Customer Reviews

Ricoh Aficio CL3000 Color Laser Printer

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Our company purchased the CL3000 not more than 4 months ago. It worked out of the box, and the color printing is fast. This lasted to about a week. After a week, the printer began making a horrible grinding noise. After letting the Ricoh help desk listen to the noise over the phone, they scheduled a tech to come out and fix it. The tech showed and said that the auger waste doors on the color PCU were jammed, and the color PCU needed to be replaced. He didn't carry the part on him, so it would have to come from Ricoh direct. This took about a week, so no printer for two weeks since the problem occurred. We replaced the color PCU, and continued printing for 3 more months. We began to notice red streaks in the color sections of print. Again we consulted Ricoh's help desk (which is nothing more than a tech scheduling service), and they sent out the same tech again. This time, he claims the black PCU is faulty. He actually broken the flimsy auger door and used a wadded up piece of paper to force the door open. This time, he requested we return the PCU under warranty, to Ricoh for exchange. I would like to heave this over a cliff before I invest more time on a clearly defective design. For those of you who love this unit, are you printing more than 400 pages a week? Maybe it's just a matter of time for you.........

It's got speed, good color quality and tones, and a small footprint. While it isn't edge-to-edge, it certainly prints on a large area of paper. It comes network-ready. For just under $850, what else could you ask for?!

I strongly recommend the Ricoh CL 3000 for anyone in a small- to mid-size business that needs color printing on a very regular basis.

---Edited on January 17, 2006. About six months after getting this, we started seeing some really bad banding. And have spent almost the cost of the printer initially ($700) in trying to fix it. Unfortunately, the staying power of this is a joke. So if I could do it all over again, I'd probably give it three stars.

This Printer - is one of the best I have ever seen in performance and quality output. The Color is Bright - clear - and consistant. Get the Duplexer and watch this machine print your manuals and books - double sided - in record time. The main con I would have with this printer is that Ricoh - a very famous Japanese company- doesn't advertise it. If they advertised it - it would be even more expensive. It is an excellent printer and I would highly recommend it for the advanced home user or as a workgroup printer. It has options including hard disk, additional memory and duplexer. Try it - you'll love it!

Laura's comments are not outrageous. While this printer DID work out of the box (on a MAC) great and I like the quality of color, speed, etc.; I have had continual problems with the Photo Conductor Units(PCU) about every 3-4 months. I've had the machine for about 16 months now, only have 8700 copies total and I've had to replace the color & B&W each twice and the Intermediate Transfer Unit once. It's a love/hate relationship for me. So far corp. has comped things but its been like pulling teeth. They finally sent a tech out and he had probs too; so I feel confindent it wasn't just me...

Great when it works, but you could buy a new machine every year for the $$$ spent on supplies---What do you think, has anyone every done THAT?

I bought this color printer two years agao and was very pleased with the setup and performance. We use it in a small business office with several other printers in the office.

But over the past two years , I have had to replace the color PCU 4 timns at over $300 each and the black PCU sevral times. My annual maintenece cost easily exceeds the cost of the original printer.

We dont use this printer heavily and we are getttimng less than 50 % of the published usage per PCU.

I wouldnt reccommend this printer. Everytime I replace a PCU, I question weather to junk this one and buy another brand.

TOm

Fast, easy to set up and great prints from photos to brochures. This printer was able to handle the great variety of paper sizes and weight types that I needed to print on. The output was great. Glossy prints where of photo quality at 1200 by 1200. This is a must have printer for the home or small office.

What a bargin ... I picked up one of these and had it connected to the network printing from PCs, MACs and a UNIX workstation in about 35 minutes. The basic CL3000 comes with USB, Parallel and Ethernet connetions, four toner cartridges, a color and black developer cartridge and thats it ... great instructions. I registered via FAX and they call the next day asking if everything was ok. The print output is as good as a $2000 or more color laser and print speed for color is excellent. Too bad they don't do some marketing, this printer is a steal.