Xerox Xpress 54 Large Format Inkjet Printers

Trying to find XEROX Engineering Systems (XES) large format printers

During 2000 for months we have tried to find where Xerox hides its information on wide format printers. We even went to the giant international trade show at DRUPA, 2000, where Xerox had an entire hall. But the sole Xerox wide format we could find had no attendant and no one was even looking at it. At all the other wide format printer booths like ColorSpan, Roland, Epson, HP, large crowds were admiring the fabulous output of those inkjet printers. What has happened at Xerox? Xerox unfortunately set its stakes on the wrong technology.

Electrostatic printers are no longer popular due to their up front purchase cost. Then Xerox bought the solid-ink technology that came along with Tektronix. Their wide format printer faired poorly in reviews and as far as I can tell this unfortunate printer has been phased out. It's technology offered little future in today's market. Canon, Epson, and now HP have printers that offer outstanding museum quality output. Not much space for phase change technology at large format size (works great for desktop sized Tektronix laser printers however).

So at Seybold we finally found the mini-Xerox booth. Three friendly and helpful Xerox people did their best to convince me of the worthiness of their printer. But when I saw the pitiful output, grainy, worse than Encad, about as bad as that of the Brady (Fuji-Hunt), and then I was told the EFI Fiery hardware RIP sold for $7,000. Whoa, none of those RIPs are worth that, not even half that. $3,000 is pushing its value.

Can't update any EFI Fiery RIP, can't run any other printer with those RIPs. It is obsolete soon after you buy it and it is worthless when you get your next printer. How can any company justify purchasing such an overpriced and under-functioned system? I admire whoever wrote the Xerox brochures for the Xpress. Perhaps they have never seen any of the competition's printers. Kind of hard to give a good recommendation to this printer. Too bad, since Xerox-Tektronic printers are among my favorite for laser technology. Overall Xerox is an admirable company. When Canon finally delivers its model 9000, then that will gobble up what is left of the wide format market. Xerox will have a hard time developing its own technology. Xaar heads are too low quality (MIT heads are what the Xerox uses; I get them impression they are comparable to the Xaar system).

The Seiko also uses Xaar heads; also has low quality when shown at DRUPA 2000. I wish Xerox luck in somehow buying or developing a more acceptable large format inkjet color technology. But until they develop a better printhead technology, the claims in their ads about photo quality are not matched with the actual products. Countless large format printers offer much better quality. Almost every month we get e-mail from people who already own a Xerox Xpress printer and they are either broken down or otherwise the users say they want to abandon them and get better printers. We are contacting these companies to find out specifically what it is that they don't like about the Xpress. After all, every printer does something okay. However we did find two people who said the printer had its good points. Fortunately even XES finally dropped the Xpress and came out with a greatly improved model, their ColorgrafX X2.

In the last year the Seiko printheads and printer have improved gradually but still are not fully photo-realistic quality. Also their ad claims for being the fastest are overstated (and potentially violate most US Federal regulations as clearly stated by the Federal Trade Commission).

The older XES Xpress has now long ago been replaced by the newer better Colorgrafx X2 printer. Still has Xaar-like piezo printheads; still has oil-based ink technology, but everything about the printer is improved (other than its hefty price and the whopping cost of the associated RIP). Output from the Colorgrafx X2 printer varies considerably. I have seen really nice output, almost photo-quality. Yet in other instances the oil-based technology with Xaar-like heads is still rather splotchy.

Here is where it would be so much easier to judge the potential of this kind of printer if we knew more about its preferences: what kinds of files it does best with, what dpi it prefers, how the various RIPs may or may not cause or improve quality. When we have a printer in-house we can usually work out a manner to get it to produce nice output. But when we only see it at tradeshows it’s more difficult to figure out how to showcase its capabilities. Every printer can do something nicely, even if it has a few glitches or shortcomings elsewhere. A few months ago we got an e-mail from a contented owner of the Colorgrafx X2 printer. We would bring you a report on the capabilities of this printer but do not have this printer available in our facilities. Several other new printers also being introduced at CeBIT are now en-route to FLAAR so we tend to know more about these other brands since we have them.

From seeing them in action at tradeshows, the ColorgrapfX X2 is better than the Xpress. But something happened because XES failed to exhibit at ISA tradeshow in April 2003. In May we heard that XES had been folded back into the main Xerox corporate umbrella. The ColorgrapfX X2 is now back on their web site but we do not know if Xerox intends to continue investing in wide format inkjet past this model, or whether this is their last model. We are trying to obtain information. After seeing the XES exhibited together with a Japanese wallpaper materials supplier at a tradeshow we were interested in oil-based printers for wallpaper. But everyone we know from XES is no longer there as of this year.

At DRUPA 2004 there was no ColorgrafX X2 printer whatsoever. No model X3 ColorgrafX printer had appeared either. Thus unless a ColorgrafX X3 is something more than just a rebranded Mutoh eco-solvent printer, it appears that XES and Xerox too are out of the business of attempting to design their own large format inkjet printers. Agfa, Fuji, and other companies have the same problems: they don't have the R&R funds to support developing new printers.

Instead Xerox is now selling Epson 7600 and Epson 9600 printers with a Caldera RIP from France. This is an excellent RIP, albeit costly. If you just need to print simple images, you don't need any RIP at all: the Epson printer driver by itself is plenty.

If you intend to do proofing, there are a host of proofing RIPs available, such as PerfectProof, ColorGate, and a dozen others.

Last updated June 1, 2004 based on 10 days scrutiny of printers at DRUPA trade show in Germany.
Previously updated : Sept. 16, 2003; Aug. 25, 2002; Sept. 3, 2002; Feb. 24, 2003; May 12, 2003.