Xerox Phaser 3100MFP/X review

Like the other mono lasers here, Xerox's Phaser 3100MFP/X has only a USB port and a simple text-only LCD, but we were surprised by some of its extra features.

Beneath a flap next to its display is a full miniature keyboard, which you can use to send text messages, assuming your telephone provider has given you details of its SMS transmission server. The Sudoku puzzle generator is inexplicable. More useful is that you can connect a USB wireless adaptor to the printer to connect it to a wireless network.

The Phaser's basic functions are simple. Mono lettering in our text document was dark and sharp, although characters became spidery at sizes of 8pt and below. At 18.5ppm for standard text and 5.3ppm for greyscale documents, the Phaser is a little slower than most of the other laser printers here. Greyscale quality was usable but not very attractive. Shading on graphs and illustrations was solid and precise, but prints were marred by horizontal streaks. Worse still was the Phaser's reproduction of photographic images, which looked blocky with visible dither patterns.

You can scan images at up to 600dpi to a USB drive or your PC. When scanning from a PC, Vista and XP users are limited to a WIA scanner driver, which uses Windows' basic image acquisition capabilities and provides only a handful of image correction options. A more advanced TWAIN driver is provided for Windows 2000 users. We were satisfied with the results of our WIA scan tests, particularly when it came to photographic images. Colours were a little brighter than in our original documents, but the effect was pleasing, particularly when scanning images for the web.

Despite its low price and vast range of features and capabilities, this MFP tries to hard to do everything but skimps on essentials such as a proper scanner driver and print quality. We also experienced unexpected paper jams during fast print jobs, particularly when performing ADF photocopies. We prefer Brother's cheaper DCP-7030, while fax users should choose Lexmark's X340.