Oki Printing Solutions C3400n

The Oki Printing Solutions C3400n is a new low-end model in Oki's family of networked color laser printers. It carries the same $400 price tag (as of 10/6/2006) as the C3200n we reviewed in April 2006, but it's smaller and faster. It sports a new design that's better suited to a small office than Oki's former corporate style, looking more like a stackable plastic storage box than a printer.

The C3400n falls short of the C3200n's good paper handling. Its main paper tray holds 250 sheets instead of 300, while it has a single-sheet slot in place of the C3200n's 100-sheet manual tray. Though the C3400n retains the 250-sheet output bin (which gives a straighter path for thicker media), its rear-output capacity is down to 10 sheets from 100.

If you print many envelopes, you'd be better off with the new C3200n, which lets you feed more than one envelope at a time. Oki offers no optional paper trays for either printer, and the C3400n lacks the option of a duplexer.

The C3400n also trades the C3200n's neat backlit LCD for a simple control panel with two buttons and three lights, so most of the time you'll likely operate the printer from your PC.

The C3400n applies toner to the page using four LED arrays, a trait common to all Oki color printers. Like the C3200n, the $800 C5800Ldn we also reviewed in April 2006, and the $600 C5200n we reviewed in December 2005, the C3400n relies on a Windows GDI-based driver. By rendering the pages on your PC, Oki can build a cheaper printer by avoiding the need to pay licensing fees for printer languages such as PCL and PostScript. The good news is that this doesn't hurt the C3400n's performance, which is an improvement over the C3200n. In our tests, the C3400n printed text at a roughly average 15.0 pages per minute and excelled at color graphics, printing them at 5.3 ppm at default settings on plain paper; it printed at 2.5 ppm on glossy paper at best quality settings.

This model also offers improved text quality over the C3400n. Text output looked a little gray in our tests, and we noticed some jagged diagonals in large lettering, but most characters were sharp and nicely formed. Our line-art sample exhibited some minor horizontal banding in blocks of close parallel lines, but otherwise lines appeared sharp and distinct. Grayscale images achieved some good shadow detail, but looked a bit grainy with some narrow horizontal banding. On plain paper, the printer's rich, waxy inks give a glossy photographic appearance, but the images appeared grainy and oversaturated. When we printed at higher quality settings on Oki's Premium White Gloss paper, we still saw banding patterns, unnatural colors, and some posterization (lack of smooth gradient) in the darkest areas.

For maintenance, the top of the printer lifts to give easy access to the toner cartridges. Oki includes four cartridges, each rated for 1000 pages. You can buy replacement cartidges with a slightly higher yield than the C3200n's, making the newer model more economical to run. Black cartridges rated at 2500 pages cost $60, while the three 2000-page color cartridges cost $87 each. Adding to the operating costs, you must replace the four drum units every 15,000 pages; the black drum costs $40 and the color drums cost $48 apiece. Every 50,000 pages you need to replace the fuser unit ($252) and transfer belt ($318), but Oki supplies these free during the standard one-year warranty. Outside of the warranty period, you're looking at unusually high per-page costs of 3.8 cents for text and 17.8 cents for color. If you expect to print high volumes, it would be worth buying an extended warranty beyond the standard one-year warranty to reduce the recurring costs.

Dell Color Laser Printer 1320c

Dell's Color Laser Printer 1320c offers surprisingly good color quality for a low acquisition price. Its toner is expensive, however, and its control panel is confusing.Setting up the printer is very easy. The documentation (a printed setup poster and owner's manual, plus an HTML-based user guide) is thorough. The included CD offers an automated setup process, and live-action videos illustrate all the steps. Inserting the PHD (Print Head Device) unit is the one tricky part, as it's heavy and the handles are small. You also have to heft this thing over the transfer belt, which lies belly-up within the opened front cover. Though many color lasers have a similar design, they don't require you to maneuver something so heavy within this space. Dell says the transfer belt can handle a scratch or two and that you'll rarely, if ever, have to move the PHD unit. The unusual toner-cartridge design is the other reason why Dell thinks you shouldn't worry too much about the transfer belt's welfare. Many printers force you to expose their innards to replace toner; with the Color Laser Printer 1320c, you simply open a side door and slide a cartridge into its keyed slot. The downside: The toner cartridges are rated for merely 1000 pages in the standard size or 2000 pages in the high-capacity size (per Dell's specs). Those small capacities translate into higher costs for both black and color pages--at best, 3 cents for a half-page of black text and 15 cents for a page with small amounts of black plus all three colors. Low-volume users may not notice for a while, but a busier office will feel the pinch pretty quickly. The front control panel is minimalist to a fault. It consists of two clearly labeled buttons and seven LEDs, most placed in specific locations in and around a line drawing of the printer. The LEDs change color or blink to communicate the status of the printer or its various parts. The dozens of possible LED combinations take up several pages' worth of explanation in the user guide--many would be indecipherable otherwise. The best way for a printer to communicate is in human language, with words running across a display; I'm sure it's pricier to design, but it's easier for the user. To Dell's credit, the other user resources, such as the status monitor and some maintenance and diagnostic tools, are nicely designed. The driver offers a wealth of features in an accessible format.Inkjets still tend to handle color better than lasers do, but the Color Laser Printer 1320c strikes an impressive balance. It plodded through plain-text documents at a mere 12.4 pages per minute; all fonts looked slightly thick but otherwise precise. High-resolution photos printed quickly--3.1 ppm on average--and looked surprisingly smooth; colors seemed a tad bluish but essentially natural. The Color Laser Printer 1320c is best suited for a small or low-volume office. Because its paper capacity is limited (just one main input tray and a single-sheet multipurpose slot) and its toner is pricey, a larger or growing office should consider its cousin, the Color Laser Printer 3110cn, which is expandable and has higher cartridge and paper capacity.