WHAT'S HOT: Speed. The Phaser 5400 screams past all the other printers on the chart, printing text at 18.8 ppm and graphics at 5.3 ppm. Also, it has a wide paper path and wide print engine to accommodate tabloid-size paper. We found the control panel easy to navigate with a set of buttons that carefully match the three-level menu hierarchy (though we wish the LCD were backlit).

WHAT'S NOT: Price. High performance and the larger components for tabloid-size printing are expensive, so don't be surprised to learn that the Phaser 5400 costs $2149. More important, we were somewhat underwhelmed with the 5400's print quality. Text has a slightly grayish shadow, narrow lines tend to bunch up, and gray-scale graphics lose detail and show some streaking.

WHAT ELSE: In the kind of big office where the Phaser 5400 would be at home, users will probably make a lot of demands on it. To meet them, your IS department can expand the standard 550-sheet feeder and 150-sheet auxiliary tray with another 550-sheet feeder for $269 (letter size) or $309 (tabloid size) or a 2000-sheet paper well for $979 (letter size); add a stacker ($359) and duplexer ($369); and install an internal hard drive ($449) to store fonts, forms, and watermarks. The internal drive also supports "secure print," that is, sending a print job and having it wait in memory until you visit the printer and punch in a password.

UPSHOT: The Phaser 5400 provides performance and features for a big office, with versatility designed in so you can adapt it to meet new demands. But the print quality isn't top-notch, and the price will prove a serious obstacle for anyone who doesn't need the tabloid capability.

SUMMARY

Xerox Phaser 5400 Rated 40 ppm, standard 32MB of RAM, 1200-by-1200-dpi maximum resolution, 700 sheets input, 500 output. $2149 877/362-6567 www.xerox.com