Product Reviews

With the share of the mono laser market still heavily portioned in HP's favour, there's a long list of contenders vying for a piece of the pie. The Oki B6100dn is aimed at medium to large workgroups and promises speed, quality and affordability. There's nothing new there, but does it deliver?

The Oki certainly delivers in key areas. Connecting the printer via either USB or parallel interfaces is painless, and adding it to a TCP/IP network is barely more complex. The network utilities' setup process demanded the installation of IIS (Internet Information Services) under Windows XP, but this was the only complication. The built-in web server, meanwhile, makes the B6100dn a cinch to remotely manage from a web browser, complete with a representation of the printer's two-line LCD panel. The front panel comprises eight membrane buttons, granting access to all the important functions via a menu system.

Once set up, speed didn't prove a problem either, with the printer slightly exceeding the quoted 25ppm on our 50-page plain-text test at 600dpi. This settled to 25ppm on a more complex 24-page document with graphics, and our brutal 20-page PDF test totalling over 40MB of data ground this down to 11.5ppm at 1,200dpi. First pages emerged 12 seconds after sending on average. These figures may be way

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behind the 45ppm achieved by the A-listed HP Laserjet 4300dtn (see issue 100, p122), but it's difficult to complain at half the price.

One of the B6100dn's biggest competitors in this price range, however, is HP's Laserjet 2300dtn (see issue 105, p80), which has similar output speeds. The Oki easily gives it a run for its money on text quality, with output being excellent on both speed and text. Closer examination of our Excel spreadsheet test, however, revealed poor contrast on shaded tables, which made some figures less legible.

This also shows up on graphics printing, with the comparative darkness meaning that detail and clarity suffers slightly. Graduations are handled impressively, though, and there's little or no banding - something that can't even be said of the £1,314 4300dtn.

And it's cost that lets the Oki pull out in front. Not only is the B6100dn £120 cheaper than the 2300dtn, but the 0.8p per page running costs are much lower than the HP's 1.27p per page, putting it in the efficiency range of larger workgroup printers. With the toner barrel quoted at 15,000 pages at 5 per cent coverage, and a duty cycle of 150,000 pages, it also trumps the 2300dtn's 6,000 and 50,000 respective pages.

Options for the B6000 series are in no short supply either - both duplex and network capabilities are standard in the 6100dn unit, but are also available as add-ons for lower models. There's even a range of paper supply trays, an offset catch tray for bundling separate print jobs and a serial interface card option.

With excellent build quality and easy consumable maintenance, the B6100dn is worthy of consideration depending on your priorities. If speed is important, the 4300dtn is still the way to go, and those looking for good graphics handling are advised to stick to the 2300dtn. But for cheap text-based output and flexibility, the B6100 is hard to fault.