The Okidata C3530 is a multifunction color laser printer designed for the home or small office user. It has good multifunction features and excellent print quality, but its design is a little awkward, and toner is expensive.
The OKI C3530 can print, scan, copy, and fax, and handles each of these features quite well. Unfortunately, its design is not up to par with its functions. First, the lower half of the unit is much larger than the top of the unit, giving it a very awkward appearance. The other problem with this design is that the control panel sits further away from the user, with the paper tray in between the user and the panel. The control panel has its own problems as well. Each button has an icon instead of a text label, and not all of the icons are easy to understand. This leads to pressing the wrong button often, and much confusion. The unit is a bit flimsy overall, especially its paper tray, which feels on the verge of breaking quite often. Input paper capacity is 250 sheets.
Okidata C3530 toner cartridge capacities are a bit small, at 1,500 pages for black and 1,000 pages for each color. High-yield Okidata C3530 toner cartridges are available in capacities of 2,500 pages for black and 2,000 pages for each color. All of its replacement cartridges are somewhat expensive, leading to a high cost per page. Its low purchase price may be offset by higher running costs in the long run.
Print speeds are good, especially for a multifunction unit, at around 20 pages per minute for black and 16 pages per minute for color printing. First page out time is also very good at 11 seconds. Print quality is generally very good. Text quality is excellent and graphics printing is average.
Overall, the Okidata C3530 offers many well-implemented functions, but poor design decisions make it somewhat difficult to use.
