OKI C830 A3 LED Color Printer In Review
Today we are checking another device from OKI Printing Solutions that makes pictures with lines of light-emitting diodes. This is a full color, single-pass A3 apparatus, and for its class it's very small compact, and even somewhat cheap. And if we take into account that color printers by OKI generally duplicate colors very well, the C830 may be an appealing purchase. But let's catch the ball before the bound and first realize how balanced this printer is as far as qualities are concerned.
The printer looks very common that it is not surprising: OKI has been manufacturing devices with such design for many years. The main family features are the silhouette of smoothed box, the printing path with horizontal paper guiding, the upper output tray and a distinctive control panel.
Like all OKI consumables, the C830 cartridges enable split replacement of drum and toner cartridge. The drum yield is 20,000 pages, which is more than two time larger than the cartridge yield -- 8,000 pages. Typically, the starter cartridges encompass toner only lasting 2000 pages.
On the right side, under the covering is hiding a hatch that gives access to expansion slots. The C830 model allows for memory expansion of up to 768 MB (the onboard 256 MB and optional 512 MB module), as well as the installation of an optional hard disk. As usual, apart from these options are available additional trays and floor stand, as well as two-sided printing unit.
Among the connectivity options are an Ethernet port, a USB and parallel port. In printers of such class, the last two are added for extreme cases or very special applications, as the majority of modern systems and applications can get by with a network port.
Like any "big" printer, OKI C830 makes it possible to use the emulation of different languages and protocols: PostScript 3, PCL 5c, PCL XL, PCL 6, HP-GL, Epson FX and IBM Pro Printer III XL.
The specifications of the printer promise us a fairly good speed: 30 and 32 ppm for color and monochrome modes, respectively. However, the measured maximum speed in color barely approached 20 ppm in A4 format. The maximum for the A3 is even less -- 17.5 ppm.
As it turned out, speed parameters are set in the menu of the OKI C830, but are secured by the administrator password, so at the time of the investigation, we had to deal with the default setting.
For a multi-page file with colorful illustrations task processing notably reduced and the printing rate did not surpass 10 ppm (Auto Mode, Regular 600x600). The PCL was more rapid: 9,7 ppm for A4 and 8.5 ppm for A3. PostScript mode performed even slower: 7.7 ppm and 5.4 ppm for A4 and A3, respectively.
The OKI C830 color printing was honestly pleasing. First, a good full-color A3 picture per se makes a very optimistic impression. Secondly, OKI prints are not just good but excellent: consistent shade of color reproduction, large assortment of reproducible colors, high resolution and outstanding text output.
We should note the very soundly applied toner economy mode, which has currently been become an attribute of all OKI devices. The text published in this mode is so straightforward to read even in small fonts, so the economy is not achieved by uneven screening of the text and images, but by decreasing the density of the toner. Therefore, the text becomes gray, but with clear and directly boundaries. Pictures, of course, get worse in terms of quality, but regardless of that they stay rather OK.
Despite the optimistic specifications data, OKI C830 does not set speed records, its design and ergonomics do not shine perfection, and in the process it may give you little surprises. For one, that strange necessity to hide almost all the custom settings for the administrator password.
With OKI laser toner the printer can print in color with high quality both on A4 and A3 paper. The produced color is very good, and the text is simply magnificent even in printer toner economy mode. If you need an A3 color laser printer at a price comparable to the A4, go with the OKI C830.