Customer Reviews

Ricoh Aficio CL3500N Color Laser Printer (White)

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

 

 

We installed fourteen of these under our purview (college dorms) 10 months ago and our residents printed ~800,000 copies since.

Pros:
* They simply do not jam. I've run a printing operation serving 2500 residents for eight years and have never had a workgroup laserprinter be so reliable.
* They work well in an 'open' printing environment. We us PostScript and accept about 25% of our jobs from Macs, 70% from PCs - mostly XPSP2, and 5% Linux. There are no noticeable OS issues. We've seen that certain versions of Acrobat on Windows or Mac may fail to print, particularly with large file sizes (>300MB ps) or with full-page mathematical notations, but Adobe upgrades fix that on Windows and Preview fixes that on Mac.
* Changing toner is a no-brainer.
* The print quality is excellent for both text and color images. I'm uncertain why Andre's experience was so poor, but believe it was an anomaly.

Cons:
* It's slow. Expect to wait the 20 seconds or so for first page out unless you've just printed another job. And, when it starts printing, it's no speed demon. If you are setting up only one or so, the sleep time is configurable, but with 14 of these deployed and managed by student staff, we merely put printers in place, out-of-box. Stick with Xerox workgroup printers for speedy KW printing.
* It's heavy. Two person heavy. Really.
* It's bigger than your average printer.

Having used other color lasers, I was looking for a good, reliable machine and this is it. I print all kinds of documents: pictures, color brochures, postcards, text and image combinations and the Ricoh performs very well on a variety of media.

For the price, this is an excellent choice.

I have purchased many low end printers including the Samsungs. This printer has not had one bad issue, uses very litte toner and prints very high quality in B/W and Color. I have the same toner for 14 months and print daily. Great buy for the money.

I bought the Ricoh Aficio CL3500 about 6 months ago. It's been dead reliable, with no paper jams. I'm running the printer mostly from Macintoshes (MacOS X 10.4) and have found the drivers to be fine, with good control (you can put the printer into B&W or Color mode, with 15 printer-specific controllable features, far more than I need).

The only complaint I thought I had was resolved -- when I bought the printer I noted several reviews said the text quality was poor. My first print job showed pretty lousy print clarity, and I was a bit disappointed that this was the case. However, when I turned on Colorsync for the print job (you can use either the supplied Ricoh Colorsync profile in the source machine or turn on color correction "in Printer"; both work) the print quality improved drastically, and is now as good as any B&W LaserJet I've used.

Overall, a fantastic deal for a color printer that beats the pants off of inkjet printing costs.

I bought this printer 3 years ago at Amazon.com. Seemed like a good deal. After the first 2700 pages I needed a black cartridge and a PCU. 1900 pages later I need another Photoconducter Unit. I mostly print in black and white.
If the color PCU also goes out at this rate, you're better off buying a new printer. It rarely jams, could be an excellent printer, but the PCU is every time $ 150.00 for 2-3000 pages, that's BS. Very disappointed. Parts needed for 4800 printed black and white pages, $ 370.00

When I first purchased this printer I was pleased with ease of setup, its speed, and its quality - a good deal for the price of $500.00. Fast forward 1 and 1/2 years and the printer started putting vertical cyan streaks on the output. The service technician said it was the color photo conductor unit and it needed to be replaced. I had only printed about of 1,500 pages (as counted by the printer). The original toner which came with the printer wasn't even exhausted yet. The printer was out of warrentee and Ricoh's position was that this was a known "consumable" part which will need to constantly be replaced as the printer is used. Now if the part had a reasonable price tag I might almost accept the need to continually replace both the color photo conductor unit or the black/white one. Problem is Ricoh expects nearly $400.00 for this single piece, over $400.00 when taxes is included. That's nearly 30 cents per printed page for this part alone. Throw in the toner and the b/w photo conductor unit and you cost per printed page soars. In fact, it is cheaper to purchase a new cl3500 than to replace the photo conductor unit - which is just as well because I'm told the photo conductor unit will be damaged if exposed to any light which makes swapping it a bit more interesting I imagine.

I rated this printer as POOR because I do not want to have to purchase a new color laser printer every 1,500 or so prints. Anyone want to buy a slightly used printer, cheap?

No problems with my Ricoh CL3500N Color Laser printer, just in getting UPS to ring my doorbell to deliver the printer. The images, even printing faces, are better than I expected! Had a bit of trouble setting the printer up as a network stand- alone but easy to share as a printer attached to a single computer, and can easily share printer rights to my LAN. Excellent service from Amazon, as usual. I'm very happy!

After a week, this printer is proving to be a great value. For $500, the speed is unbeatable and so far print quality is great. I set it up in about 30 minutes on my home network, without having to refer to anything but the quick setup instructions. It works fine from all 3 computers now and I am very happy. Once, after being unplugged accidentally for a day, I had to reinstall the drivers because it was assigned a different IP address when it came back up - and I'm sure there was an easier fix, but it took about 10 minutes to reinstall the software.

This is a FANTASTIC printer. Reliable, clear printing, a work horse although it doesn't double print without an expensive add on. But, you have to replace everything all the time. I think their toners come half empty and we have had to replace the photoconductor unit for both the color and black and white more than twice. We have TWO people in our office and have only had it a couple of years.

Welcome to the DISPOSABLE COLOR LASER PRINTER! Had this printer for over a year now, 22,000 prints so far. When it does print well the prints are nice, but once something needs replacing you may as well throw it out and buy a new printer.

Doesn't print well on cardstock because thick paper has to feed through the Bypass tray and as it feeds the paper it "stops" for a second leaving this obvious over-inked smudge all the way down the paper.

I have seen the price of the toner fall over the year, but it sure eats a lot. I replaced the color PCU and black PCU units a few months ago, and am now having printing problems, that's why I am on here to find a replacement printer. Don't replace any parts to this printer, just go buy a new one. Don't even call a tech on it, they are just going to encourage you to replace the consumables...Black PCU $178; Color PCU $225; Fuser $319; toner $125 each color, $55 for black; cost of a new printer, $300. That's priceless!