Expert Verdict
With companies like Brother and Dell ruling the LED printer market, it is good to look at one of the latest offerings from the pioneer of the technology, OKI. The OKI C310dn printer is a mid-range device that is specially designed for small offices or workgroups.
The drum and the OKI C301DN Toner Cartridges fit just right where one is behind the other from the front to back in the printer. The high-intensity LED strips fit perfectly between the OKI C301DN Toner Cartridges without any bulk of the laser system. The control panel of the printer is very easy with just five buttons, including a four-way selection ring. There are two indicators on the panel, one is labelled Ready whereas the other is labelled Attention. Moreover, there is a 2-line by 16-characters backlit LCD screen. The backlight is light blue. Though it looks quite funky, it helps to reduce the contrast between the backlight and black characters.
The main paper tray at the bottom of the front panel can take up to 250-sheets and a multipurpose tray, which folds down from above this, has the capacity to hold up to extra 100 sheets. There is also an optional 250-sheet tray available. At the back of the printer, there are sockets for USB and 10/100 Ethernet. The drum unit and its four OKI C301DN Toner Cartridges are provided in situ and you only have to pull up the lid, strip its packaging tapes and slide the blue plastic shutters on the OKI C301DN Toner Cartridges across for them to feed toner into the printer. The setup couldn’t be much simpler.
For the C310dn, OKI claims a speed rate of 24ppm for black print and 22ppm for colour. The five-page text document took 20 seconds to complete and with toner save mode engaged, it took exceptionally longer than 18 seconds, around 21. This implies it produces a speed of 15ppm, which is considerably less than the claimed speed. Coloured graphics are produced a little lower than the text, with the 5-page document taking around 25 seconds. Also, a 15 X 10 cm photo on an A4 sheet took 14 seconds, which is very respectable.
If we talk about the print quality, it is more adequate for black text documents. Also, the toner save mode for the OKI C301DN Toner Cartridges, did not make any difference to the print quality. Since it also took the same time, around one second to print, there seemed to be almost no reason for not setting it as the default. The graphics are bright and very suitable for a business printer and registration of black text over colour backgrounds is good, with no signs of any white bandings around characters. However, there is a disadvantage when you print photographic content, there is vividness in graphs and charts.
The four OKI C301DN Toner Cartridges last for 3,500 ISO pages when printing black and 2,000 when printing colour. Besides this, there’s a 20,000-page drum, a fuser and a transfer belt, each of which lasts for about 60,000 pages. Even using the cheapest source of cartridges, the C310dn should cost you around 2.7p for a black page and 12.5p for a colour one, including 0.7p for paper in both cases. Neither of these expenses is excessive for the kind of use this machine is likely to get and it certainly is less expensive than equivalent colour laser printers.
In all, the OKI C301DN is a serviceable printer, though not as quick as some machines with similar speed ratings, the print quality on text and graphics is good and costs are comparatively good to its rivals. If you are looking for a machine for a busy small business or workgroup, this device is to keep in mind.