Oki C5500n

Pros: very fast print speed, print quality, printer construction

Cons: some pixelation, footprint, media size and weight adjustment

Summary: This is the first high-quality "laser" (ahem, LED) printer I've owned for my soho, but I've been using laser's for years. I liked the Cnet review, but it's missing a couple of important points. This printer is very well made, not a feather-light piece of injection-molded plastic like most mass-made printers. The other is Oki's support and free software.

Oki emailed me some utilities for color swatches and print supervision which tracks toner and page usage on-screen, and others. They also sell the toner, duplexer, etc. on their own website, at "street prices". I received the duplexer by UPS in 3 days for a final price of $152...lots of online vendors can match that, but that's not bad from the manufacturer. I print reports with rich text, .jpg headers, charts, etc. and the printer spits them out almost as fast as regular text docs. I do not like the need to enter the menu every time I need to print something less-ordinary like a transparency or No. 10 envelope or 28 lb. bond paper -- an express option for media changes would be nice like a dedicated button or switch. I also found that saturated colors or small fonts "pixelate" (have jagged edges) at times. It's very small, and unless you proof very closely, you probably wouldn't see it -- it can be corrected too by printing on the "best" print setting. However, it would be nice if it didn't do that at all.

I respect other people's experiences, but honestly, I just didn't understand "rhansen's" review that toner costs are high. I looked at toner cartridge prices and yields quite thoroughly from Lexmark, Canon and HP before buying, and found when you compare a "2K" cartridge from Oki and see what it gets you...about 2,000 prints...it's in the center. Not the cheapest, not the most expensive, but it does give high-quality. After using it for a year, I think it meets those estimates fairly closely (you can always increase or decrease print quality to consume/save toner). I also didn't agree with the review where a person bought it used and found it didn't work. Maybe Oki should honor a warranty to anyone for 1 year, but if you were in the business of manufacturing low-margin printers, would you do that, knowing there are owners who may run their off-road vehicle over top of the printer before selling it to a second owner? How can you guarantee a printer's performance when it didn't come direct from your factory?? More importantly, do Okidata's competitors do better or worse in this regard?

Anyways, I have found Oki's shipping and cartridge prices reasonable, but don't take my word for it...check their website, and Staples and various online vendors and see. If you need an all-in-one, maybe you should get the HP for a few dollars more as the Cnet reveiw says, although I personally found HP's sharpness was a little less for printers in the same price category as the C5500n. Also, I don't think most people buy the C5500n for full $599...it's pretty easy to get it between $400-500.

I wanted a high quality printer for a small home office business, not another 1 pound piece of plastic from Costco. At 57 pounds, maybe the C5500n is overbuilt, but it reminds me of the business class printers I've been using for the last 25 years. I wrote another online review for a popular computer mag website, and said the same thing there: If my office burned down tomorrow and I had to buy another printer with the insurance check, I would probably buy this same printer all over again, because its strength's and Oki's support greatly outweigh its weaknesses. If you want an all-in-one for your home computer, and don't care about the occasional ink-jet smudge or loading paper in 50 piece stacks or printing every odd-numbered page and then flipping the stack over to print every even-numbered page, then yes, the review correctly notes this is an expensive printer. Personally, I'm fed up with cheap consumer junk and would probably buy this printer again even for non-soho use because it could probably fall off of the desk it's sitting on and still work.