Oki MB470 review

There's usually an element of compromise involved in selecting a multifunction laser printer, but Oki's latest MB470 workgroup MFP aims to deliver on all counts. It ticks the box for value and combines this with print, scan, fax and colour copy functions, 28ppm print and copy speeds, a true 1,200dpi resolution and an integral duplex unit.

The MB470 comes as standard with a 250-sheet lower tray plus 50-sheet MPT and ADF. Paper capacity can be increased with an extra 530-sheet lower tray and the 64MB of resident memory can be pushed up to 320MB, although Oki cheekily charges £135 for a 256MB stick.

A comprehensive control panel and backlit display provides access to all key features. For fax ops you get a standard 33.6Kbits/sec fax modem and a good choice of port options.

Driver installation is swift, although the TWAIN driver can only be used for directly retrieving or pushing a scanned image to a PC with a local USB connection. Oki's software package includes PrintSupervision web server for remotely viewing and managing all networked printers. The Print Control Server and Client are used to track and control printer usage, while for general scanning activities you get the PaperPort 11 SE and OmniPage SE4 utilities.

For network scanning you can direct the image to an email or locally attached PC and opt for PDF, TIFF or JPEG output. Profiles store details on network PCs, and email address books and fax phone books can be created directly from the bundled MFP Setup tool.

The MB470 dashed through our 28-page Word document in precisely one minute at both 600dpi and 1,200dpi resolutions. Our heavy duty 24-page DTP test document printed at 1,200dpi in 50 seconds. Copy speeds were a tad slower, with a 28-page copy delivered at 19.5ppm.

Text is clean and sharp but photographs and graphics suffer from cross-hatching. We could see no appreciable difference between 600dpi and 1,200dpi prints and despite fiddling with the driver controls, we found photos were also too light and lacking in definition. The scanner fared better, producing good levels of detail although, again, the cross hatching effect was noticeable.

Printing costs could also be better with the imaging drum and high capacity toner cartridge returning a page for 1.5p. The drum has a comparatively high price tag and low mileage. To achieve the printer's maximum monthly duty cycle of 70,000 pages you'd need three of them.

Workgroups with print speeds, features and value high on their agenda will find the MB470 a worthy candidate. If you can cope with the average print quality this Oki will make a good general printer for a small office.

Author: Dave Mitchell