Review: Oki B2500 MFP multi-function printer

Oki's B2500 MFP is a budget mono laser printer, scanner and copier aimed at individuals. It's a compact unit and the relatively small footprint means it won't take up too much space in a home office environment. It's also silent during standby, which will similarly appeal to home users.

A control panel sits at the top and provides quick access to photocopying and various other menu options, with a two-line LCD indicating what's going on.

Setup certainly shouldn't pose too many problems. We managed to get the printer up and running in just five minutes - all you need do is remove the packaging, load some paper and slap in the toner cartridge.

A 250-sheet input tray is situated at the bottom of the unit, while a single sheet feeder allows quick loading for other paper types. There’s no real output tray, instead the sheets are spat out just underneath the scanning unit; a flip out piece of plastic stops them from tumbling to the floor. The downside of this method is that only 50 output sheets can be handled at any one time but, for home users, this shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Print quality is very impressive considering the price of the unit. With budget lasers we often see quality issues, but text printed by the B2500 MFP is incredibly sharp and clear.

As far as speeds go, Oki quotes the B2500 MFP’s print speed at 16ppm (pages per minute). Indeed, our plain text tests showed this to be pretty near the mark, with a rate of 14.7ppm. Our sample pdf took a little longer to be printed at 12.13ppm.

As with all printers, and indeed any product that requires frequent maintenance, total cost of ownership is an important factor when it comes to making a purchase decision. The RRP for the printer is £149, but it can be picked up for around £120 inc VAT.

The standard toner cartridge costs £71 and is good for 2,200 pages (3.2p per page, assuming 5 per cent coverage), but the printer actually ships with a 1,500 -page cartridge as standard. This is common with laser printers and basically allows manufacturers to reduce that all important initial outlay for the printer.

Should you be happy splashing out a little extra when the starter cartridge is on its last legs, a high capacity 4,000 (£90/2.3p per page) page version is available and offers better value for money.

Although this isn't outrageously expensive, the Dell 1710n mono laser we recently reviewed is a fair bit cheaper to run with a 3,000-page toner at £64 (2.1p per page) and a 6,000-page version for £81 (1.4p per page).

Aside from the toner, there are no other consumables to replace and each new toner cartridge comes with its own image drum.

The maximum monthly duty cycle for the B2500 MFP sits at 2,000 pages. If you think you’ll exceed this, you’d be better off opting for a more expensive model. Oki has various models in this range. This model is the cheapest, while the B4525 MFP sits at the top with a duty cycle of 12,500 pages.

If you're prepared to pay the reasonably high running costs, the B2500 MFP is a great printer that's hard to beat in terms of ease of use and print quality. Finally, it's worth noting that this is a Windows-only printer.

Also consider:
Dell 1710n
A cheap mono laser with low running costs

Samsung CLP-300
Samsung combines inkjet-like convenience with laser-quality documents

OKI C3300n LED single-pass LED printer
A fast alternative to a laser printer for small workgroups and home users

All laser printer reviews

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