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Similar in size to most other small-office lasers we've seen lately, the Oki B4350 is a bit pricier than most, at $299. But the extra dollars fetch top-rated print speeds and good-looking prints. This model also has more top-mounted controls than you'll find on a typical personal printer: A well-designed eight-button control panel with a two-line LCD display puts all settings at your fingertips.
The B4350 prints text well. Small text looked crisp, and large characters solid. Even at tiny font sizes, characters remained whole. Though line art showed slight banding in areas of fine parallel lines, it looked clean elsewhere. Our photo sample had some banding and was too light, but that shortcoming permitted it to show plenty of detail, even in darker areas. All in all, the B4350 produced the cleanest-looking output we've seen from a monochrome laser printer tested recently.
This model's outstanding speed--20.1 pages per minute on text, and 13.2 pages per minute on graphics--is another remarkable attribute. It also kicked out the first text page in a little under 8 seconds, faster than any other current small-office printer.
The B4350's main paper tray holds 250 sheets of paper. An optional 500-sheet drawer costs $190. You can feed special paper or thicker media such as envelopes via the fold-down auxiliary paper tray, one sheet at a time. For envelopes you must also open the rear paper exit to create a flat path through the printer.
A printed Setup Guide walks you through the process of unpacking the printer, installing the drum unit and toner cartridge, and loading the machine with paper. The guide doesn't discuss installing the print driver, but we found that process quite intuitive. The User's Guide, which comes as a PDF file on the software CD-ROM, is more complete.
An expensive ($231) internal ethernet adapter enables you to share the B4350 with colleagues; but given these print speeds, that's a reasonable proposition.
Upshot: For the money, Oki Data's Oki B4350 provides fast printing and excellent text, with an LCD navigation display that makes it particularly easy to use.
Paul Jasper
