Wirth Consulting

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Review: Business-Class A4 Color Laser/LED MFPs – OKI MC361 Color MFP is Best in Class

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In this Head2Head comparison, we investigated Business-Class A4 Color Laser/LED MFPs, a product that nearly every business wants or needs. While these devices can cost as much as several inkjet All-in-Ones combined, and their Cost per Page (especially color) and energy consumption can be considerably higher than business-class inkjets, their business-class feature sets, faster print speeds, greater supply capacities, and superior image permanence are attractive to those willing to pay a premium for them.

Our  requirements for this class include networking, automatic duplex printing, automatic document feeder, and a 250-sheet expandable media supply. We found 10 devices that met this criteria that ranged in price from $399.00 to $890.00, from Brother, Canon, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Konica Minolta, Lexmark, OKI, Ricoh, Samsung  and Xerox.

As there was a large disparity in feature sets, Cost Per Page and Total Cost of Ownership, determining the best was not an easy task. For example, some enable users to download, customize, and install advanced workflow solutions, while others offered advanced enterprise-level management and security. After considerable soul-searching, we found that the OKI MC361 Color MFP was Best In Class based on the following strengths:

 

OKI MC361 Color MFP

Support for OKI’s PrintSuperVision Professional/Enterprise network management solutions.

  • Print-driver deployment and Universal PCL 5e print driver.
  • PostScript (emulation) print driver and Color Swatch, Color Correct, PS Gamma Adjuster utilities, banner printing capability (up to 52″) and the ability to print on up to 120 lb. index stock enable light-duty commercial color-printing applications.
  • Color Access Policy Manager for creating and managing usage rules for color-printing.
  • Backlit 5-line graphic LCD display.
  • 50-sheet duplexing automatic document feeder and 100-sheet multipurpose tray.
  • Color scan to compressed/encrypted PDF, network folders and email servers (with LDAP lookup).
  • Optional Desktop Capture Solution for automated routing of scanned documents to Microsoft Office SharePoint document repositories.
  • OmniPage OCR and Nuance PaperPort desktop document-management software.
  • Optional Lantronix solution (with user management system) for mobile printing from Apple iOS mobile devices.
  • Competitive Cost Per Page and Total Cost of Ownership.

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