Okidata C6100 Toner
Oki C6100 Toner Cartridges

The Okidata C6100 is a color laser printer designed for the small or medium office environment and is an upgrade to the Oki C5100 toner printer. Its speed and print quality are appealing, but its price is higher than competing products.

The OKI C6100 has a relatively compact design and is fairly lightweight, allowing it to fit into smaller spaces when necessary. Its design is boxy, with the input paper tray on the bottom and output tray on top. The LCD screen and control panel are somewhat lacking. The LCD screen is only two lines, which is often not enough to adequately relay the information needed, like remaining laser printer toner. There are also few buttons on the control panel, requiring some buttons to perform multiple functions. This can get confusing, as exiting a menu may require the user to push a button labeled 'On Line'. The printer includes a reference for these button functions, but it seems more confusing than is necessary.

Paper capacity is not a problem, with a 300 sheet drawer as standard, and an optional 530 sheet tray available as an add-on, allowing the printer to grow along with your needs. Print quality is generally good, especially for text. Graphics quality suffers somewhat, showing many artifacts an over-saturated colors. The toner ink for the OKI C6100 tends to be glossy on the page, which can be a bit distracting. Print speed is about average, at 28 pages per minute for black and 3.9 pages per minute in color. These color printing speeds do tend to fall behind the competition a bit.

The C6100 ships with full capacity Okidata C6100 toner cartridges, at 6,100 pages for black and 5,100 pages for each color ink toner. This is becoming a rarity with modern printers, as many manufacturers now include "starter" cartridges of lower capacity. OKI should be commended for including full-size Okidata C6100 toner cartridges with this unit.

Overall, the Okidata C6100 produces high-quality prints at decent speeds. The front panel can be somewhat confusing, and color printing is lacking. Full-size cartridges included with the printer mean lower operating costs down the road.