OKI Printing Solutions B6500dn Digital Monochrome Printer

Though the B6500n is fast, its print quality varies. Oki claims a top engine speed of 45 pages per minute; and in our tests it reached 40.1 ppm--better than most competitors could manage. Its graphics speed was a more typical 7.3 ppm, but the graphics quality dismayed us: Regardless of the type of image we printed, we saw washed-out shades and roughness or horizontal banding.

The B6500n comes standard with a 550-sheet input tray and a 150-sheet multipurpose tray, plus a 500-sheet output tray and an auxiliary, straight-paper-path rear output that holds 70 sheets. The unit doesn't include automatic duplexing, but Oki sells the B6500dn (with duplexer in place) for $1060. Not enough paper capacity? Add one or two more 550-sheet input trays for $312 apiece. Unfortunately, these trays were carelessly designed. Neither the guides nor most markings are color-coded, so it's easy to miss things like where to stop the length guide for letter-size paper. Extending the trays to legal-size requires unlocking two latches; the instructions for doing this are stamped into bottom of tray and are not colored, so they're hard to find, let alone read. Connectivity includes USB, ethernet, and even the older parallel and serial ports.