OKI MB472w

BY M. DAVID STONE

If you’re looking for a monochrome laser multifunction printer (MFP)for heavy-duty use in a micro office, small office, or workgroup, or for up to moderate use in a midsize office, the OKI MB472w ($399) is a strong contender. Like other OKI printers that compete directly with lasers, the MB472w$412.25 at Amazon is actually an LED printer, which means that it uses LEDs rather than a laser to draw the image of each page on its drum. However, it uses the same technology as laser printers otherwise, making it indistinguishable from a laser in any practical sense.

One obvious competitor for the MB472w is the Canon imageClass MF6160dw$299.99 at WalMart, which remains our Editors’ Choice in this category primarily because it delivers somewhat higher text quality than the OKI printer, as well as faster speeds in our tests. However, the MB472w comes in a close second overall, and offers some strengths of its own, most notably a lower claimed cost per page. Depending on your preferences, either one could be the better fit.

Basics
The MB472w offers a full set of basic MFP features, including the ability to print and fax from a PC, scan to a PC, and work as a standalone copier, fax machine, and direct email sender—meaning it can scan a document and send it as an email attachment without needing a PC. Going beyond the basics, it can print to and scan from a USB memory key, and it also offers mobile support.

Assuming you connect the printer directly to a network, using either Ethernet or Wi-Fi, and the network is connected to the Internet, the MB472w will let you print through the cloud. It will also let you print through a Wi-Fi access point on your network from iOS and Android smartphones and tablets. It doesn’t offer Wi-Fi Direct, which means you can’t connect to it if it’s not on a network. However, that shouldn’t be an issue, since most offices that need this heavy-duty a printer will almost certainly put it on a network.

Part of what defines the printer as suitable for moderate to heavy-duty use in a midsize office is its paper handling. The MB472w comes standard with a 250-sheet drawer, a 100-sheet multipurpose tray, and an automatic duplexer (for two-sided printing). You can also add a 530-sheet tray ($229) for a maximum capacity of 880 sheets.

For scanning, the MB472w offers both a letter-size flatbed and a 50-page automatic document feeder (ADF) that can handle up to legal-size pages. It can also copy, scan, and fax in duplex, by scanning one side of the page, turning it over, and scanning the other—a feature that the Canon MF6160dw also offers. This approach to duplex scanning is slower than scanning both sides of the page at once, but it’s a lot more convenient than having to scan duplex documents manually.

As is typical for MFPs that can both print and scan in duplex, the MB472w can mix and match the two features for copying, so you can copy both single- and double-sided originals to your choice of single- or double-sided copies.

Setup, Speed, and Output Quality
The MB472w is a typical size and weight for this heavy-duty an MFP. It’s too big to share a desk with comfortably, at 17.9 by 16.8 by 18.8 inches (HWD), and heavy enough, at 44 pounds 2 ounces, that you may want some help moving it into place.

Setup is typical for a monochrome MFP. For my tests, I connected it to a network by Ethernet and installed the drivers on a Windows Vista system. One minor potential issue is that the Recommended Install choice doesn’t install the fax driver. If you want to fax from your PC, you need to choose Custom Install and then click on the Fax Driver check box.

The engine rating for the MB472w is 35 pages per minute (ppm), which is the speed you should see when printing documents like text files that need little to no processing. The speed on our tests was within the typical range for the engine speed, but not impressive.

I timed the printer on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing), at 9.7ppm. That’s just a bit slower—although not significantly slower—than the 10.1ppm I timed for the more expensive OKI MB492$622.42 at Amazon, which is rated at 42ppm. However, it’s significantly slower than the Canon MF6160dw, which has the same speed rating as the MB472w, but came in at 13.2ppm in simplex (one-sided) mode. The Canon printer also managed 9.9ppm in its default duplex setting, essentially tying the MB472w’s time for simplex mode.

Output quality overall is at the high end of what we expect in this category. Text quality falls in the middle of a fairly tight range that includes the vast majority of monochrome MFPs, making it good enough for any business use, as long as you don’t have an unusual need for small fonts.

Graphics and photo quality both fall at the high end of the range for monochrome MFPs. For graphics, that translates to being good enough so that most people would consider the output suitable for PowerPoint handouts and the like. Photos are easily good enough for printing webpages with photos or even photos in, say, newsletters—for those few who may still print newsletters instead of sending them electronically.

If you need still better output quality than the OKI MB472w offers for text, or you can benefit from faster speed, you should certainly take a close look at the Canon MF6160dw. But also keep in mind that the MB472w’s lower claimed running cost—at 1.9 cents per page compared with 2.8 cents for the Canon printer—can save you $9 for every 1,000 pages you print. Print 45,000 pages over the printer’s lifetime, and the savings can pay for the initial price of the printer. If you expect to print enough for the savings to matter, the MB472w may well be the printer you want.

original article

OKI B412dn

BY M. DAVID STONE

The OKI B412dn ($199) is the sort of compact but powerful beast that’s small enough to share a desk with, but capable enough to serve as a shared printer. Built around an LED engine—which means it substitutes LEDs for a laser as its light source—it’s technically not a laser printer, but it uses the same technology otherwise, which is why most people don’t draw a distinction between LED and laser printers. More important, compared head-to-head with actual laser printers, it can be an attractive choice.

The B412dn$190.00 at Amazon is a close competitor in many ways to the Brother HL-5450DN$142.47 at Amazon, which is our Editors’ Choice moderate- to heavy-duty monochrome laser for personal use or for shared printing in a micro office or workgroup. In particular, it offers slightly better paper handling. Both printers come with a 250-sheet paper tray and duplexer (for two-sided printing) standard. Both also include a multipurpose tray. However, the B412dn’s tray holds 100 sheets rather than 50.

The paper capacity for either printer should be sufficient for most offices, but the extra capacity for the B412dn is a welcome convenience. For those offices that need more, both printers also offer an additional tray. Here again, the B412dn offers a little extra, with its 530-sheet tray ($229) boosting the capacity from 350 sheets to a maximum 880 sheets. The Brother HL-5450’s maximum is 800 sheets.

Basics, Setup, and Speed
As tested, the only connection choices for B412dn are USB and Ethernet, although a Wi-Fi module ($75) is also available. Mobile printing support includes printing through the cloud—assuming the printer is on a network, and the network is connected to the Internet. It also includes connecting though an access point on the network to print from an iOS or Android smartphone or tablet. However, the Wi-Fi module does not offer Wi-Fi Direct or the equivalent, which means that if you chose to connect to a PC via USB cable instead of connecting to a network, you won’t be able to take advantage of mobile printing.

Setup is standard fare. The printer is small enough to find room for easily, at 9.6 by 15.2 by 14.3 inches (HWD), and it weighs just 26 pounds 8 ounces. For my tests, I connected it using its Ethernet port and installed the driver on a system running Windows Vista.

OKI rates the B412dn at 35 pages per minute (ppm), which is the speed you should see when printing a text document or other file that needs little to no processing. On our business applications suite, I clocked it (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing) at an effective 9.6ppm. That’s acceptably fast for the price and engine speed, but is a touch slower than the Brother HL-5450DN, at 10.8ppm. It’s also slower than the less-expensive Canon imageClass LBP6230dw$99.99 at Amazon in the Canon printer’s default duplex mode, at 10.8ppm, and a lot slower than the Canon printer in simplex (one-sided) mode, at 13.2ppm.

Output Quality and Running Costs
Output quality for the B412dn earns the same general description as its speed: more than acceptable overall, but not impressive.

Text quality in my tests was just a touch below par for a monochrome laser, but not in a way that will matter for most business use. With small font sizes, the strokes were so thin that the text looked gray rather than black, making it hard to read. At 8 points and above, however, almost every font we test with was highly readable and easily good enough for most purposes short of high-quality desktop publishing. As long as you don’t need small fonts, you shouldn’t have a problem.

Graphics and photo quality are both typical for a monochrome laser. For graphics, that translates to being easily good enough for any internal business use. Unless you have a particularly critical eye, you’ll probably consider it good enough for PowerPoint handouts and the like as well. Photo quality is good enough to print recognizable images from photos on Web pages.

One final strong point for the B412dn is its running cost, at a claimed 1.9 cents per page. That’s about the same as the claimed cost for the Brother HL-5450DN, but a lot cheaper than the cost for most printers in this price range. The more pages you print, the more this can save you. The Canon LBP6230dw’s claimed cost, for example, is 4.1 cents per page, with the 2.2 cent per page difference working out to $22 for 1,000 pages.

If you print few enough pages so you don’t have to consider running cost, you may prefer the Canon LBP6230dw to the OKI B412dn because of its faster speed. However, if you print enough for the cost per page to matter, either the B412dn or the Brother HL-5450DN will be far less expensive in the long run. Between them, the Brother printer offers faster speed and better text quality, which keeps it firmly in place as our Editors’ Choice. That said, if the B412dn’s speed and text quality are good enough for your purposes, its slightly lower claimed cost per page and its slightly better paper handling may make it the better fit.

original article

OKI B432dn

BY M. DAVID STONE

Although technically not a laser printer—because it uses LEDs instead of a laser to draw the image of each page on its drum—the OKI B432dn ($349) uses the same technology otherwise, putting it firmly in the monochrome laser category for all practical purposes. Beyond that, its strong points include both its level of paper handling and its low running cost. The combination will make it of particular interest to small offices with both heavy-duty print needs and an appreciation of how spending just a little less on each printed page can add up to big savings in the long run.

The advantage of the B432dn’s 1.6 cents-per-page running cost will vary depending on how much you print and what printer you’re using for the comparison. The OKI B412dn$190.00 at Amazon, for example, also has a low running cost for its price. However, the printer itself is $150 less than the B432dn, and its claimed running cost is 0.3 cents her per page .

The difference works out to $30 for 10,000 pages. Print 50,000 pages with both printers over their lifetimes, and the total cost of ownership will be the same in both cases. Every 10,000 pages beyond that translates to a $30 savings for the B432dn. Run the same calculation with the Brother HL-5450DN$142.47 at Amazon and the advantage for the B432dn is even greater. The difference in initial price is smaller and the savings in running cost is bigger, at $50 for every 10,000 pages.

Basics
Complementing the B432dn’s low running cost is paper handling that’s suitable for heavy-duty printing in a micro office. The printer comes with a 250-sheet drawer, 100-sheet multipurpose tray, and a duplexer (for two-sided printing) standard. If you need more, you can boost the capacity to 880 sheets with an optional 530-sheet tray ($229).

Going a little beyond the basics, the B432dn adds mobile printing support. If you connect to a network with either Ethernet or with the optional Wi-Fi module ($75), you can print from an iOS or Android smartphone or tablet by connecting through an access point on your network. You can also print though the cloud. However, the Wi-Fi option does not support Wi-Fi Direct or the equivalent, which means that if you connect to a single PC via USB cable rather than to your network, you can’t connect directly with mobile devices.

One other feature worth noting is support for PostScript, a printer language that most offices can do without, but some applications require.

Setup and Speed
The B432dn weighs 26 pounds 8 ounces and measures 9.6 by 15.2 by 14.3 inches (HWD), making it small and light enough for one person to move into place. Setup is typical for a monochrome laser. For my tests, I connected it to a network using its Ethernet port and installed the driver on a Windows Vista system.

OKI rates the printer engine at 42 pages per minute (ppm), which is close to the speed you should see when printing a file that needs little to no processing. However, the effective speed can be much slower, depending on how many pages are in the print job.

Results on our tests are usually significantly slower than the engine rating, both because most of our test files include graphics and photos that require processing, and because we time what’s known as throughput, which includes the time between giving the print command and the first page starting to print. Engine ratings don’t include that time. Even after taking this into account, however, the B432dn was slow for both its price and its rating on our tests.

The reason for the slow performance is that the B432dn takes more time than most of the competition to warm up at the start of a print job. For long documents, the fast speed once printing actually begins will largely make up for the slow start. However, our tests consist of one to four-page documents, because most offices print far more short documents than long ones.

I timed the printer on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing) at only 6.8ppm. In comparison, the OKI B412dn came in at 9.6ppm, the Brother HL-5450DN managed 10.8ppm, and the much-less-expensive Canon imageClass LBP6230dw$99.99 at Amazon hit 10.8ppm in its default duplex mode and 13.2ppm in simplex (one-sided) mode. The best that can be said of the B432dn’s speed for short print jobs is that it’s tolerable, but sluggish. The good news is that with substantially longer documents, the slow warm-up time won’t be as significant a drag on the overall print time.

Output Quality
Output quality overall is more than acceptable, particularly for text, which is easily good enough for almost any business need short of high-quality desktop publishing. Unless you make extensive use of small font sizes, you shouldn’t have a problem with it.

Graphics and photo quality are both typical for a monochrome laser. The graphics output is easily good enough for any internal business use, and most people would consider it good enough for PowerPoint handouts and the like as well. Photo quality is good enough to print recognizable images from photos on Web pages.

If you won’t be printing enough for the B432dn’s low cost per page to be a key consideration, you might be better off with the OKI B412dn, which offers the same paper handling plus faster throughput for short print jobs. Also consider the Brother HL-5450DN. In addition to offering nearly the same level of paper handling, the Brother model delivers better text quality than the B432dn, which helps make it our Editors’ Choice moderate- to heavy-duty monochrome laser for personal use or for shared printing in a micro office or workgroup.

If your print needs are heavy-duty enough, the OKI B432dn’s low running cost can save money in the long run compared with less expensive printers with higher running costs. And if most of the documents you print are long enough for the fast engine speed to make up for the slow warm-up time, it can even be a compelling choice.

original article

Oki C331dn

Introduction

One word that’s often used to describe a printer is “workhorse,” and the Oki C331dn ($349) is one such example. Like the Dell C1765nr, the C331dn is an LED color printer, which uses a fixed width printhead containing LEDs to “write” the image on a photoconductor drum, rather than a scanning laser beam. Workhorse printers like this aren’t marketed toward the home user, but, having said that, it’s worth considering if you print a couple of hundred pages a month. In a house with a fair number of users doing a lot of printing, you can easily bump up against a typical consumer laser printer’s recommended monthly duty cycle. That’s not going to happen with the C331dn. Its duty cycle is up to 45,000 pages a month – that’s seven cases (not reams) of paper a month.

Obviously, most home and even small business users will approach that duty cycle. But combined with Oki’s three-year warranty, it underlines how durable the printer is – you’re not going to break it by using it.

Features and design

The C331dn looks deceptively small when viewed from the front. It’s only 16.1 inches wide and 9.5 inches tall (without the optional second paper tray). But, due to the design of how the cartridges are laid out, the C331dn is very deep, at 19.8 inches – considerably deeper than most of the printers we’ve tested recently. And the setup guide illustrates two people lifting it while unpacking. That’s probably a good idea, as the printer weighs in at almost 50 pounds.

There are few controls on the printer you need to worry about. Besides the navigation and OK buttons for scrolling through menus on a backlit 16-character display, there are the Power Save button, Online, and Cancel buttons. For the most part, once set up, you’ll make most of the adjustments from the print driver on your computer.

One thing that’s notable about the C331dn is that you can get very granular with the color settings. The printer can print a sheet of color swatches that you can use with software, such as Photoshop, to set the RGB values on an image that’s being created or edited to a very specific color. Few home users will take advantage of this, but it’s a nice feature to have if you do a lot of precise color printing.

The C331dn has a large input tray that holds 250 sheets, exactly a half-ream. If you generally run large print jobs, there’s an optional second paper tray that fits underneath the printer and adds another 530 sheets of capacity. A panel on the front of the printer folds down to expose a multi-purpose tray for heavy or specialized stock. Depending on the weight of the paper, it can hold up to another 100 sheets. Auto duplexing (two-side printing) is a feature.

Paper exits at the top of the printer, and a pop-up support just isn’t going to hold the entire input tray’s capacity, so you’ll need to keep an eye on the printer if you have a long print job running, like a copy of a nonfiction book.

The C331dn does not support Wi-Fi. Considering how prevalent Wi-Fi is today in both the home and office, this will be an important factor to home or small business user.

What’s in the box

There were no surprises inside the box. It contains the printer, a power cord, a disc containing drivers Windows and Mac drivers, and documentation. The C331dn has the toner cartridges and drum already installed, so setup is really just attaching the power cord, loading paper, and plugging in a USB or Ethernet cable. Oki also includes a number of utilities on the installation disc, but few, if any, of these will be of use to the typical home user unless they need precision color output.

Performance and use

Setting up the C331dn is completely automated. Running the installation, we were asked whether we wanted to use Ethernet or USB, and instructed to plug in the appropriate cable. The USB and Ethernet ports are hidden behind a door at the rear of the right side panel, but there’s no mention of it on the setup guide. The C331dn gives you a choice of printer drivers: You can install the PCL driver that almost every application uses, or the Postscript driver which is somewhat better for use with graphics software and when you need to do precise color matching. You can, of course, install them both and choose which driver to use at print time.

Once we started testing, we were impressed with the C331dn’s performance and print quality. The print driver offers four settings: ProQ/High Quality, Fine/Detail, Normal, and Draft. Our speed testing was performed using the Normal setting, which is the default, while we set the driver to its highest quality when we tested for image quality.

Oki rates the C331dn at up to 23 pages per minute in color mode, which is exactly what we achieved in our testing. Oki didn’t recommend a particular paper for the best image quality, so we used HP Office paper as well as the Premium Inkjet & Laser paper from Hammermill. Printing our test images yielded spot-on color with both papers. The images, however, were noticeably brighter when printed on the more expensive Premium Inkjet & Laser paper.

While the Oki C331dn is priced about the same as other color lasers in its class, its operating costs are on the high side. Toner cartridges will print 3,000 pages (color) and 3,500 pages in black. High-capacity cartridges are not available for this model. With color cartridges costing about $146 and black about $98, the cost-per-page works out to an expensive 20 cents per color page printed.

Conclusion

The Oki C331dn is a workhorse of a printer. The printer itself is relatively inexpensive, but the cost of supplies is on the high side at about 20 cents a page.

But the output quality is really good, and the printer is fast. The C331dn also offers automatic duplexing and a large paper drawer. With the optional 530-sheet second paper drawer, you can load up to a ream-and-a-half of paper and print away, which makes the C331dn perfect for long print jobs or when you need lots of copies of a flyer or report.

By Ted Needleman, DigitalTrends

SPECIFICATIONS

Key Features

  • Features :

Release Information

  • Release Date :
  • Release Price : $349.00

Design

  • Width : 16.1″
  • Height : 19.8″
  • Depth : 9.5″
  • Weight : 48.5 lbs
  • Compatibility : Microsoft® Windows® 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista®, Windows XP Home/XP Professional, Windows Server 2008, Server 2008 R2, Server 2003; Mac® OS X 10.5 and higher
  • Memory : 128 mB
  • Type : Laser

Printer specifics

  • Technology : Laser
  • Output : Color
  • Black print speed : 25 ppm
  • Color print speed : 23 ppm
  • Color print quality : 1200 x 600 dpi
  • Print languages : PCL® 6, PCL 5c; PostScript® 3™; IBM® ProPrinter®, Epson® FX
  • Duplex printing : Yes
  • Max. duty cycle : 45,000

Paper Handling/Media

  • Input capacity : 350sheets
  • Max. input capacity : 880 sheets
  • Output capacity : 250 sheets
  • Media type : handles card stock, labels, envelopes (max. 10) and banners, plain paper
  • Media sizes supported : 4.1″ x 5.8″ to 8.5″ x 14″; 3″ x 5″ to 8.5″ x 52″ banners3, 5.8″ x 8.3″ to 8.5″ x 14″

Ports

  • USB ports : 1

Connectivity

  • Network ports : 10/100 Base-TX Ethernet
  • Wireless : None

Power

  • Requirements : 120v
  • Consumption : < .5W, 1.5W, 14W, 90W
original article

OKI MC362w

Our Verdict: This laser-class multifunction provides high-volume printing and loads of productivity features for workgroup use. Our main quibble: The value proposition gets watered down by its high cost per page. Read More…

Introduction

We assume that when a small office or workgroup spends $500 or $600 on a color laser-class multifunction workhorse (for printing, scanning, copying, and faxing) with a high recommended output rating, the point is, well, to use it. If you buy a machine that has a high duty cycle (that is, the number of pages the manufacturer says you can print each month without unduly stressing the machine), you intend to churn out thousands of prints and photocopies each month. Otherwise, why spend so much money on such a high-volume machine, right?

As we’ve pointed out many times in past reviews of high-volume laser printers, when considering high-volume models, such as the subject of this review, OKI’s $549-list MC362w, a laser-class multifunction model, the up-front purchase price should seldom be your first concern—especially if you plan on using it at or anywhere near its monthly duty cycle. As you’ll see in our Setup & Paper Handling section a little later in this review, a far more important consideration when buying a mid- or high-volume workhorse is the operating cost per page (CPP). Failure to mind this ongoing expense could cost you hundreds, even thousands, of dollars more than necessary over the life of the printer. No exaggeration.

Before we go on, though, perhaps you’ve noticed that we’ve referred to the MC362w as a “laser-class” printer, as opposed to simply a laser printer. That’s because this machine relies on LED technology, rather than the more conventional laser apparatus. The difference between these devices centers on the basic print technology. Instead of using a laser to charge the page image onto the print drum, LED-based machines use an array of light-emitting diodes to do that work. Printer makers substitute LEDs for lasers because they have fewer moving parts, are smaller and lighter, and cost less to manufacture. Otherwise, LED models operate much the same as laser printers do, including how they use toner.

Although an LED printer is technically not a laser printer, it looks and acts very much like one. Historically, small and home offices have chosen laser and laser-class printers over inkjet models because they print faster and cost less to use over time, despite their somewhat heftier up-front purchase price. Nowadays, though—due to the introduction of high-volume, low-cost-per-page inkjets—you typically have to buy a relatively pricey, high-volume color laser printer to see a speed or per-page-cost benefit. Many lower-volume, lower-cost color lasers no longer have the performance and CPP advantages over their inkjet counterparts. In fact, they sometimes cost more to use.

Furthermore, recent advances in inkjet technology, such as the fixed PageWide printhead in HP’s OfficeJet X line of high-volume printers, have placed even more pressure on entry-level and midrange laser-class machines like this OKI. (See, for example, our review of the HP OfficeJet Pro X576dw.)  And that’s especially true of the MC362w, which is a lower-end, lower-volume model of a pair of multifunction machines OKI debuted recently. The other, the $749-list MC562w, not only has a higher recommended monthly duty cycle (60,000 pages), but it also supports higher-yield toner cartridges than the MC362w does—which translates into a lower CPP.

And that’s our primary quibble with this laser-class machine: By today’s standards, it costs too much to use on an ongoing basis. Apart from that, though, it performed well on our benchmark tests, and, while, out of the box, it didn’t print photos as well as several laser-class devices we’ve tested, its overall print and copy quality was respectable. It comes with nearly every productivity and convenience option we can think of, and it feels very much like it’s built to last.

We like the OKI MC362dw for small offices and workgroups that require fast and dependable laser output, but at relatively low volumes. If you plan to print a lot, there are better values out there, including OKI’s own MC562w. (See a review of the OKI MC562w on our sister site, PCMag.com.)

Design & Features

Measuring 16.8 inches across, 20 inches from front to back, and 17.5 inches high—and weighing a whopping 63 pounds—the OKI MC362w is certainly no desktop printer. You’ll need to find a sturdy, dedicated perch to rest it on. The good news, though, is that in addition to standard Wi-Fi (which is often an extra-cost option on machines in this class), the MC362w also supports Ethernet, or you can hook it up to an individual PC via USB. The Wi-Fi is a big plus, because it gives you lots more flexibility in terms of where to put this printer, which is big enough to be office furniture.

You can also print from (and scan to) a USB flash-memory device via a USB port located on the right side of the chassis, just beneath the control panel, and the MC362w supports printing from mobile devices via Apple’s AirPrint or the Cortado cloud service. Unlike most recent wireless printers, though, we didn’t find direct support for Google’s Cloud Print or Wi-Fi Direct. In case you’re not familiar with the latter, Wi-Fi Direct is a protocol that allows mobile devices to connect to a printer without either device belonging to an intermediary network.

As for the control panel, this one, with all of its physical buttons and navigation keys, is a bit busy and archaic-looking, lacking in the style and high-tech appeal we see in the all-digital, touch-screen-centric control centers in certain competing models from HP and Brother. Overall, though, we found it logically laid out and easy to use. The graphical LCD is not in color, nor is it touch-enabled, and it provides little-to-no help in terms of displaying scans or images from USB keys. But it gets the job done  

Other features include a 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) that supports paper up to legal-size (8.5×14 inches). The ADF also supports auto-duplexing, which allows you to scan, copy, and fax two-sided multipage documents without having to manually turn the originals over. When you use the auto-duplexing ADF with the duplexing print engine, making two-sided copies of two-sided originals is a cinch. 

So far, most of the features we’ve talked about are available on most high-volume MFPs. What’s notas common, though, is this machine’s support for multiple printer languages, including HP’s PCL 5 and Adobe’s PostScript 3 emulation. In addition to being the two most common page-description languages (PDLs) used on most laser printers, they’re also used by most high-end typesetting machines and printing presses. What this means to you is that the MC362w’s output should be reliable for proofing documents destined for high-end print runs.

Setup & Paper Handling

The hardest part of setting up the OKI MC362w, by far, was wrestling it out of the box. After we plugged it in, illustrated directions on the LCD walked us through connecting to our network and preparing the toner cartridges. The installation CD found the printer immediately and installed the drivers and utilities, which included a fully licensed version of Nuance’s PaperPort document-management software, as well as OmniPage optical character recognition (OCR) software for converting scanned text to editable text. During our hands-on trials, OmniPage converted our scans nearly error-free, which we have come to expect from that exceptional OCR program.

Unlike its higher-volume sibling, the MC562w, the MC362w supports only one size of toner cartridge—OKI’s Type C17 cartridges. The black Type C17 cartridge yields (according to OKI) about 3,500 pages and sells for $97.60 on the company’s Web site. The three color Type C17 cartridges yield about 3,000 pages and sell for $146.30 each.

Using these numbers, we calculated the MC362w’s cost per page: Black-and-white pages run about 2.8 cents each, and color pages about 17.5 cents each. These numbers are quite high for a laser-class printer in this price range, especially the color-page figure. Unfortunately, as mentioned, OKI doesn’t offer a higher-yield cartridge set for this printer. Were you to purchase the higher-volume OKI MC562w, on the other hand, it supports higher-yield cartridges that deliver about 2.4 cents for monochrome pages and 12.3 cents for color.

Granted, these numbers are a little better, but they’re nowhere near the best in the business. Take, for example, HP’s OfficeJet Pro X576dw multifunction printer. Granted, this is one of HP’s PageWide business-oriented inkjets, not a laser or LED model, but it plays in the same sandbox as this OKI model and its big brother. When you use HP’s high-yield cartridges with this printer, black-and-white pages will run you about 1.3 cents each, and color about 6.1 cents each.

This is a huge difference, especially for color pages—a difference of more than 6 cents per page. Were you to use this OKI model at anywhere near its recommended monthly duty cycle, the per-page cost difference would be immense. Say, for example, you printed 30,000 pages a month. Those same 30,000 pages would cost you $1,860 less on HP’s OfficeJet X printer than on the MC362w. That’s a difference of over $22,000 a year!

Now, granted, most businesses print primarily black-and-white pages on their laser-class devices. If that’s the case, the price differences would not be nearly as dramatic, but, comparatively speaking, it would still cost you far too much to print on this laser-class printer. Furthermore, keep in mind that the above numbers reflect a comparison between OKI’s higher-volume MC562w and HP’s OfficeJet X576dw printer. The difference for printing 30,000 color pages on the MC362w would be even greater (about $3,420 per 30,000 pages). 

As for the paper handling, the OKI MC362w has two import sources: a 250-sheet drawer at the front of the chassis, and a 100-page override tray on the back. If that’s not enough paper capacity, you can add an optional 530-sheet drawer for an additional $199 list. Printed pages land on a 200-page output bed beneath the scanner.

In the course of our hands-on tests, the printer path, the ADF, and all of the auto-duplexing functions worked flawlessly. We experienced no paper jams or any other mishaps.

Performance

On our battery of performance benchmarks, the MC362w turned in average, or slightly below average, scores for an MFP printer in this price range. The exception was our photo-printing test, in which it came in slightly above average. However, we should also point out that, as discussed on the next page, to get the best results on several tests—mainly, with documents containing embedded photographs or intricately shaded graphics—we had to boost the quality settings, which sometimes slowed down print times quite a bit. In short, unlike some competing models, this OKI didn’t always deliver acceptable results at its default quality settings, to our eyes.

In any case, to assess how well this MFP held up to comparably priced high-volume printers, we pitted it against three other machines. The first, HP’s $799-list OfficeJet Pro X576dw Multifunction Printer, isn’t a laser-class device at all, as we noted earlier. Instead, it’s an inkjet MFP based on HP’s relatively new PageWide stationary-printhead technology. We also included Samsung’s $699-list laser MFP, the CLX-6260FW Color Multifunction Printer$699.00 at TheNerds.net. And to round out the comparison, we also included a single-function laser printer, Dell’s $649-list C3760dn Color Laser Printer$569.99 at Dell.

As our charts below depict, considering that our OKI test unit sells for about $100 to $200 less than these competing models, it held its own, overall, in our tests.

Business Printing: Adobe Acrobat Test

This test times how long a printer takes to print a four-page landscape-orientation Adobe Acrobat document containing text and photos. Here, our OKI test unit came in behind the other three models in this group. It was more than twice as slow as HP’s high-volume PageWide inkjet.

Business Printing: Microsoft Office Suite Test

In this trial, we time how quickly the printer churns out a series of Microsoft Office suite documents. The timed score is a sum of the results from five different test documents: a one-page Excel table with a grid in it; a one-page Excel graph; a three-page Excel document containing charts and graphs; a four-page PowerPoint document (containing full-page slides); and a two-page Word text document. 

Business Printing: Effective Pages Per Minute Test

This test measures pages per minute (ppm) with typical business documents. It is a cumulative rate of printing we derive from our Microsoft Office and Acrobat tests. We determine it by combining the times from each test and doing some additional math.

Here, our OKI test unit fell significantly behind both the HP and Dell machines on this important test, with the OfficeJet Pro X576dw almost doubling the ppm.

Photo Printing (4×6) Test

In our Photo Printing Test, we time how long the printer takes to churn out a sample 4×6-inch snapshot. These results are an average based on several runs of the print job. 

Here, our OKI test unit turned in the best score, but the quality of the photo paled significantly next to that of the HP inkjet model in this group. In fact, as you’ll see on the next page (the Printed Output & Conclusion section), except when printing text, the laser-class MC362w’s output quality was, compared to the OfficeJet Pro X576dw, somewhat inferior across the board.

original article