Okidata(R) C5100n Digital Color Printer

The C5100N comes with 32 MB standard, which can be upgraded to up to 288 MB. Other options include duplexing and an extra 530-sheet paper tray to expand input capacity to 930 sheets. The C5100N offers a space-saving design to reduce its footprint on your desktop, and also comes backed by a one-year on-site warranty on the printer, and five-year warranty on the printhead.

Product Description
For workgroups with a tight budget and high expectations, OKI offers the C5100n Digital Color printer. This compact performer makes fast, high-quality OKI color and monochrome output accessible to most shared environments. It's an ideal business tool. Department heads take note: with its speed, low purchase price and low cost per page this printer can take the place of slower color inkjet and mono machines - and stretch your budget. Even with the small footprint, the C5100n is big on productivity, turning out 12 full-color and 20 mono pages per minute, with the first color page printing in just 18.3 seconds, the first mono page in as little as 9 seconds. And those are crisp, bright pages at 1200 x 600 dpi.

My experience: I agree that the photos aren't the best. They look GREAT (or, much better) on cardstock, and the finished-look of laser gives a more professional look than inkjet, to some extent. The price was right for us, and the results were acceptable for an organization that is used to using a mimeograph for volume color, one color at a time.

Since our emphasis isn't on speed of first output (nobody is really near the printer), the time to first print is not really applicable. Duplex cardstock is an iffy proposition. IF the settings are correct, it should work, and does work.

Consumables are used pretty fast, to be sure. To maintain stock, I've been purchasing up to 4 each C,M,Y,K monthly, and have purchased three sets of imaging drums since September. (I'm supposed to: 21000 images on one printer, and 32000 on the other). The web interface is *great*, and tells anyone who wants to know, what they need to know. I've recently purchased a third unit for another department. Understand that the toners are rated for 5% coverage, so printing 'coated' paper is going to reduce your output significantly.

In all, we have increased our color visibility in ways that we wouldn't have touched either in inkjet or outsourcing. The costs are only of consumables, so we don't have to worry about leasing a color copier. When our user's needs start becoming more toward photo-ready artwork, we'll consider moving to a more advanced model. But when it comes to an Excel Chart or just getting the printout in color, we're pretty happy.

Pro: Workgroup color at a decent print speed, and for what was needed, a good price. Images are fixed on paper. Networkable out of box. Rather decent technical support.

Con: Color is put in distinct points on paper, so no smearing or mixing allowed like inkjet. Slow-ish first page to print, but afterwards makes up for it.

Conclusion: If photos matter, this probably isn't for you. But, if you primarily need clipart, graph, chart, and text color, and want to do some volume of it, this may be a great addition to a workgroup or department.


warning to network admins   January 31, 2004
2 out of 4 found this review helpful

If you plan to install this printer on a network, think twice. Using the latest driver and built-in NIC, even on a fast switched network, you will probably not get the rated 'time-to-first-page' performance. As print jobs are processed at the workstation (no PCL emulation), the time needed for the data to leave the queue and get to the printer can mean an inconvenient wait standing at the printer to grab your pages. Evidently, Oki has known about this for some time.

I gave 2 stars as the web-mgmt interface is pretty good.