A company that has become synonymous with document-copying, Xerox has a long-established reputation in the laser-printer market, a reputation largely achieved on the strength of its solid-ink printers. Imagine our surprise, then, when we unpacked the Phaser 7400: not only was there a superficial resemblance to the OKI C95650N, but its internals were identical. We sought clarification from Xerox, who said:

“The engine for the Phaser 7400 is indeed purchased from OKI. However, the printer controller, which is the heart of the printer – defining functionality, print management, user interface and processing algorithms – is Xerox. Also, the drivers are Xerox developed. Controller, control panel and drivers deliver a consistent look and feel across our product range, enhancing the customer experience through bi-directional functionality, simple to use icons and 80 per cent of most common features accessible from the first driver tab.”

So what of those features that, in Xerox’s words, “enhance the customer experience”? Well, we have to say that the front LCD panel on the Phaser 7400 is one of the clearest and most informative we’ve seen; by comparison, the OKI’s was a little limited in the information presented to the user. Of course with a network printer, the front status panel becomes of secondary importance to network utilities, and Xerox’s XSupportCentre is admirably comprehensive. However, like OKI, Xerox have packaged a suite of utilities built for PowerPC in a brand new printer; not only does this make inefficient use of the processor in all new Macs, but also lends them a somewhat perfunctory quality. This is a pity, as we couldn’t fault their functionality.

Moving on to the performance tests, the unit supplied by Xerox was the entry-level model without automatic duplexing, so we couldn’t put this aspect of the Phaser 7400 to the test.

Comparison with the C9650N in our Word document print-speed test was instructive: the Xerox managed 50 pages in an average 1 minute 25.74 seconds, which translates to just under 35 pages per minute. We had slight reservations about sharpness at small font sizes.