Okidata B4600 Laser Printer Review
Continuing my series on printers, today I’m taking a look at the Okidata B4600 Laser Printer. This mono laser printer is designed for the small office/home office environment that does plain old black and white printing. If you’ve been around computers a while like me you recognize the Okidata name from dot matrix printer days where they were known for their reliability and printing output power. How does this laser printer compare to the old days and, more importantly, in today’s marketplace?
Review Continued Below…
The Okidata B4600 is a pretty basic, lower end, laser printer. There aren’t any features like scanning and faxing. This printer is designed for one job, printing. The inputs include both USB and parallel ports. The standard paper capacity is 250 sheets with the option to expand it with a 500 sheet tray for a total of 750 sheets. Resolution on the printer is 1200×600 dpi. Drivers are available for Windows, including Vista, and Mac.
With this printer we want to see good performance and good output quality. The B4600 doesn’t disappoint in this area. The speed is about 27ppm with text and it warms up rather quickly too. The document quality is good as well. The pages I observed, mostly Adobe PDF documents with mixed text and graphics, had well formed characters and black-and-white graphics. The resulting reports had a good professional look to them that our clients on this project appreciated.
Performance wise, the Okidata B4600 Laser Printer should do well in a small office with relatively modest printing needs such as a smaller medical practice or legal office. The monthly duty cycle of the printer is 40,000 pages which is more than adequate. Operating costs are relatively low too, at least at first glance. I may have to revisit this after our clients have been using them a while. I’ll also have to report back on long term durability in the field but the unit seems to be solidly built with no obviously flimsy parts.
All in all, I’d say that the Okidata B4600 lives up to the reputation established by their dot-matrix ancestors for plain printing efficiency. I’d recommend this printer for the SOHO environment if you have basic monochrome printing needs that are beyond what you can do with your basic inkjet printer.
It seems like this is a pretty decent printer for those looking for a modest and not so extravagant laser printer. It seems especially nice because it’s a relatively low cost buy and keep printer.
Till then,
Jean
Two questions - How much does a replacement cartridge cost, and can you refill them with toner? My trusty HP 12A Cartridges are a winner on cost, so I fully endorse the HP series of mono printers that use these cartridges.
Hi Web,
Replacement cartridges for the Okidata B4600 usually run between $50-80 retail. Of course, you can often catch better deals on them on eBay and other online discounters. Just watch the shipping charges so you don’t get ripped off there.
I don’t know about refilling them. I’ve always had bad luck with refilled toner cartridges so I just buy new ones.
This looks like a decent printer. Good point about mentioning cartridge costs. When choosing a printer, you cannot just look at the base price. You also have to consider how much it will cost in the long run. Sometimes a printer will seem cheap until it comes time to replace cartridges or toner.
Cartridge is the main factor of the printer whenever there is a talk regarding printer coz its the way where one can print something good or better. This information will defintely help those who want to buy such printer with good rate of cartridge. Laser printers are always the best to work and okidata does look very useful from this review.
With a monthly duty cycle of 40,000 pages this is a real bargain of a printer. As you say, the operating costs are low too, so seems to be the perfect device for a small office. Thanks for this valuable share.