Xerox Phaser 6010 laser-like colour printer

LED printers are like laser printers, though the technology differs slightly.

Xerox's compact LED print engine, is used in Dell's low-cost colour printers and now makes an appearance in Xerox's own similar device.

The Phaser 6010 is a cheap printer. It costs just over £100 and provides full colour output.

It's also a really small printer, smaller than a small microwave and tastefully styled in white, with a translucent dark blue output tray. This has to be flipped open before use and the front cover folds down to make a feed tray. Another translucent dark blue cover slides out from inside the machine to cover the paper.

Controls are straightforward with a ring of navigation controls to move around the menus, which are displayed on a two-line text-only screen. There are connections at the back for USB (to a single computer) and for plugging into a wired network for sharing, and the right-hand side panel swings open to give access to four neat toner cartridges that clipped in place in a couple of seconds.

Xerox says the Phaser 6010 can print 15 pages per minute (ppm) of black text and 12ppm in colour, but we saw 10.3ppm and 7.7ppm, respectively. These are still good results for a printer at this price and the print quality produced by the LED engine, which uses high-intensity LED strips, rather than a laser beam, to illuminate its drum, were generally good.

Black text was solid with crisp edges, and colours were bright and attention grabbing. Registration (printing of black text over colour) was tight, but some colours, particularly greens and blues, came out too dark. Photos sometimes looked a little gaudy, but most of these shortcomings can be adjusted. The printer was impressively quiet in use.

The rather large downside is running costs. Each of the 1,000-page colour cartridges costs £53 and the 2,000-page black one clocks in at £62, giving a cost per colour page of 19p.

Against better-value black-and-white laser printers and inkjet models that produce colour pages for under 5p, it looks like very poor value.