Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I moved up to this printer from an (excellent) Magicolor 3100 printer.
My basic requirements were large format printing (11x17), cover paper
handling, color, speed and duplexing. The printer arrived palleted.
First, the printer is very heavy, and two of us had difficulty setting
it up. I would almost recommend a lift table to handle it. I plan to
get the high capacity feeder both for the extra trays, and also for a
way to get it around, since it is really to heavy to lift without a
dolly or other aid. The HCF has wheels on it, and basically converts
the printer to a roll around waist height machine.
The C9650 is a LED printer, meaning that it uses a bar of LEDs to do
the same job as a rotating laser. This both gives it both less rotating
parts as well as simpler mechanics. The bar has 66000 leds (600x11"),
and there are four of them, one for each color. There is a version of
this printer with 1200x1200 resolution, which means a LED bar with
twice the number of LEDs, but the price increment is more than the cost
of this printer at almost $4000 (yikes!). The odd sounding 1200x600
resolution of the c9650 printer comes from the fact that although the
LED spacing is fixed, the modulation of the LEDs across the width of
the paper can be increased to 1200 dots per inch easily.
Oki is one of the few makers of pure LED driven printers. I have no idea
why LED based printers have not taken over the market due to the
advantages of this type of print head. Possibly it is just far cheaper
to make scanning heads than LED bars.
The first comparision was to my older 3100 printer, which claims
1200x1200 print resolution against the C96450's 1200x600. There was no
contest, the C9650 was far clearer and sharper than the 3100 on photos
I fed both. In addition, the C9650 produced far less paper curl than
the 3100, a fact I attribute to the simpler paper path of the C9650.
In fact, the C9650 produced copy that was virtually flat. I was
impressed. Low curl is important in my one-off binding application.
The other reason I chose this printer was because it can print cover
stock without complaint (gsm 300 or better). This is due to the ability
of the printer to both input and output such thick material directly
from the sides of the printer with (as the brochure says) almost a
perfectly straight printer path. This also be attributed to the
printers simplified LED print path, but to be fair there are other
non-LED printers that can do this. I use the ability to print covers
to feed a one-off perfect binding operation with a BQ-140 binder and a
Triumph paper cutter. The C9650 will (according to the brochure) also
accept longer than 17" material, which will be essential for 8.5x11"
binds, because of the 1-2" of spine needed at the back of the book.
All in all, so far this is shaping up to be an outstanding printer. The
few negatives I had were the fact that the printer was shipped with the
wrong toner cartridges in the box (they fixed it quicky and said it
has happened before, but it says something about quality control at
Oki), and a salesman at Oki who told me that this printer is considered
a low volume item at Oki, to be discontinued.
The 11x17 market needs this kind of printer. I notice that other
companies, including Xerox, are reselling this printer. One maker is
even marketing it as a "super thick" stock printer (they may modify it
for this purpose). The bottom line is that this is a workhorse printer
able to do jobs that other printers cannot. The large format market is
new, neglected in my opinion, and the large format market with thick
stock ability is only a handfull of machines.
Scott Moore,
San Jose, CA
Click Here to see more reviews about: OKI C9650dn - Printer - color - duplex - LED - Tabloid Extra (12 in x 18 in), 12.9 in x 17.8 in - 1200 dpi x 600 dpi - up to 40 ppm (mono) / up to 36 ppm (color) - capacity: 760 sheets - Parallel, USB, 1000Base-T
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