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Oki B411dn review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £217.01
inc VAT

The B411dn is swift and its print quality is above average. Running costs are also above average though.

Specifications

Mono LED, 33ppm print speed, Parallel, USB, 10/100 Ethernet, 245x387x364mm

http://www.printerland.co.uk

Oki’s B411dn is a network printer with automatic duplexing and – unusually – a parallel port. It prints at a reasonably swift speed of 33 pages per minute (ppm). Like other Oki printers it uses LEDs to create the page image, rather than a laser and mirror, which Oki claims is more robust. Although the B411dn’s specification isn’t remarkable at this price, its 60,000-page maximum monthly duty cycle inspires confidence, and it comes with a three-year onsite warranty.

We’ve seen several cheaper mono lasers with 10- or 50-sheet multipurpose feeds, but the Oki makes do with a single-sheet manual feed. The standard paper tray holds up to 250 sheets of A4, but for £125 you can fit a second 530-sheet cassette for a 780-sheet capacity.

Like most duplex printers, the B411dn sucks printed pages back in and flips them over in order to print the second side. However, during our tests a finished page was pulled back into the printer along with the half-printed one, causing a paper jam that was comparatively hard to clear.

Oki B411dn

Unusually, this printer has no envelope media setting, although it automatically selects ‘heavy’ if you choose an envelope media size. At the rear of the printer there’s an unusually sophisticated fold-out tray that holds the output from the straight paper path, but even using this we couldn’t print envelopes without their trailing edge being crumpled.

At this price we’d expect a laser-class printer to have reasonable running costs, but at 2.3p per print the B411dn is far from cheap. Its drum lasts 25,000 pages and the supplied toner is good for a fair 2,000 prints, but 3,000-page replacement toners cost around £60. Buying the printer and enough toner for 21,000 prints would cost around £660 – more than several competitors.

Oki B411dn display

Fortunately, the B411dn’s print quality is reasonably good. Its toner doesn’t seem as dark on the page as many rivals, but the printer generally places it with accuracy. The result is crisp text with sharp outlines, and plenty of shading detail in photos. The same is true in illustrations and other graphics, but the dither patterns used seem more regular, and hence more noticeable than most. Graphics have a speckled appearance if you look at them closely.

Given its media handling problems and the relatively high price and running costs, the B411dn can’t compete with the cheaper Canon LBP6300dn.

Basic Specifications

Rating ***
Maximum native print resolution 2,400x600dpi
Maximum enhanced print resolution 2,400x600dpi

Quoted Speeds

Quoted speed, mono A4 33ppm
Quoted warm-up time 20s
Quoted time to first page, mono 5s

Tested Speeds

Mono page from sleep time 1.0 27s
Letter, time to first page 1.0 15s
25-page mono document – total time 00:00:57
Time for 24 pages mixed greyscale 1.0 1m 2s
Time for two greyscale 10x8in photos 1.1 17s
Time for six greyscale 6x4in photos 1.0 22s

Physical and Environmental

Standard printer interfaces Parallel, USB, 10/100 Ethernet
Optional printer interfaces none
Size 245x387x364mm
Weight 12.0kg
Noise (in normal use) 54dB(A)
Duty cycle 60,000 pages

Paper Handling

Maximum paper size A4/legal
Maximum paper weight 163gsm
Standard paper inputs 2
Standard paper input capacity 251
Maximum paper inputs 3
Maximum paper input capacity 781
Output tray capacity 150 sheets
Duplex (code, cost if option) Yes

General

Printer technology Mono LED
Language(s) PCL 5e, PCL 6, Epson FX, IBM ProPrinter
Supported operating systems Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7, Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later
Standard printer memory 64MB
Maximum printer memory 320MB
Other laser features and options none

Buying Information

Price £217
Price of 2nd paper cassette £125
Capacity of supplied black toner 2,000 pages
Capacity of supplied drum(s) 25,000 pages
Estimated mono TCO – three years light £305.55
Estimated mono TCO – three years medium £665.49
Estimated mono TCO – three years heavy £2541.95
Warranty three years onsite
Supplier http://www.printerland.co.uk
Details www.oki.co.uk

Tested Print Speeds

Time for two greyscale 10x8in photos 1.1 17s
Time for six greyscale 6x4in photos 1.0 22s