OKI has a long history of producing LED-based colour printers that have delivered laser-like quality at high speeds.

Previously, we looked at the C3200n as part of a group test .

The new-look C3300n and C3400n use a very similar basic design while offering enhanced performance and print quality, along with more flexible media handling.

Inside the printer, a narrow, deep case holds four horizontally mounted toner cartridges arranged in parallel from front to back.

Using what is known as single-pass technology, the page runs beneath each cartridge in turn, on a single journey through the print engine.

This gives a potential four-fold increase in speed over the majority of laser printers that must pass the page through the print engine for each toner colour separately.

The C3300n is capable of up to 12 pages per minute (ppm) in colour and, by moving colour components aside and speeding up the mechanism a little, up to 16ppm in monochrome.

The C3400n is a little faster, at 16ppm and 20ppm respectively.

In our tests, the first page came out in a reasonably fast 12 seconds for monochrome and 15 seconds for colour, however the C3200n was rated faster, at nine and 14 seconds respectively. This delay time is crucial as most print jobs are only a couple of pages long.

The 'straight-through' print path also has the advantage of allowing more flexible paper handling. There’s no need to keep the page stuck to a curved drum, so paper stock of up to 203gsm can be used without fear of jams.

Unlike the C3200n, the C3300n doesn't come in a non-networked, USB-only version; both the C3300n and C3400m coming with 10/100 Ethernet as standard.

Also missing is the C3200’s LCD status panel, which is replaced by a row of LEDs.

Although they’ve certainly improved over the years, we’ve never been great fans of the colour photo print quality from LED printers.

The C3300n has improved print quality over the C3200, but LED printers always lag slightly behind standard laser printers in terms of photographic-style output.

The C3300n is no exception to this rule. There are no problems in terms of resolution and smoothness, but colours appear somewhat dull and skin-tones aren’t as lifelike as we’ve seen from other printers.

However, print quality depends a lot on source material; landscapes with plenty of blue sky and trees produced quite vivid results. You shouldn't, however, have a problem with colour in graphics and presentations.

Driver support for Windows is good and it comes with integrated help and links to OKI’s online support pages, which are also very useful and easy to navigate.

OKI’s supplied Webprint Utility makes printing from web pages easy without wasting paper of problems fitting the browser image on your page.

A top-loading mechanism makes toner installation simple. It’s always easy to see what you’re doing and the cartridges simply slot in and lock with a lever. These cartridges are small, which makes them easy to handle but also means they’ll run out quickly.

The 1,000-page capacity is equivalent to only two standard packs of paper. Black cartridges cost £23.50, while cyan and yellow cartridges cost £33; strangely, magenta is £1 less.

Multi-colour value packs are available for both toner and imaging drums, but these save you only around £5 compared to buying the items separately.

Other consumable items include one imaging drum per colour, which must be replaced every 15,000 impressions. These cost £29 for black and £26 each for colour.

At 30,000 pages you’ll need a new fuser unit, at £56.50 and every 50,000 pages, the transfer belt will need replacing at a cost of £56.50.

By comparison, Dell’s toner charges amount to only around £10.56 for 1,000 monochrome pages and £18.21 per 1,000 pages in colour for its similarly priced 3110cn colour laser printer.

Dell’s alternative is also faster, can cope with almost double the monthly duty cycle and will print from a variety of operating systems, whereas the C3300n is limited by its Windows-only compatibility.

Overall, the C3300n is fast and easy to use, but the print quality could be better.

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