Xerox C320 printer review: a high-performance color laser printer ideal for home or office use
Table of Contents
As one of the pioneers of the photocopier business, Xerox is still releasing new office printers to this day. One of the newer models is the Xerox 320, a color laser jet printer that promises speed and quality for business or home office use cases. Being a bit smaller in comparison to massive office setups, it is a suitable home printer, but with a weight of over 20kg/45lbs, it’s still no easy feat to set up by yourself.
As a laser printer, it has a high capacity yield from its toner and easily handles long job queues. But it certainly can be a shocker when a refill of cartridges for the printer comes out to more than the unit itself, so it’s best for those who can make use of it. With all being said, we put the Xerox C320 through its paces to see how it performs – as well as how it competes against similarly priced alternatives.
- Printer Output: Color
- Printer Type: Laser
- Connectivity Technology: Ethernet, USB, Wi-Fi Direct, Mobile printing
- Duplex Printing: Yes, automatic
Overall, the Xerox C320 is a capable color laser printer that handles job queues efficiently. The setup process is well-documented and straightforward, though it might require two of you to move it to the right position. However, the PC printing experience was somewhat disappointing; the companion app introduced unnecessary delays by prioritizing itself, which slowed down the workflow.
Replacing the toner is also a costly affair. While its expenses are on par with most cartridge-based printers, the larger laser cartridges can actually cost more than the printer itself, which is quite surprising. Despite lacking the ink efficiency of tank-based models, the C320 remains an excellent choice for high-volume printing and busy office environments.
- Well-guided and easy setup process, with various ways to do it
- When it warms up, fast at printing
- Solid build quality and well secured for transport
- Great quality prints overall
- Costly cartridge replacements
- PC app slows down print times and gives pop-ups each time
- Finnicky with throwing up errors occasionally
Box contents and setup
As with most other printers, there’s not much to the unboxing and what comes with it. That is, if you have the strength to move the whole box. Since it weighs over 23kg (52lb) packaged, it is recommended to have two people move it. Once you do get it where you want it, here’s what you can find inside of it when unpacking:
- Main printer unit
- 4x ink cartridges (CMYK, pre-installed)
- Power cable
- Set up guide and documentation
Inside, the printer sits snugly between (above and below) two pieces of very thick foam, keeping it sturdily in place no matter how much it gets juggled around in shipping. Once you remove the top piece, you will find the entire printer bagged in a massive plastic bag.
Heaving it out of the box, I found the printer itself taped up all over, with thick pieces of tape of varying lengths holding the various openings closed and in place. It goes even further than that, though, adding red plastic tabs into the printer, holding several internal mechanisms separated and in place, too.
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Xerox C320 cartridge bay, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 installed cartridges, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 wireless dongle, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 open profile, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 front open, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 box contents, Image by PC Guide
So, after fully unboxing the printer, it’s very much recommended to follow the instruction manual that goes through each of the steps – making sure you get each of the tabs and taped up areas. The tape on the outside was relatively simple, but pulling out the red tabs took some effort, and definitely made me feel like I was letting rip a Beyblade more than preparing a pritner.
You don’t have to install the cartridges either, as the C320 comes with the full range of ink pre-installed, and it’s one of the red tabs that sets them free to release their liquid. After that, you will need to load up the paper tray. It supports a wide range of paper sizes, and adjustable guides make it easy to align the tray with the paper you’re using.
This part was somewhat awkward to adjust and didn’t feel quite right. When loading plain A4 paper, it extended too far forward, resting on and even beyond the slope, which prevented the tray from closing. Pulling the tray back slightly and allowing the paper to sit flat resolved the issue.
It was also hard to close the tray at times, as it sits freely at the bottom; it kept catching the uneven table it sat on next to my desk, which might just be a fault of the design, since it’s made for an optional expansion that clips onto the bottom for a bigger paper tray.
Even though I followed the printer manual, the phone app does offer the same, and maybe a better experience, offering videos and visual guides on how to unbox and prep the printer. It also has the option for setting it up on your network or just plugging in to a PC. You can use that instead, or you can just follow the instructions of the touchscreen and set it up from there instead.
Xerox C320 admin password, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 setup summary, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 add printer, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 connected, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 unbox, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 set up, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 PC app, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 naming, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 easy assist unbox, Image by PC Guide
The flexibility makes it quite handy to set up and holds your hand for the most part, ensuring you do everything by the book as expected. You can see some of the design of the phone app and the setup process below.
Design
As a small office or business printer, the design is certainly more on the simple side – without any highlights or colorings that might be eye-catching or too outlandish. The Xerox C320 is just a two-tone printer, with the top colored in a dark blue, while the rest is in a bog-standard white.
The unit sits rather tall and wide, being both a laser and office-based printer. With dimensions of 455 x 423 x 318mm (17.9 x 16.6 x 12.5in.), it is a prominent piece of hardware that needs a fair bit of space. You also have to consider the spacing on the right side, since the cartridge door swings out in that direction and needs quite a bit of space if you want to access it properly.
Xerox C320 connectivity ports, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 front on, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 front USB, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 left side, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 paper guides, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 paper tray 2, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 power port, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 menu, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 paper output stopper, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 power button, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 rear, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 right side, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 screen, Image by PC Guide
At the front, the printer features a main paper tray at the base, with a hinged door above that opens fully downward, giving easy access to the core printing components for maintenance or clearing paper jams. The touchscreen is integrated into this door, positioned at a convenient angle, with the power button subtly located along its side for a clean, streamlined look.
The sides are fairly flat by design, with only a color change and a slight jutting out on the right side of note. It’s at the back that you can find the various connection ports. Along with some more unusual-looking fan grills and a metal plate, like in the back of the microwave, which deals with the heat of the printer.
Print results and speed
In our testing lab, I put the printer to the test, checking its speed and print quality. Loading it up with six pages mixed of three colors and three in monochrome, and timing them gave me a good idea of the performance to expect. I also attempted a photo print on glossy paper, which it handled successfully, though smaller photo sizes weren’t supported since the printer isn’t designed for photo printing. Instead, I performed a longer dual-sided monochrome print to evaluate its sustained printing speed.
Xerox C320 image tests, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 monochrome tests, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 script test, Image by PC Guide
Xerox C320 color tests, Image by PC Guide
With this test, the six separate pages took just around 54 seconds to print. The first page, a color test, took 29s from pressing print to the sheet ending up in the output. Then the next two color prints took around 2 seconds each. On the monochrome side, the first page took around eight seconds, the second 2s, and then 11 seconds for the last.
The timings here were slightly disjointed and might be due to various pages coming out. It also shows the printer having to keep heat in its rollers to transfer the ink to the page. Doing one big Bee Movie script, I printed 10 pages double-sided to see how that fared, and that took just around 44 seconds, with the first page taking 15, but 7 on each subsequent sheet on both sides, so it can certainly get up to a good speed.
What was a bit frustrating was if I tried printing from any source like a PDF open in browser, it first gave me a pop up from the Xerox utility, telling me it will automatically print the page in 15 seconds, and that I can preview it, instead of actually printing the page, which resorted to me using the app to print instead, but even that requried me installing another version of the printer to allow me to do it (as I also had the USB and LAN connected ones as different versions).
Also, I found that if you load the sheets incorrectly, it takes multiple at a time, so you end up with multiple blanks between your print, and the second side is printed on the wrong sheet. But with these errors rectified, the final printing quality is rather impressive.
Even without aligning, the colors come out with great vibrance and without any overspill. Keeping the sharp lines of the edges, and doing so even on the smallest lettering, keeping them legible and without artifacting outside of that.
Similarly, the black and white test gave the same results, with the grid and gradients coming in sharp and at high quality. But there were a few boxes on the gradients that had what looked like roller marks across them, which can be a bit of a dig on the quality.
Having printed the longer doc of a script, there are no errors in the quality, like smudging or illegible text. This is ideal for this printer as it’s most likely the main use case for this printer.
Specifications and cost
| Printing Technology | Color Laser |
| Maximum Print Resolution | 1200 x 1200 dpi, 4800 Color Quality |
| Ink Type | Cartridges |
| Scanner resolution and type | N/A |
| Operating Systems | Windows® 11, Windows® 10, Windows Server 2022, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2012. macOS 13.x, macOS 12.x, macOS 11.x. |
| Dimensions (W x D x H) | 455 x 423 x 318mm (17.9 x 16.6 x 12.5in.) |
| Weight | 20.6kg (45lb) |
| Connectivity | Hi-Speed USB 2.0 (Type A port 1x front, 1x rear), Hi-Speed USB (Type B port 1x rear), Gigabit Ethernet, Wireless 802.11 b/g/n |
| Mobile and Cloud printing | Apple AirPrint, Mopria Print Service, Chromebook, Wi-Fi Direct® Cloud via the Xerox® Print and Scan Experience App |
| Paper Sizes | Main Tray: From 98 x 148mm (3.9 x 5.8in) up to 216 x 356mm (8.5 x 14in), 60 gsm to 216 gsm (to 105gsm duplex) Manual Feed: 76 x 127mm (3 x 5in) up to 216 x 356mm (8.5 x 14in), 60 gsm to 216 gsm (to 105gsm duplex) |
| Input Paper Capacity | Main Tray: 250 sheets of 75gsm Manual Feed: 1 sheet of 75 gsm |
| Display | 7.4cm (2.9in) diagonal touchscreen |
Looking over the finer details, although it can print in quality, it can lack compared to some inkjet printers like the ET-4800 we reviewed a while back. It is also quite a bit heavier than even some of the larger ones we looked over, like the HP Laserjet Pro or Epson WF, as those are fairly similar in size. It does offer a fair amount of flexible connectivity, both hardline or wirelessly, making it easier to print however you want.
All of that comes in at a cost of $450, which is slightly more premium compared to other color laser printers we’ve seen – especially when you consider the base model doesn’t offer any scanning or copying either, it’s a bit of an expensive option.
Even more so when you look to replace the ink cartridges inside, a full set of standard toner will set you back $490, which has a supposed yield of 1,800 pages in color and 2,200 in black. A high-capacity bundle is $950 with yields of 5,500 and 8,000 pages.
So, going for a high-capacity toner, your page cost comes to $0.03 per monochrome sheet and $0.09 per colored sheet. Which, in the end, isn’t totally outrageous, but it is a big sum to replace it. Still being a cartridge printer, it doesn’t yield the same economy as ink tanks that are cheaper to refill.
- Printer Output: Color
- Printer Type: Laser
- Connectivity Technology: Ethernet, USB, Wi-Fi Direct, Mobile printing
- Duplex Printing: Yes, automatic
Conclusion
Overall, the Xerox C320 is a strong color laser printer that can go through the job queue with ease. With a helpful guide on how to set it up and get it going, the whole process is well-instructed to set it up, even if it does take two people to move it. But the PC process was a bit of a letdown when it came to printing, as the app caused a delay in printing and made itself the priority, which slowed the whole thing down unnecessarily.
It also certainly costs a pretty penny to replace the toner inside. Generally, it costs around the same as any other cartridge-based printer, but due to its size, as a laser printer, it comes to more than the printer itself, and it has quite a shocking price tag. Lacking the ink efficiency of an ink tank, it’s still great for high-volume printing and office work, and might just be the right choice for you.
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