A colour laser printer is most likely the perfect solution with regard to home offices that print a great amount of colour documents. Available for close to £270, the Oki C3600 is network-ready and prints at an impressive speed in comparison with its competitors, but unfortunately it's much larger as compared to the majority of printers and also does not have fancy features such as a full colour LCD screen and a wireless print server.
We are not too impressed with the C3600's design, but we have really never been too taken with laser printers generally speaking. The matte white C3600 measures 371 x 290 x 478mm and weighs around 46lbs. We would not refer to it as a behemoth, but it's much larger compared to the Samsung CLP315W, which only measures 389 x 244 x 312mm. The C3600 also weighs about 9 kg more compared to the CLP-315W, therefore people who have very little desk space are likely to be more happy with a smaller device.
All ports that are needed to connect the printer to your computer is positioned at the back of the chassis, which includes the USB and the Ethernet port for networking across multiple systems. One beneficial feature missing on the C3600 is a front-mounted USB port for connecting PictBridge- compatible cameras as well as direct printing from a USB flash disk.
Given that it is only a single-function laser printer, there are only a few additional features, however we applaud Oki for making use of a 400MHz processor along with a hefty 128 mb of memory, which allows the C3600 to manage even bigger print jobs than the competition. You can even upgarde the memory up to 640MB.
The C3600's cyan, magenta, yellow and black toner cartridges are individually separated and is placed directly underneath the top cover and is lined up horizontally. This printer delivered with 'standard' capacity cartridges. Based on the statements from Oki, the black cartridge can last for 1,500 pages while each of the 3 colour cartridges lasts for 1,000 prints. The replacement for the black cartridge costs about £35, while the replacement of the colour cartridges is about £55. There are also high-capacity cartridges from Oki which can print out 2,500 black pages (around £50) or 2,500 colour pages (around £70). There are also available toner cartridges that is compatible with OKI C3600 at 30% saving. The suggested monthly work cycle for this particular printer is 35,000 pages, and that is more than sufficient for small businesses.
The C3600 fared really well in a direct output speed evaluation with 3 other colour laser printers. It emerged second best in all of our tests, just a bit behind from the Brother Hl4040CN, also a single-function printer at the same price range. The black text were printed at nearly the same speed as the HL -4040CN, generating 15.61 pages per minute, in contrast to the HL-4040CN's 15.66. This could not match the Samsung CLP-315W in the colour presentation test, but it's safe to say that you won't be waiting too long for any document with this printer.
The performance of the C3600 in all our print-quality test looked extremely well. The black text appeared as good as we expect to have from a laser printer, with bold line formation and smooth gradation on font size scales. The C3600 also managed our text graphics admirably, demonstrating remarkable signs of colour separation together with well-defined image variation, even in some of the delicate blending detail. Evidently, some of the images appeared a little smudgy and pixellated, but the general print quality throughout presentations, graphics as well as simple text increased our primary impression of this particular printer.
The Oki C3600 is rather big and hefty, and doesn't include a plethora of features. It does, however, produce high-quality prints at a quick rate, which makes it among our favourite colour laser printers.
