“Workhorse” is one of the most common terms used for laser printers. The reason for this is fairly obvious – that most people only consider buying a laser printer if volume printing is a requirement for them. If that is your criteria as well, then you’ll find it difficult to do better than Oki C331DN colour printer. The Oki C331DN is, indeed, a workhorse of its class.
While intended for home use, it has proven to be more than suitable for small to medium workgroups and offices. This is evidenced by its speed and paper capacity. Technically, though, the Oki C331DN isn’t a laser printer. It is instead an LED printer. This means that it uses LEDs to write the image onto the photoconductor drum as opposed to laser. Use of LEDs makes the printer slightly more energy efficient and environment friendly.
The key thing about the Oki C331DN colour printer is that it is one of the most balanced printers you’ll ever come across, irrespective of their class. The blend of good speed, excellent paper handling, and decent output quality is what makes the Oki C331DN attractive to so many users. Let’s find out a little more with the following review.
Strengths of Oki C331DN
There are two things that set the Oki C331DN colour printer apart from its primary competitors – paper handling and speed. The paper capacity of this printer is far ahead of other printers available in the segment. For instance, in the standard configuration of this printer, you’ll find total paper capacity of 350 sheets split between a 100 sheet multipurpose tray and a 250 sheet paper drawer.
The multipurpose tray makes it possible for you to use specialised stock in this printer such as heavy papers. The 100 sheet capacity is the maximum and it may vary on the basis of how thick the sheets are. However, if you think this isn’t enough for you, you’ll get the option to include a 530 sheet add-on tray. With the optional tray added, the printer’s total paper capacity will go up to 880 sheets.
The speed of the Oki C331DN colour printer is also significant as it can process 25 pages per minute (ppm) of monochrome documents and 23 ppm of colour documents. The combination of high paper capacity and quick speeds allows for high volume printing which is why most owners use this printer for business purposes.
Another feature that makes this printer very useful in the office setup is automatic duplexing. Automatic duplexing makes double sided printing very easy particularly if you consider the fact that this printer possesses good duplexing speed too.
Weaknesses of Oki C331DN
As far as weaknesses of the Oki C331DN colour printer go, there aren’t many surprises. The most obvious weakness is one that is common amongst all laser or LED printers. This is the fact that while text and graphics printing quality is satisfactory, photo printing quality is less so. If you print photos with the Oki C331DN, you shouldn’t expect the result to be anything better than newspaper images.
As for the print quality of text and graphics, you shouldn’t have trouble because the output quality is good for everything except for high end marketing material. Technically speaking, the printer’s rated maximum resolution is 1200 x 600 dots per inch (dpi).
Another flaw of the Oki C331DN colour printer that may affect your verdict is that it doesn’t offer Wi-Fi direct facility. Instead, this printer only offers USB and Ethernet options. This may result in mobile printing getting affected but the negative effect is only slight because mobile prints can still be routed through the internet.
There is another limitation of the Oki C331DN printer that you should be mindful of. This is the fact that this printer, despite looking compact can become cumbersome. It looks compact because its length and width are less than standard. However, it is cumbersome because its depth is much higher than its competitors. Consequently, you may have trouble putting it on your desk, if it is not large enough.
Key Features of Oki C331DN
If space is not very big problem for you and you still want to buy the Oki C331DN LED colour printer, then you most probably want to be sure of the same. Knowing the dimensions of this printer will no doubt be helpful in this regard. The Oki C331DN colour printer spans 241mm x 409mm x 503mm. The weight of this nifty looking printer will surprise you though as it weighs a hefty 22 kg.
Once you’ve found the right place for your new printer, setting it up will not be a problem at all. The set up process is quick and short with regular prompts from the printer. After it has been set up, you don’t have to regulate your usage either because the monthly duty cycle of this printer is enough for SMEs. The rated monthly duty cycle of the Oki C331DN is 45,000 pages.
However, depending on where you buy your toner cartridges from, you may have to pay close attention to your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). If you check other reviews online, you’ll find that most of them say that the “per page cost” of this printer is on the higher side.
However, we haven’t focused on that so much because there are cheaper toner cartridges available online that can reduce the “per page cost”. The root of Office Hacks, Inkjet Wholesale, is of course one of them. By getting our cartridges you can bring down your “per page cost” from 22 cents to only 17 cents.
After you’ve set this printer up, you won’t really need to use the physical control panel on it. The Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), however, has provided one nonetheless. There is a backlit 16 character display that is controlled with the help of a few buttons.
There is the Power Save button, the Online button, the Cancel button, the OK button, and the navigation buttons. The memory capacity of this printer is 128 MB. It may seem lesser than other printers out these but these memory capacities are rarely ever used to their full potential by even the most avid printer users.
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