Design
The WorkCentre 6605 is heavy, so installing it is a two-person job. It's not hard to find room for it on a desktop or cabinet, and day-to-day access to the paper trays and toner slot is all done from the front, helping somewhat if space is tight. As with other multifunctions, however, it's best sited at a reasonable height so that walk-up users can access the ADF and touchscreen, which here can't be tilted forward to change the viewing angle.
The screen is one of the best we've seen from Xerox. It's clear and sharp, responding snappily to finger presses. Just as importantly, it's easy and intuitive to navigate its various menus and functions, which could help reduce the number of support calls. In general the 6605 feels built to take a suitable amount of punishment. As we'd expect, the various trays, lids and stops all feel robust, even if the main paper tray doesn't slide in and out with quite the smoothness we'd hope for. Although both the ADF and printer output trays have flip up stops to arrest paper, we found we didn't need these when working with A4.
The printer's toners are accessed through a fold down front panel. High-capacity replacements last for 6,000 pages each (colour) and 8,000 pages (black) - reasonable figures given the expected usage level. Other maintenance items include a 60,000-page imaging unit, and 100,000-page fuser and transfer units. Xerox was keen to stress that replacements wouldn't be required at typical usage levels, but we always include all maintenance items in our figures, giving the 6605 costs per page of 1.7p in mono and 6.4p in colour (ex VAT). The toner-only costs are 0.6p lower in each case. Although this is on the steep side, we'd expect it to fall somewhat once the new supplies become more widely available.
