The Xerox Phaser 7750 is one of the quickest A3 colour laser printers available, printing in both colour and black and white at up to 35 pages per minute.

This capability comes courtesy of a single-pass laser engine and a PowerPC processor, with built-in networking, remote management and optional paper handling facilities.

Speed is clearly a big selling point with the 7750, although the 35ppm claim relates only to A4 documents. A3 pages are produced at around two-thirds of that rate, which at roughly 21-22ppm is still impressive. The first page appears in around 12 seconds and output quality in our tests was excellent across a range of document types.

The maximum resolution is 1,200 x 1,200dpi, with a special photo mode to enhance this further if required. There are lots of colour matching and correcting facilities, including Pantone simulation and support for ICC, ICM and Apple ColorSync systems. This enables the printer to be deployed in both specialist Microsoft and Apple environments.

Like all A3 printers, the Xerox laser is a large, heavy device, and benefits from a 150,000 page per month duty cycle. That said, it is no harder to maintain and run than a standard mono laser. The consumables are a little unusual, with cylindrical cartridges (one for each component colour) located behind a door at the front.

Even so, they are easy enough to change and reasonably priced. Black cartridges, which are capable of printing around 32,000 pages, retail at £92 + VAT, while each colour cylinder, rated at 22,000 pages, costs £169 + VAT. Alternatively, running costs can be covered by a variety of toner-inclusive price plans with fixed quarterly charges, which also pay for fuser and imaging unit changes.

A 500-sheet paper drawer comes as standard, along with a 150-sheet multi-purpose tray for labels, envelopes, transparencies and other media of differing size and thickness. A further feeder containing three more drawers can be added underneath for £840 + VAT, or you can opt for a high-capacity feeder at £1,050 + VAT to expand the capacity by 2,500 pages. Maximum paper weight is 169gsm or 220gsm if manually fed, and all drawers take A3 sheets, with a 1,000-sheet stacker/finisher/stapler as another option for £1,400 + VAT.

The main processing board features a 715MHz G4 PowerPC chip that can be equipped with up to 1GB of memory using industry-standard Dimm modules. The base model, the Phaser 7750V/B at £4,900 + VAT, comes with just 256MB, while our 7750V/DN had 384MB to cope with a built-in Ethernet network adapter and a duplexer, both of which are absent on the cheaper model.

A 20GB internal hard disk is included across the range and all 7750 lasers can process Adobe PDF documents directly, as well as Adobe PostScript 3 and PCL 5c emulations. Drivers are included for all versions of Windows from 95 and later, with Linux, Unix and Novell NetWare drivers also available.

We experienced no problems either installing or using the 7750, because although there is a usable LCD panel at the front of the printer, just about everything you might want to do can be achieved remotely. For example, there is a built-in web server with one of the most impressive interfaces for remote printer setup and management we have seen.

The 7750 also ships with Xerox software called CentreWare IS, which can be used to remotely manage both Xerox and other manufacturers' printers on the network. Users then get a utility called Printing Scout to tell them when paper or toner needs changing, and there is support in the driver software for N-up and booklet printing, duplexing and a range of other advanced printing options.

Price £5,780 + VAT as tested

Contact: Xerox 0870 241 3245