Customer Reviews

Ricoh Aficio Color Laser Printer (SP C210)

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

 

 

Pros: Good quality color and black/white images. It is a nice\ printer for a home office for a low initial price.

Cons: The cartridges run out fast and are expensive to replace ($120/each or $480/all). This makes this printer a poor overall choice. It costs less to buy another printer than to purchase replacement cartridges. And given the rate that the cartridges run out, we had to buy another printer after a ream and a half. I would only recommend this product if the replacement cartridge costs dropped considerably.

When I purchased the Ricoh SP C210 it worked wonderfully. The color was superb and the output fast. I recently updated my iMac to OSX 10.5, Leopard, and found out the hard way that Ricoh will not provide an updated print diver for 10.5. The printer cannot communicate with the computer. So, now I have a very large paper weight on my desk. Beware, this printer is not on Ricoh's list of printer that are compatible with the latest Apple OS.

I am happy enough with the print quality, even though it prints darker on the paper than it shows on the screen - I had to do a lot of work to change the colors I used on a presentation because the black writing was too hard to read on the printed darker blue background.
When I was printing a large and important presentation, the black ink went out on me. I fiddled with it (turned the cogs etc) and it seemed to be okay again. The same think soon happen with the cyan cartridge. No matter what I did I couldn't get the machine to print since it kept saying I needed a new cyan cartridge. If I did a test page, the blues were still deep and rich, so it is a mystery why it won't print when there is obviously toner left. Because my presentation was so important, I started scouring the area to find replacement cartridges - You will not find them - I called the Ricoh Service Center listed on the Ricoh website, but this is not a storefront but for service personnel servicing large corporate clients. I tried the big warehouse chains, but they only carry the most popular makes, which Ricoh is not. I had to get it printed at Kinkos at their high prices.
Since there are so many printers to choose, I would recommend not buying this one: you'll find yourself in the middle of a print job with the printer refusing to cough up another copy and nowhere immediately ready to sell you a new toner cartridge.

My home office ink-jet started to show signs of old age and since color lasers have come down considerably in price I decided to take the plunge. Researching the web I found this model met all my requirements. Some reviews complained it was too noisy. Well it's no louder than my old Epson ink-jet. Set up took about a half hour and then it was simply plug and play. Instructions were complete and understandable. Pressed a button and out comes the print test sheet. Wow, it knocked my socks off! This machine is awesome.