OKIDATA C5600 COLOR TONER CARTRIDGES SET

OkiData C5600 Review

Overview:

The OkiData C5600 is intended as a black and white workhorse printer, but it doesn't skimp on its support for color printing and image processing. With the ability to handle a substantive paper throughput and fast speeds, smaller workgroup users will likely be more than satisfied with this model despite its age.

Pros:

The C5600 measures 13.36" by 15.7" by 20.8" and weighs approximately 57.3 lbs with all of its consumables installed, making it considerably smaller than MFPs and more than adequate for storage on a table or desktop, rather than a dedicated piece of furniture such as a cabinet or credenza.

The C5600 produces documents at a maximum speed of 20 pages per minute in color and 32 pages per minute in black and white, with a time to first print of 8 seconds in black and white and 11 seconds in color, consistent with most newer models (older laser printers often had much longer times to first prints for color prints than black and white ones). Warmup requires 60 seconds from power on and 45 seconds from power save.

The C5600 produces documents at a maximum resolution of 1200 by 600 DPI with enhancements such as Auto Color Balance and Photo Enhance available in the printer's drivers.

The printer's main paper tray supports 300 sheets of paper sized A4, A5, B5, or A6. If this isn't satisfactory (and it very well may not be in many environments, as many offices go through upwards of a ream of paper on a daily basis), a 530-sheet paper tray can be added capable of processing sheets sized A4, A5, and B5. A multi-purpose tray is also attached to the printer, which supports 100 sheets of paper sized A4, A5, B5, and A6, as well as up to 10 envelopes sized Com-9, Com-10, DL, Monarch, or C5. Labels (sized Avery 7162, 7664, and 7666), and custom-sized banners can also be run through the printer, as can up to 50 transparencies.

Duplex printing is available as an optional add-on; supported paper sizes include A4, A5, and B5, as well as custom sized documents between 5.8" by 8.3" and 8.5" by 14".

The C5600 ships with 64MB of RAM standard, which can be expanded to 320MB of RAM if desired.

The printer interfaces with systems using either USB 2.0 or 10/100 Base-TX Ethernet for easy networking with other devices. Included drivers support Windows from 98 and NT 4.0 onward, as well as Mac OS 9 and both the PowerPC and Intel variants of Mac OS X.

Cons:

The printer includes no typefaces in memory, making support across multiple platforms potentially more difficult; it also can lead to inferior quality reproductions of Adobe PostScript 3 fonts and PDF documents.

While the C5600 includes a number of image enhancing tools and job tracking software, most of it is only available for Windows, making the printer somewhat less appealing to Mac OS or Linux-centric work environments where administrators will need to implement third-party solutions to track jobs and ensure full compatibility.

Environments that process color and black documents in equal numbers will likely find the C5600 frustrating as a consequence of its toner cartridge sizes, as color toner must be replaced three times as often as black toner (many other models offer equal amounts in black and color toner cartridges, or have black cartridges only 10 to 20 percent larger than color ones).

Stapling, stacking, and other sophisticated paper finishing options are not available with this model, potentially making large jobs tedious to sort and organize.