RICOH GX 3050 ???

[ffutures]

As my old laser gets more and more tired I'm incereasingly thinking in terms of replacing it with something else. I don't usually do vast quantities but there are occasional big runs e.g. 100+ sheets of disk labels.

The bottom line is that I need good mono and preferably colour, duplexing would be very useful, and preferably not incredibly expensive to run.

The one I keep coming back to is the RICOH GX 3050 "gelsprinter," which is a network printer with duplex and goes for around 60 quid plus postage. It's an inkjet but the ink is allegedly quick drying and relatively cheap. There appear to be Mac and Linux drivers for it.

Anyone got any reasonable hands-on experience (and not just seen a review, I want to know the real dirt...)?

There's no great urgency, the laser is still fine for mono - what I may do is buy something else for colour, e.g. the Ricoh, and keep the laser as my workhorse for text and drafts.

Comments

[nojay.livejournal.com]

If you're only needing colour capability occasionally I'd suggest you find a quick-print shop somewhere locally and get any colour stuff done there. It will probably work out cheaper in the long run, the quality is usually guaranteed and you don't have the aggravation of inkjet ink or gels drying up during long periods of disuse and clogging the nozzles.

If you're determined to have in-house colour printing my recommendation would be to buy a new laser; they're expensive to feed but the toner doesn't die on you in a few months which mitigates the cost somewhat. Ebuyer are doing the Dell 1320cn for about 125 quid and it comes with full-capacity toners. Refurb toner sets cost about 70 quid, I understand and they'll give about 2000 pages at 5% coverage. It's not duplex out of the box though.

There's also the Xerox/Tektronix solid-wax Phasers which do very good colour and photoreproduction once calibrated. They don't dry up or get blocked nozzles as do inkjets, but they're not that cheap. You can find them on Ebay occasionally; they were office workhorses like the older HP LJ 4 and 5 monsters and they don't break easily. Ebay ref: 110551606831 is a listing for a refurbished Phaser for 280 quid BIN, duplex printing included.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit dubious about the wax ones because there's only one source for consumables AFAIK.

The Dell is around cheaper than that (see e.g. Morgan who give you two sets of toners for about the same price), but I really would like duplex, it's been very useful. Unfortunately the duplex kit cost more than the printer when I checked it out!

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

I have an older version of the Xerox color printer with the "solid ink" technology. It is fine in a busy office environment, but bad for occasional spot printing because it has to melt the crayons every time you warm it up, which ends up leaving most of your solid ink in a black wax you have to throw out. I had a bunch at an old job. You can get third party ink for them.

The color on the Dell color printers is not good. It is fine for "office" printing, where you're just doing charts or bars of color. It is very poor at reproducing color images. We have one at work, and it gets very little use.

Having said that, I completely agree with nojay's assessment. You're better off getting a color laser if you're going to do any kind of volume. They're more reliable and cheaper on a per-page basis. One of the downsides if you're making game components is that the laser toner and/or solid ink doesn't soak into the page: it melts onto it. That means it'll scuff off with heavy use. With a good inkjet, the paper actually soaks up the ink which reduces scuffing from continual use (like cards or handouts that get a lot of handling).

I've never had a bad experience with HPs or Canons, and I've used many models from both extensively. I still use my LaserJet 4050N, which is rock-solid and still works great after many many years, including the abuse of hauling it around to conventions.

I was scarred by a long, horrific experience with a Ricoh color laser printer so I would never, ever buy one. I do have a Ricoh tabloid printer (mono laser) that works, but is a bear to deal with and has very flimsy components. I can't recommend it.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

More on Dell: the build quality on them isn't great. They seem to break down much more quickly than other printers we have, and they're very, very noisy on their way to the graveyard. I haven't had one make it to 20k pages before I had to replace a part. We haven't had any trouble with the duplexers, though. Really, only the Ricohs seemed to have duplexer trouble. Every single one I've had to deal with had frequent duplexer jams.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Forgot to say that as I understand it the Ricoh uses some sort of gel ink that doesn't clog etc. - allegedly. But again it's tying you to a single supplier, no refurbs etc.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

I've got an HP2600n that I'm pretty happy with. Not duplex (that would be handy) and not terribly good for photographs, but fast, quiet, and reliable.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

HP is probably the option I'll look at first if I go for another laser.