Oki B440dn review

Unlike our top award winner this month, the Oki B440dn has every feature we'd expect of a fully-fledged business printer. It boasts double-sided printing from its automatic duplexer, a network module with embedded HTTP server for setup and administration, and plenty of capacity for high-volume work.

The maximum duty cycle is a decent 70,000 and paper capacity is good too. At a total of 580 pages, it's a fraction down on the best here - but not by much. And there's a host of network tools provided with the printer to make your life easier.

Running costs are very low, with plenty of flexibility built into the price structure of consumables. Rather than simply two options - standard and high-yield cartridges with 3,500 and 7,000 page capacities respectively - the B440dn also offers an extra high-yield cartridge that will print 10,000 pages. If you use these consistently then the Oki works out as the joint-second cheapest printer to run in this group, costing only £642 after 30,000 pages.

But the most notable aspect of the B440dn is that it combines the ability to produce its super-cheap prints with top-quality output. Every aspect of our quality tests was produced with ease. Photographs were balanced and detailed, and gradients were smooth and dither-free. More importantly, there was no evidence of banding anywhere in this output, and text was also impeccably produced with remarkably crisp, clean edges and very little toner "spatter".

The only thing that lets this printer down is its rated speed of just 28ppm, especially when rivals here go up to 38ppm. But at least it's consistent with it. The B440dn pumped out plain text at a measured rate of 27ppm, and this fell by only 2ppm when printing our demanding 12-page spreadsheet.

Still, the relative lack of speed isn't enough to dent our enthusiasm for the B440dn. It's well-equipped, reasonably priced, cheap to run and produces outstanding quality. A worthy alternative to the Kyocera, if output quality is your priority.

Author: Jonathan Bray