Oki C5750n review

Oki's C5750n colour laser is aimed at businesses that need a printer to handle both demanding image-printing tasks and high-speed mono print runs.

It has parallel, USB and Ethernet ports, and maintenance and configuration tools are available through a two-line LCD screen. There's also a web interface for remote administration.

The C5750n was easy to set up. Toner cartridges were shipped inside the printer and just had to be removed from their protective packaging before being slotted back into place. The installation program failed to auto-detect the printer on our network, but the C5750n can display its own IP address, which we entered directly into the installer.

Both PCL and PostScript drivers are included, as well as colour profile tools and Oki's Template Manager for printing on non-standard media. A multipurpose tray for special media can handle paper and card stock up to 203gsm as well as transparency sheets, labels and envelopes without creasing or curling. It can alternatively take up to 100 sheets of 80gsm A4. The main paper tray holds 300 sheets of A4.

The C5750 defaults to its 1,200x600dpi Fine resolution, but we chose the 600x600dpi Normal setting in the PCL driver for testing. Mono text quality was phenomenal, with sharp reproductions of even tiny characters. Print speeds were fairly quick, although our mono test result of 22.7ppm was a long way from Oki's quoted 32ppm; draft mode was no faster. Text documents at Fine quality printed at 20.3ppm.

The results of our colour print tests were less consistent. All prints had a glossy finish, which gave a professional touch to graphics and business documents. However, the PCL driver gave images a marked purple tint, particularly visible on photos.

The highest ProQ2400 quality setting is intended to create glossy prints with less graininess and more accurate greyscale. This should be ideal for photos, but only made our prints look more purple. A Photo Enhancement option eliminated the tint, but at the cost of overall image quality. Colour profile options didn't correct this and slowed print speeds to a crawl.

The PostScript driver didn't suffer from this problem but printing took almost twice as long, with two Fine-quality 10x8in photo images printing in 55 seconds, compared to 28 seconds using PCL. Using the PCL driver, colour prints emerged at a respectable 15.2ppm, but fell short of the quoted 22ppm.

The C5750's running costs can soon mount up. Colour cartridges last for just 2,000 pages each, which isn't enough for a workgroup printer, and a set of three costs £135 inc VAT. The four image drums must be changed every 20,000 pages at a total cost of £120. Meanwhile, the fuser unit and transfer belt both last 60,000 pages and cost around £50 each. The starter cartridges contain enough toner for 2,250 pages, but 750 pages of that is used to charge the image drums.

All colour laser printers are expensive to run, but at £4,039 for three years of heavy use (72,000 mono and 36,000 colour pages), the C5750n costs over £1,200 more than the least economical printer in our colour laser group test in Shopper 240. Costs for medium and light use were also very high.

The C5750n's fast, economical mono text prints looked great, but although colour prints were glossy, they suffered from painfully slow PostScript speeds and poor PCL colour balance. This, along with high running costs, makes the C5750 a poor choice. A high-quality mono laser would cost less to buy, while less expensive colour workgroup printers such as Brother's HL-4050CDN can produce more accurate colour at only slightly slower speeds.