OKIDATA C3600N COLOR TONER CARTRIDGES SET

OkiData C3600n Review

Overview:

The OkiData C3600n is a small color laser printer offering fairly high resolution prints in a compact package, making the printer a strong choice for users looking for either a fast personal printer or a substantive device for a small office environment with a relatively low paper throughput.

Pros:

The C3600n measures 14.7" by 18.8" by 11.4" and weighs approximately 46 lbs, making it heavier than consumer inkjet printers but considerably lighter than small office MFPs and much smaller than any industrial laser printer. As a consequence, it will sit comfortably on a desk or table alongside other computer equipment with no inconvenience.

The C3600n produces pages at a maximum speed of 16 pages per minute in color or 20 pages per minute in monochrome with a warmup time to first page up 12 seconds in color or 10 seconds in monochrome. Its maximum resolution is 1200 by 600 dpi, consistent with most other lower-end laser printers.

The C3600n features PCL 5c and PostScript 3 emulation, as well as SIDM support, 80 PCL fonts and 80 PostScript fonts, OCR-A, OCR-B and line printer bitmap fonts, and USPS, UPC-A, UPC-E, Code 39, and Code 128 barcodes. It also includes drivers to allow for printing from Windows 2000 and newer, Mac OS X 10.2.8 and newer, and some versions of UNIX and Linux. The printer interfaces with systems using either USB 2.0 or 10/100Base-T Ethernet powered by the printer's internal print server for easy networking, though the printer only supports TCP/IP networking architectures.

The printer ships with 128 MB of memory standard, which can be expanded to 640 MB of memory if desired to speed up the printing process.

The printer has a 250 sheet paper input tray and a 1-sheet multipurpose tray, which can process card stock, labels, envelopes and banners. Supported paper sizes measure between 4.1" by 5.8" and 8.5" by 14", and the printer's multipurpose tray measures between 4.1" by 5.8" and 8.5" by 48".

The C3600n includes a printing solutions suite to monitor workgroup printers for reports and management, all performed via a dedicated web interface that requires no additional software to be installed for access. 

Cons:

The printer's maximum paper capacity, at 250 sheets, is likely more than enough for a 1-5 user environment, but potentially unsatisfactory for many larger environments, as even many small offices go through upwards of a ream of paper (500 sheets) on a daily basis.

Unlike many other consumer and higher end printers, the C3600n has no support for duplex printing, requiring that all double sided documents be manually attended to. While this was once an uncommon feature on personal-use printers, it's now common to find on most of them, even on low-end inkjets, and its absence here could prove frustrating for users who insist on printing double-sided documents.

The printer does not include actual support for Adobe PostScript 3 in hard memory, meaning that PDFs and other documents that rely on those fonts will not look as good as they can when produced by printers with those accessories installed.

Compared to many higher end laser printers the C3600n suffers from slower print speeds. Newer, larger devices offer speeds as fast as 40-60 pages per minute in both black and color, upwards of three times faster than the C3600n, though such speeds are almost never available in devices with footprints as small as this printer's, meaning that users looking for speed will need to sacrifice the convenience of this printer's package.