Built around an LED engine, which means that it uses LEDs rather than a laser to draw the image of each page on its drum, the OKI MB492 ($599) uses the same technology as laser printer otherwise. That makes it indistinguishable from a monochrome laser multifunction printer (MFP) in any practical sense, which is why LED-based printers are usually grouped with lasers. If you're looking for a monochrome laser MFP for up to heavy-duty use in a micro or small office—or up to medium-duty use in a midsize office—the MB492 ($399.99 at Amazon) is a strong contender, and it belongs on your short list.

The OKI printer doesn't offer quite enough to replace the Brother MFC-8950DW as Editors' Choice for the category, primarily because of its lower paper capacity and lack of both Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Direct, even as an upgrade. If you don't need the Brother printer's additional paper handling or its Wi-Fi support, however, the two printers are closely matched otherwise, with similar speeds, MFP functions, and features.

Basics

The MB492 can print and fax from, as well as scan to, a PC. Standalone capabilities include copying and faxing, scanning a document to send as email or through an Internet fax service, and both printing from and scanning to a USB memory key. A 7-inch touch screen, plus a well-designed menu system, makes it easy to give commands from the front panel.

Mobile printing support includes printing through an access point from iOS and Android smartphones and tablets. However, the lack of Wi-Fi Direct means that if you don't have an access point on your network, your mobile printing will be limited to printing through the cloud. It also means that if you connect the printer to a single PC via USB cable, you won't be able to take advantage of the mobile printing support at all. However, that shouldn't be an issue in most cases, since almost any office that needs this heavy-duty a printer is likely to connect it to a network.

The MB492 falls a notch below the Brother MFC-8950DW in terms of paper handling, but it offers more than enough for most small to medium-size offices. The printer comes with a 250-sheet paper drawer, a 100-sheet multipurpose tray, and a print duplexer for two-sided printing. If you need more, you can boost the capacity to 880 sheets with an optional 530-sheet second drawer ($229). In comparison, the Brother printer offers a 550-sheet standard capacity, and a maximum 1,050 sheets.

For scanning, the MB492 supplements its letter-size flatbed with a 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF). The ADF can handle up to legal-size paper, and it also duplexes, by scanning one side of the page, turning it over, and scanning the other side. Here again, the Brother printer offers a little more, with a legal-size flatbed and a duplexing scanner, rather than duplexing ADF, which saves time by scanning both sides of the page at once.

In addition to both printing and scanning in duplex, the MB492 can combine the two to let you copy both single- and double-sided originals to your choice of single- or double-sided copies. It can also scan in duplex for faxing.

Setup, Speed, and Output Quality

At 17.9 by 16.8 by 18.8 inches (HWD), the MB492 is too big to share a desk with comfortably, but small enough so you shouldn't have any trouble finding room for it even in most small offices. Given its weight of 46.3 pounds, moving it into place is best treated as a two-person job.

Setup is standard for the breed. For my tests, I connected it to a network by Ethernet and installed the drivers and other software on a system running Windows Vista. If you want to fax from your PC, however, be aware that the Recommended Install choice doesn't include the fax driver. You need to choose Custom Install and then click on the Fax Driver check box.

OKI rates the MB492 at 42 pages per minute (ppm), which is the speed you should see when printing text files or other documents that need little to no processing. Results on our tests were reasonable for the engine speed and price, but not impressive.

See How We Test Printers

On our business applications suite (timed with QualityLogic's hardware and software), the MB492 came in at 10.1ppm, which makes it essentially tied with both the Brother MFC-8950DW, at 10.6ppm, and the Brother MFC-8910DW at 10.0ppm. However, it's also slower than some less expensive printers with lower rated speeds, including, for example, the Canon imageClass MF212w ($151.20 at Canon) , with a 24ppm rating and a 12.2ppm measured speed on our tests.

Output quality is a touch below par overall, primarily because the text output falls as the low end of the fairly tight range that includes the vast majority of monochrome lasers. Fortunately, lasers in general do so well with text that even the low end of the range is more than good enough for almost any business use, as long as you don't have a need for small fonts.

Graphics and photo output are absolutely typical for a laser. For graphics output, that translates to being suitable for any internal business need. Most people would also consider it good enough for PowerPoint handouts and the like. Photos are roughly equivalent to photos in a newspaper, making them good enough to print recognizable images from photos on Web pages.

If your print needs are heavy-duty enough to benefit from the Brother MFC-8950DW's paper capacity, or you must have a legal-size flatbed or Wi-Fi, you'll obviously want to take a close look at the Brother printer. If don't need one or more of those specific features, however, the OKI MB492 can go head-to-head with the Brother MFC-8950DW, and it delivers somewhat better graphics quality. That's enough to make it an excellent alternative, and could be enough to make it your preferred choice.

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