From its start at Tektronix to that companys takeover by Fuji Xerox, solid ink printing technology has had a tumultuous life. Solid ink printers can output black and white and colour prints with amazing speed and high finish quality, but theyre usually quite expensive, which limits the technologys market penetration.

The new Fuji Xerox Phaser 8200 takes the bite out of solid ink printing, with a price of just under $6,000 (previous models have cost over $10,000).The 8200DP is one of the top models in the range, and features 10/100 Ethernet, 1,200dpi photo-print mode and 128MB of RAM as standard, but there are two lower models without this extra functionality that begin at $3,995.

Its not often you find a printer that lives up to the manufacturers page per minute rating, but the Phaser 8200DP does. It churns out 10ppm in standard colour, with only nine seconds until the first sheet pops out into the tray, and can print out 16ppm in Fast colour. The finish is shiny and waxy even on plain A4 paper, and its some of the best printing weve seen, aside from the quality attained with a photo printer and expensive photo paper. Instead of printing a masterpiece each time, particularly when you just want to print minutes from a meeting, the bundled software and driver package lets you configure the printer and individual prints to the nth degree, with multiple controls depending on the output required. Its a great unit, particularly for a workplace that occasionally needs high-quality colour prints. Just a couple of problems: the noise level when it spits out prints and the smell when its heating up the solid ink blocks.

Darren Ellis