Anyone who owns a printer is familiar with the business model known as giving away the razor (read: printer) to sell the blades (read: ink). But with the Xerox Phaser 8860 Color Printer ($2,500 street), Xerox has just turned the equation around, giving away the ink so people will buy the printer. It's one of those rare solutions that's brilliant in its simplicity. And the potential audience includes any small or medium-size business, particularly those feeling the pressure of high ink costs (you know who you are).

At $2,500, the 8860 is the least expensive color printer around. In fact, if you print as little as 1,275 color pages per month for three years, it's effectively free. The math is straightforward. Xerox claims a 3.2-cent cost per color page based on the ISO/IEC standard—in a world where few printers break the 10-cent-per-page mark and even fewer drop below 9 cents per page. The next lowest claim I've seen for any color laser I've tested is 8.7 cents per color page for the Konica Minolta magicolor 5570. With the 8860, that translates to a minimum savings of 5.5 cents per page, or a little over $70 per 1,275 pages.

Saving $70 per month for 36 months works out to a total of $2,520—more than paying for the cost of the printer itself. Print more pages per month, or keep the printer going longer, and you'll save even more money. And that's just compared with the next least-expensive alternative.

Before you ask, you don't lose the savings on monochrome pages, either, at 1.7 cents per page. Not so incidentally, at first glance the difference in claimed color and monochrome cost per page based on the ISO/IEC standard may seem to contradict Xerox's claim that the 8860 can print a color page for the same price as printing the identical page in black. But the ISO/IEC black and color pages aren't even vaguely the same. So it's perfectly reasonable that the cost per page based on the ISO/IEC standard can be different, even while the cost for printing identical pages in color or monochrome can be the same.

It's also worth mentioning that the same pricing model applies to the Xerox Phaser 8860MFP color multifunction printer, an all-in-one (AIO) based on the 8860, with a scanner and other AIO functions added.

For small-to-midsize offices and workgroups that print lots of pages in color, the math is compelling. In fact, it almost doesn't matter how good the printer is, as long as it's minimally acceptable. But the really good news is that, with the possible exception of speed, the 8860 qualifies as a lot more than minimal, with more than acceptable output quality and better-than-average paper handling.

The 8860 is a solid-ink printer, the next generation after the Xerox Phaser 8560MFP/D. Solid-ink printers offer laser-class speed and quality. Instead of using toner particles that are fused onto paper, these printers start with solid blocks of ink, which are then melted and sprayed onto a drum that rolls against a piece of paper to transfer the image, just as an offset printing press does.

Solid-ink printers are generally aimed at small-to-midsize offices and workgroups because you have to leave them on 24 hours a day. Not only does keeping the ink melted take power, but if you turn the printer off at the end of each day, you'll use up an unacceptable amount of ink in the power-on cleaning cycle and drive up the cost of printing.

As with comparable lasers and earlier Xerox solid-ink printers, the 8860 is a hefty beast. At 14.5 by 16 by 21 inches (HWD), it's too big to share a desk with comfortably. And at 60 pounds, you'll probably want some help moving it into place. The actual setup, however, is as easy as it gets—one of the advantages of solid-ink technology. Aside from pulling off a few strips of packing tape, all you have to do to set up the printer on a network is load paper, plug it in, and run the fully automated installation routine while you're waiting for the ink to melt.

The printer ships with ink already loaded, but you can also add more when you set it up, if you like. Simply open the top cover and slip each ink block into its keyed slot. Loading the ink is a lot faster and easier than putting a toner cartridge into a laser printer.

The 8860's print speed is a little on the slow side for the price, but nowhere near slow enough to hurt the overall value. Xerox rates it at 30 pages per minute (ppm) for both monochrome and color at its top speed and at 16 ppm for both in the default enhanced mode. On our tests, it turned in reasonable times for the default rating.

I timed the 8860 on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing, www.qualitylogic.com), at a total 9 minutes 38 seconds. That's a bit faster than the 10:31 total for the previous-generation 8560MFP/D. But it's also a lot slower than the 5:38 total for the much less expensive Editors' Choice Xerox Phaser 6360DN laser, or even the 7:51 total for the (also less expensive) HP Color LaserJet CP4005dn Printer. It's tempting to add a comment here about using the extra time to calculate how much money you're saving (and there's a germ of truth hidden in that joke), but the more important issue is that the 8860 is still reasonably fast in absolute terms.

Output quality is a strong point overall. Text is a touch below typical laser quality, but it keeps the same crisp, clean edges, which gives it a professional look. More than half the fonts on our tests were easily readable, with well-formed characters at 6 points and some fonts passing the threshold at sizes as small as 4 points. One heavily stylized font with thick strokes needed 20 points, which is fairly common even for lasers. Unless you have an unusual need for small fonts, the printer should be able to handle any text you want to print.

Graphics were more than good enough for any internal business use, including PowerPoint handouts. As with earlier-generation solid-ink printers, I saw visible dithering in the form of graininess, but nothing that I would count as a serious problem. Graphics are better than I've usually seen from lasers and could be considered good enough for output like trifold brochures and mailings. Photo quality is on a par with that of most lasers, which makes it easily good enough for printing company newsletters or Web pages with photos.

The 8860 also earns points for good paper handling. A 525-sheet drawer, a 100-sheet multipurpose tray, and a duplexer come standard. You can also add two more 525-sheet drawers ($400 each) for a maximum capacity of 1,675 pages—more than enough to avoid constantly adding paper. Given the cost of the ink, the 8860 doesn't have to deliver much else to make it worth considering. But given what it actually delivers, if you print anywhere near enough in color for the low running cost to translate to worthwhile savings, it belongs on your short list. And it's earned a spot on our list as Editors' Choice, alongside the Xerox Phaser 6360DN.

Check out the Xerox Phaser 8860 Color Printer's test scores.

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