The Xerox Phaser 860 is a color solid ink printer that delivers quick prints at affordable pricing for the home office or small work group although a medium sized work group with smaller printing demands could easily utilize it; the Xerox Phaser 860 is higher priced at around $2,000.00.

The Xerox Phaser 860 doesn’t support much in the way of media size, only A4, A4 long and legal sizes are supported, which limits its usefulness in a more demanding office. The total media capacity for the Xerox Phaser 860, however, is 1,200 sheets which makes up for the lack of supported media styles. To power the solid ink printer Xerox has equipped a 250 MHz PowerPC processor and a base memory of 64/128 MB depending upon the model, in line with other printers of its class. Unfortunately the base model does not have networking standard; higher end models like the 860N, 860DP and 860 DX have 10/100BaseTX Ethernet connections. Optional features include duplex printing, hard drive, and pipeline printing at an additional price.

The color is presented in vivid detail and the first printed page is out faster than most laser printers; sometimes as fast as 3 seconds depending upon resolution. Cost per printed color document is close to 4 cents per page and dropping quickly; black and white documents can cost less than a cent per page and are presented quite well to 8 point fonts. The Xerox solid ink printing costs are lower than some laser printers. The 65,000 page per month yield is a little low for medium work groups but they may choose it for the 3.5 pages per minute speed for photo prints and 16 pages per minute for color documents, although this is somewhat slow comparatively speaking. Color correction and special features abound on the Xerox 860 with Intelligent Ready, TekColor Correction, Watermark, N-Up Printing, and Auto Tray Select options.

A fully loaded Xerox Phaser 860 solid ink printer will cost a pretty penny, but the savings from low cost color prints will pay for the initial investment and provide world class color prints.