Oki MB760dnfax review

Oki’s MB760dnfax is designed for workgroups with heavy printing demands, and combines a high monthly duty cycle with low running costs. It pools print, copy, fax and scan operations with a heap of extra hardware including 2GB of RAM, duplexing, a 160GB internal hard disk and a Gigabit print server.

Oki MB760dnfax review: features and expansion options

The MB760dnfax is highly expandable: three additional 530-sheet trays can be installed beneath the base tray, or you can opt for a huge, 2,000-sheet feeder instead. It has a large, 9in colour LCD touchscreen, but we were disappointed to discover the optional wireless adapter costs £144 – and must be installed by an engineer.

As standard, the printer has a 100-sheet ADF, and although the MB760dnfax is only a single-side scanner, it can capture both sides of pages by pulling them back in and reversing them. Consumables consist of only a high-capacity toner cartridge and maintenance kit, which deliver pages at 1p each.

Oki’s software utility installs all the required software in one go, making setup speedy. However, we had to increase the printer’s sleep time via its web interface to allow the utility to discover it prior to loading the drivers.

Oki MB760dnfax review: speed tests

The Oki delivers on its speed claims, printing a 50-page Word document at 48ppm, or 38ppm with duplex enabled. Our 24-page DTP test document averaged 47ppm at both the 600dpi and 1,200dpi driver settings, and the time to first page was less than ten seconds in all tests.

Text output is crisp and sharp at 600dpi, and mono photos and reports show good levels of detail, with only minimal banding. A 20-page copy job using the scanner’s noisy ADF returned 35ppm, although we found the colour quality for the flatbed was rather grainy, even at 600dpi.

The large colour touchscreen was easy to use for copy, scan, print and fax operations. Documents can be scanned to the internal hard disk, remote systems via SMB or FTP, email or a USB stick inserted in the front port.

However, mobile support is non-existent – not even AirPrint is on offer, and cloud printing is sparse. Although we were able to add the MB760 duplex to our Google Cloud Print account, there’s nothing here to match HP’s Connected or Dell’s Document Hub services.

Oki’s Windows software is better. Tools include a viewer for managing private fax and email address books. You can use it to download the printer’s public address book, and you can also scan directly to public and password-protected private “boxes” on the printer’s hard disk, and use the e-Filing web interface to manage their contents.

Another utility provides backup and restore tools, while the File Downloader picks up files scanned to a specific box and downloads them to your PC. Access to specific printer functions can be controlled from the web browser interface, and restrictions can be applied to both individual users and groups.

Oki MB760dnfax review: verdict

The MB760dnfax is well suited to offices with hefty printing demands, a keen eye on running costs and a need for speed. In price terms, it compares well with other A4 mono MFPs in this speed bracket; when you add in the fact that vendors such as Lexmark charge over £400 for an internal hard disk, the value looks even better.