Xerox Phaser 3130

The Phaser 3130 may seem expensive, but Xerox has gambled by providing a better specification and paper handling than many of its competitors at this price. It seems this gamble has paid off.

The Phaser 3130 looks like many other personal lasers on the market, although the curvy case design prevents it from being just another white slab. Paper is fed from an internal 250-sheet cassette which closes flush with the rest of the case, with a mechanical paper-level indicator at the front. Printouts are delivered face-down on top of the unit in conventional manner, while a basic flap at the back opens up to act as a functional alternative face-up tray. There's a single-sheet manual feed slot just above the main cassette at the front which, when used in conjunction with the face-up exit at the back, provides a useful straight path for printing onto thick card without the risk of jams.

Our test unit was provided with a solitary parallel port, but we are assured the shipping product will also feature a USB2 port. Testing with a slow parallel connection may have contributed to the slow results we achieved for data-intensive graphics printing, despite the 32MB of memory - a very generous amount by personal laser standards. Throughput tests for plain text documents suggested a real-world performance of over 14ppm (pages per minute), which is not far off the official engine rating of 16ppm.

Print quality is good, if not outstanding. Text begins to break up below 6pt and halftone greys seem a little streaky, but it's still well above average compared with other personal lasers. This sums up the Phaser 3130: you pay a little more, but you definitely get your money's worth.

Contact: Xerox 0870 541 3245
www.xerox.com/officeprinting

Specifications:

• Mono laser
• 250-sheet input cassette
• 16ppm
• 1,200dpi image quality
• 32MB of memory
• USB2, parallel
• 348 x 355 x 193mm (w x d x h)
• Toner cartridge: £64.63
• Cartridge life: 3,000 sheets at five per cent coverage