Product Reviews

Most colour lasers in the £1,000 price range offer colour print speeds of around 4ppm - HP's Laserjet 2500n and the magicolor 2300 DeskLaser from Minolta-QMS are cases in point. However, Oki's C5300n delivers three times the speed at 12ppm and yet comes in at well under a grand.

It achieves this high speed by having separate processes for each colour, with the four toner cartridges laid out in-line down the paper path, each with its own photo-conductive drum. Above each unit in the printer's lid are four LED arrays, one for each colour. Data can be sent to all four heads simultaneously so images are laid down in a single pass. However, this technology isn't new, as it was first introduced in Lexmark's OptraColor 1200 in 2000.

The C5300n delivers a good specification for the price, as along with a speedy processor and a good helping of memory you get an integral Ethernet print server and support for Windows, NetWare and Macintosh networks. The 400-sheet paper capacity is spread across a 100-sheet multipurpose tray and a 300-sheet base tray. Using the multipurpose tray and the rear output slot creates a virtually flat paper path so the C5300n can deal with heavy 203g/m2 stationery and media up to 1.2m in length.

Installation

The C5300n had no difficulties achieving the quoted print speeds, churning out a 24-page basic text document in 73 seconds for a tidy 20ppm average. Our heavily formatted 24-page DTP-style document with lashings of colour charts, graphics and photos also posed no problem and was delivered in just under two minutes. Overall quality was impressive, although we were hard-pushed to spot any significant differences between 600 x 600dpi and the enhanced 600 x 1,200dpi resolutions. Even so, text was pin sharp at all font sizes. Stepping across colour fades was non-existent but, while colours were particularly rich and vivid, the level of saturation may not be to everyone's taste. Furthermore, this led to a slight loss of detail in darker areas of photographic images, which may require some fiddling with the driver settings to rectify.

Compared with the budget-priced magicolor 2300W (see p66), the C5300n delivers better output quality and a superior specification. It's also the fastest printer around at this price point, so if you feel the need for speed with your office colour printing, the C5300n is a natural choice.