Mac Creative > Reviews > A3+ colour laser printers > OKI C9650N [Mac]

OKI C9650N [Mac]

OKI C9650N [Mac]
  • Manufacturer: OKI (http://www.oki.co.uk)
  • Pros: Handles media up to 300gsm, banner printing, pretty respectable colour print speed
  • Cons: Utilities are Carbon apps for PowerPC, and are a little processor-hungry in operation
  • Price: £2,100
  • Star rating: 4

Like the rest of the printers in our group test, the OKI C9650N is marketed as a one-stop solution for in-house printing of both business documents and artwork. To that end, OKI has gone to a great deal of trouble to ensure that it meets the needs of its intended market. We looked at the entry-level base unit – to which can be added a variety of paper trays and finishing units – so we couldn’t examine the auto-duplexing capability of the unit, as it is optional at this level.

The print engine – the physical mechanism inside any printer – is one factor that distinguishes one product from another. In common with other OKI printers, the C9650N uses LED rather than laser technology.

The proponents of LED printing point out that LED printheads have fewer moving parts and are therefore more efficient in operation: this is the reasoning behind the company’s claimed performance figure of 36 pages per minute in colour for the 9650N. In practice, the time taken to print 50 A4 copies of our Word document was, on average, 1 minute 45 seconds, giving a ‘real-world’ result of around 29 pages per minute: still pretty respectable.

The trump card with the C9650N, however, is its capacity for different weights of media: the side-mounted multi-purpose tray is capable of handling paper up to 300gsm, the biggest of any printer in this test. Like others (the Magicolor 8650DN, for example), the OKI can also handle banners up to 1.2 metres long.

If LED printers can be claimed to be speedier, the trade-off is that, due to physical limitations – you can only cram a finite number of LEDs into a printhead array – definition tends to suffer in fine print. The C95650N bore this out on examination of our standard print resolution test, with a general lack of sharpness in small print, together with a slight flattening out of the curves of the letter ‘S’. To be sure, for most purposes this would be barely noticeable, but if you’re regularly producing documents in which fine-print quality is critical, this should be borne in mind.

This product is part of our A3+ colour laser printers group product review. Other products in this group are:

 

Canon LBP5960

  • Star rating: 3

 

HP LaserJet 5550DN

  • Star rating: 3

 

Konica Minolta 8650DN

  • Editors ChoiceStar rating: 5

 

Lexmark C935DN

  • Star rating: 3

 

Xerox Phaser 7400 [Mac]

  • Star rating: 4

<<back to A3+ colour laser printers review

Win a pair of BEATS SOLO HD headphones