Phaser 3125/N

Fuji Xerox's Phaser 3125/N isn't the prettiest of printers. Thankfully, it makes up for this with quick printing and decent quality. It is a step up from bargain bin monochrome laser printers.

Departing from the gloss white and black designs of other low-end monochrome laser printers, Fuji Xerox opts instead for the classic beige of a bygone era of tech. The printer has a relatively small footprint, but it stands taller than most of its competitors.

The input tray holds up to 250 sheets at a time, which should be enough for most situations. The use of a fold-out tray for input rather than a cassette means the Phaser 3125/N has a slightly deeper footprint than it would otherwise. The output tray faces forward rather than to the rear of the printer, allowing printouts to be easily retrieved.

The Phaser 3125/N has 32MB of internal memory and offers both USB 2.0 and Ethernet connectivity. There is no support for automatic duplexing; manual duplex is provided instead.

Although most suited to offices that need to only small volumes of printing, it still offers decent durability. Fuji Xerox claims the Phaser 3125/N can handle a maximum monthly duty cycle of 20,000 pages, so it can keep up with any sudden spike in printing needs.

Fuji Xerox offers the ability to change only very basic settings when the printer is connected via USB — a far cry from the Toolbox software seen with HP's Colour LaserJet CP2025dn. The integrated Web interface is only slightly better, with a basic view of the printer's properties. Users can print directly from the Web interface, troubleshoot problems and determine toner status.

The Phaser 3125/N provides a modest speed boost over cheaper monochrome laser printers. We achieved an average print speed of 23.62 pages per minute, which is very close to Fuji Xerox's claimed print speed of 24ppm. The first page was out in an average of 11 seconds during our tests; the company claims a first page out time of 9 seconds. The Phaser 3125/N will print at consistent speeds using either the 600dpi or 1200dpi quality settings, unlike the variable print speeds Canon's Laser Shot LBP 3100B and HP's LaserJet P1005.

Print quality is commendable. Text is crisp and very readable, with accurate characters and no aberrations — other low-end monochrome printers often print bold text that can be hard to read.

A text enhancement feature can be enabled when printing in 600dpi mode; this boosts quality slightly while using less toner than printing at 1200dpi.

The Phaser 3125/N ships with a low-yield 1000 page toner, but subsequent toners will yield an average 3000 pages each. Using standard toners, the printer will have a reasonable cost per page of 4.7c per page.