Xerox 3130 Printer Review
The Xerox Phaser 3130 is a monochrome laser printer aimed at the small office or home user. While its price is a little higher than most competing products, it offers more speed and slightly better print quality than most of its competition. The Phaser 3130 is very compact and lightweight for a laser printer, measuring just 13.8 x 15.4 x 14.6 inches (HWD) and weighing only 15 pounds with the toner cartridge. This makes it very easy to fit onto almost any desktop area and easy to move around without needing extra help. This will be particularly appealing for home users.
The design includes a 250-sheet input tray, which is small by office standards, but should be adequate for most small office and home users. It also includes a manual feed option, though it only accepts a single sheet at a time for manual feeding. There is no multipurpose tray. A parallel port and USB port are included, but an ethernet port for networking is not included. As the printer is designed for personal or small office use, it would not likely suit the needs of a larger network anyway.
The Phaser 3130 includes a number of useful printing and cost saving options. There is a Xerox toner save option, which reduces the amount of toner used for each print, reducing overall toner consumption. The printer also supports "n-up" printing, which prints multiple pages on a single page. This also saves toner by reducing the number of pages needed for non-essential prints.
Print speed is around 17 pages per minute, which is good for its price and class. Print quality is excellent. Text quality is the focus, with sharp text down to very small font sizes. Graphics and photo printing are only adequate by laser standards, but for a personal printer at this price point, quite good.
Overall, the Phaser 3130 is a great choice for personal use or as a printer shared among 2 to 4 users for light printing duties. Its speed and quality are both good for the price, and extra features like toner saver mode will help reduce costs and add value.
