The OKI MB770 is a monochrome multifunction printer (MFP) built for offices with massive print volumes. It has sufficiently high paper capacity for that role, a good feature set including a 100-sheet reversing automatic document feeder, and solid overall output quality across the board. To get it to operate at its full speed, and to prevent from having to power up every time you need to use its screen, you will want to tweak one setting, as by default it is unusually quick to go into Power Saver and Sleep modes.
The MB770 uses an LED-based engine (essentially the same as a laser, but using LEDs instead of a laser as a light source), and is considered a laser-class printer. It prints, copies, faxes, and scans. It can scan to email, network folder, or USB key (which it can also print from). It supports secure, password-protected printing. It has a 100-sheet reversing automatic document feeder for copying, scanning, or faxing two-sided documents; it scans one side, flips the page over, and scans the other side.
View AllÂ
This MFP measures 26.6 by 20.6 by 23.8 inches (HWD), so you'll want to put it on its own table, and one without any shelves above it as it is very tall. It weighs 106 pounds, so you may want to get two other people to move it into place. The front panel houses a nine-inch color touch screen, as well as an alphanumeric keypad and physical buttons for quickly switching between functions.
The MB770 is built for very heavy print volumes, with a 280,000 page-per-month duty cycle and a recommended monthly max of 30,000 pages. It has a 630-sheet standard paper capacity, between a 530-sheet main tray and a 100-sheet multipurpose tray. It comes with an auto-duplexer for printing on both sides of a sheet of paper. It has an offline stapler for manually stapling printed pages together. You can add up to 3 optional 530-sheet trays and/or a 2,000-sheet feeder, to a maximum of 3,160 sheets.
There are three other models in the MB760/MB770 family. The OKI MB760 has a slightly lower rated speed (49 ppm) and maximum monthly duty cycle (250,000 pages) but otherwise is much the same as the OKI MB770. The OKI MB770f adds a 530-sheet second tray with a caster base for a standard (and maximum) paper capacity of 1,160 sheets, and the OKI MB770fx adds a 2,000-sheet feeder for a 2,630-sheet paper capacity.
The OKI MB770 offers USB and Ethernet (including Gigabit Ethernet) connectivity; we tested it on a network with drivers installed on a PC running Windows Vista.
Speed
By default, the MB770 is unusually quick to go into Power Saver and Sleep modes (after just 1 minute and 2 minutes of idleness, respectively). After a minute of idleness, the screen goes dark. To restore it, you need to hit the Power button, and it takes upwards of 10 seconds for the screen menu to reappear. This quickness to go into power-saving modes can be an annoyance if you're working from the screen, and it also impacted printing speeds in our testing.
OKI says that it is set this way to comply with the Energy Star 2.0 standard for imaging devices, which goes into effect in January 1, 2014. Time to go into Sleep mode is but one of many factors used in calculating a product's typical weekly power usage, which plays a large role in determining whether a product is Energy Star qualified. The required time to go into Sleep mode, however, is considerably longer than the OKI MB770 is set to by default. The time to both Power Saver and Sleep mode can be reset through the printer's Admin menu for up to 60 minutes.
The MFP's "sleepiness" had a significant impact on its tested speeds. I timed it on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing), at an effective 5.6 pages per minute (ppm). For our official testing, we use a printer's default settings, as in our experience most users tend to stick with them; our testing protocol has a set interval between each test, slightly longer than the OKI MB770's time to Sleep, and during it the printer would go into Sleep mode, to awaken when the print command was sent to it.
The bottom line is that awakening the OKI MB770 added an average of 12 seconds to the timings for each of our tests. If you print relatively few, longer jobs, the delay may not be an issue, as it's modest compared with the total print time, but if you print a lot of shorter jobs, those dozen-second delays will add up. In that case, you'll want to reset the Power Saver and Sleep times.
I also timed the MB770 on an ad-hoc basis while keeping it out of Power Saver/Sleep mode. As such, it turned in a much more respectable 10.5 ppm, though it's still a bit on the slow side for its rated speed. It effectively matches the HP LaserJet Enterprise M4555h, 3.5 stars), also rated at 55 pages per minute, which tested at 10.6 ppm, while the Editors' Choice Dell B3465dnf Multifunction Laser Printer, rated at 50 pages per minute, tested at a considerably faster 15 ppm. The much faster rated (70 pages per minute) and more expensive Dell B5465dnf Mono Laser Multifunction Printer tested at 18.7 ppm.
Output Quality
Output quality was pretty typical of a mono laser across the board. The MB770's text quality should be fine for any internal business use, and most other business needs short of demanding desktop publishing applications that use very small fonts.
Graphics quality was good enough for most any internal business use; whether they're good enough for PowerPoint handouts depends on who you'd be handing them to, and how much of a perfectionist you are. The printer did well in showing very thin lines, but did a poor job in distinguishing between similar shadings.
With photos, there was mild banding in some backgrounds; most prints had some dithering in the form of dot patterns, and there was some loss of detail in dark areas. Depending on how picky you are, you might consider the output good enough for photos in client newsletters, and it is fine for printing out recognizable photos from Web pages.
Running costs for the OKI MB770, based on OKI's price and yield figures for toner and image drum, are 1.4 cents per page, pretty typical of a high-volume mono MFP. This falls between the Dell B3465dnf's 1.5 cents per page and the Dell B5465dnf's penny a page, and is a touch above the HP M4555h's 1.2 cents per page.
The MB770 is built for similarly high print volumes as the HP M4555h, but costs considerably less. When kept out of Power Saver/Sleep modes, the MB770 showed comparable speed. The HP's graphics quality was considerably better.
The MB770 costs much less than the Dell B5465dnf—also built for enormous print volumes—which has a much higher rated speed (and proved worthy of it in our testing). The MB770 showed better output quality, for photos and, especially, graphics.
The MB770 costs more than the Editors' Choice Dell B3465dnf, and is built for higher print volumes. The MB770 couldn't match the B3465dnf for either print speed or output quality; the Dell did particularly well with graphics.
The OKI MB770 is a monochrome MFP built for massive print volumes, and it is relatively inexpensive as such. Its running costs are typical of its ilk, and its output quality should be fine for any internal business use. Its paper capacity is sufficiently voluminous for its intended audience, with optional extra trays if you need them. It's a reasonable choice for a workhorse MFP to churn out large print volumes, though for typical use you may want to lengthen the times to Power Saver and Sleep modes.
