Oki C7200n

Oki was last featured in our laser printer group test (see Labs, issue 70, p126), where its mono LED-based printer, the OkiPage 24dx, was criticised for poor print quality. Much of the blame for this was laid at the feet of the LED printing technology, which despite being capable of above-average speed was often prone to noticeable horizontal and vertical streaking. Since then, Oki has worked on improving the technology and also developing single-pass technology, culminating in the C7000 series of colour laser printers. This model is the mid-range network-ready unit, aimed firmly at the workgroup printer market. With claimed speeds of 20ppm in mono and an incredible 12ppm in colour, Oki is looking to bring fast colour printing direct to the heart of businesses.

The C7200n is a surprisingly compact printer, despite its 620mm depth, which is mainly due to the single-pass printing mechanism. Unlike most colour laser printers, where the paper is passed through four independent drums one-at-a-time, the C7200n has all four drums in-line, which allows each colour to be placed on the paper in a single pass, thereby essentially quadrupling print speeds. Also helping to elevate print speeds is the impressive 400MHz PowerPC processor, supported by 64Mb of RAM. This core specification is impressive enough, although if more memory is needed the C7200n can accept a staggering 1,024Mb in total, although a more reasonable 64Mb upgrade costs £129.

To help keep consumable costs down, the C7200n has separate print drums and toner cartridges for each colour. Accessing each cartridge is a simple matter of flipping open the top of the chassis, and you can also remove all the print cartridges and drums simultaneously to gain access to the lower compartment in the event of paper jams.

The main A4 paper tray accepts a useful 530-sheets of A4 paper and an extra two 530-sheet trays can be added for £269 each. Unfortunately, a duplex unit isn't included as standard on this model, although it can be added for £249 if required. Overall running costs are also good, with a 10,000-page black toner cartridge costing £46 and each 10,000-page standard colour cartridge costing £109, giving an excellent 5.33p per colour page and 0.86p per mono page. Each cartridge also has a separate drum unit, which cost £120 each and are good for 30,000 continuous A4 prints.

I began testing with our 50-page plain-text document, which was completed in two minutes, 30 seconds at an impressive 19.6ppm. Print quality was excellent, with only a very slight furring at the edges of characters. Printing using the included Adobe PostScript 3 driver produced an almost identical time, whilst also offering slightly better quality output than PCL5C.

To test Oki's claims of 12ppm in full colour we used a heavily formatted, 24-page DTP document containing several graphic images and photos. While not quite achieving the quoted maximum 12ppm print speed, the C7200n still managed an impressive 8.5ppm - in both PCL5C and PS3 - at its maximum 600 x 1,200dpi resolution. Better still, quality was exceptional, the images appearing with solid tones and superb detail. However, there was a slight issue with colour matching, where mono images printed with a slight reddish hue. This could be corrected by adjusting the colour balance manually from the printer's front panel but realistically you should not be required to do this. In terms of overall quality, though, the C7200n outclasses even our current A-Listed colour laser printer, the HP LaserJet 4500N, demonstrating the advances that Oki has made with LED printing.