Review Alone among the printers in this group test, the OKI machine uses strips of high-intensity LEDs to illuminate its photoconductor drums, rather than laser beams. This makes for a simpler design, though in this case the machine is deeper from front to back than most.

The controls are very simple, with just two buttons for on/offline and job cancel, and three indicators for status.

Lift the printer’s lid and you can see the LED strips and the cartridges. There’s also a fuser unit and a transfer belt, all of which are consumables and have different page yields.

The printer has both USB and Ethernet connections, and drivers for Windows, from 2000 upwards, and Mac OS X. There’s no mention of Linux support.

OKI claims speeds of 20ppm for black and 16ppm for colour, but we saw 15.6ppm and 8.6ppm, respectively. These are not at all bad and the quality of the resultant prints is generally good. Black text, as with all the printers here, is crisp and dense, and colours are vibrant and ideal for business documents. They’re not great for photos, though, producing over-bright colours and dark tones which tend to black.

Combining all the consumables together – toner, drums, fuser, transfer belt – gives costs of 3.1p for black pages and 16.2p for colour. These are at the lower end for black print and about average for colour, so overall, this is a reasonable printer, with a simple print mechanism, but not showing outstanding value or extra versatility. ®

Next: Xerox Phaser 6125