Okidata B4100 Printer Review
The Okidata B4100 laser printer is designed for the home or small office user, like the Oki C5500 toner printer. It offers fast speeds and excellent print quality in a compact and affordable machine. It includes few bells and whistles, but exceeds at getting the job done quickly and with high quality.
The Oki B4100 laser printer is a machine built for simplicity. It has a simple control panel, with most of its features and options being handled by the driver software, and there is no LCD screen, though it is not particularly necessary.
It is also a very compact machine, measuring 7.9 inches by 14 inches by 15.6 inches, and weighs only 22 pounds. This allows it to occupy fairly small spaces, and it is easy to move around when necessary. Paper capacity is 250 sheets in its single tray. There is no multipurpose tray, so users who often use more than one type of paper will need to empty the tray before loading a new media type. Unfortunately, loading paper into the unit is a bit tricky, as the opening is a bit shallow, and scraped fingers may be the result.
Okidata B4100 toner cartridges come in two sizes. The standard laser toner cartridge has a capacity of 2,500 pages, but third-party resellers frequently sell a printer toner cartridge with a capacity of 3,000 pages. This is particularly economical, as compatible Okidata toner is much less expensive than the OEM cartridge from the manufacturer.
Print speed is impressive, especially given the unit's low price, at up to 19 pages per minute. Text is very sharp and detailed, and graphics quality is a bit above average for a laser. Its 8 MB of RAM will not be enough for heavy graphics users, but it can be expanded.
Overall, the Okidata B4100 is an excellent and simple machine with easily replaceable empty toner cartridges that gets things done quickly and easily. Users who want advanced options, or the ability to easily use more than one type of media often, should look elsewhere.
