test with the duplex setting, which came out to 4.9 ppm. Note that you should see something close to the rated speed when printing text files without graphics or photos.

Output quality for the printer is best described as easily good enough for most business needs without being impressive. The text quality is at least a match for most color laser MFPs, which means that unless you have an unusual need for small font sizes, you shouldn't have any complaints with it.

Graphics quality falls at the same level as the vast majority of the competition, making it good enough for any internal business need. Depending on how demanding you are, you may or may not consider it good enough to hand out to important clients or customers who you want to impress with a sense of your professionalism. Photos are also in the same general category as most color laser MFPs, making them good enough for things like client newsletters and potentially good enough for marketing materials like one-page handouts, depending on how much of a perfectionist you are.

Ultimately, the WorkCentre 6505DN's combination of features makes it a good fit for a small office, even if the physical fit is a little tight. It goes a step beyond most MFPs by adding standalone e-mail sending to the more common functions, and it offers speed and output quality that's easily good enough for most business use. It misses out on being an Editors' Choice only because it costs a bit more than the MF8350Cdn and lacks a multi-purpose tray. If you don't mind doing without the tray, however, or you need the direct e-mail feature or care more about text quality than photo quality, the 6505DN will probably be your preferred choice.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS
Check out the test scores for Xerox WorkCentre 6505DN.

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Xerox WorkCentre 6505DN with several other MFPs side by side.

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