Ricoh Aficio SP C210SF All-In-One Laser Printer

Ricoh SP C210SF Laser Color Flatbed All-in-One

This is a wonderful and highly functional entry level professional business machine!

I am self employed and work from home most of the time. I need a machine that can do it all because I don't like using up extra desk or shelf space with multiple machines. I have been getting by with these two and three hundred dollar all-in-one units that are readily available at any office supply store. They never perform quite as well as I would like them to, but have provided me with the bare necessities of an office machine.

The functions of these machines don't always work quite as advertised, the support is a nightmare, and the cartridges are ridiculously expensive and do not last. It wasn't until I decided to take the plunge into an entry level* "real" business machine that I discovered this is all very intentional in an effort to sell all this amazingly priced ink!

*I consider entry level to be a professional machine that you can not just run down and pick up at Office Depot and in the price range of $700-$1600 (I wanted one I could buy and not have to lease a $10,000 machine!).

Ricoh who?

I had only heard of Ricoh in the last few years, so you might wonder why I chose a Ricoh over a more well know brand. I work for a large real estate company and all the offices in my branch are all filled with Ricoh products. I had never heard of them before they started populating the offices, but have enjoyed the quality and consistent performance of these wonderful machines over the years. My husband is the consumer research guru as well as the computer genius in the house and he thought I was absolutely crazy to choose this machine because we could not find one single review of it anywhere on the internet. My background use of Ricoh's products at the main office as well as some of my other research led me to buy this machine anyway.

It turns out Ricoh is not a new name after all. They have actually been around in one form or another since 1936. The company sold a lot of cameras in the 50's and then went to copiers and then to faxes. All of their products over the years have been pretty innovative and I had actually never heard of them until I started using them in the real estate offices!

What's in the box and what extras do you need to buy to get started right away?

- the machine
- the power cord
- standard tray
- starter cartridges (smaller yields)
- owner's manual/warranty info
- driver/software disks and info

I didn't need to buy anything except for paper once I made the initial plunge of almost nine hundred dollars on the machine. It is important to note, though, that only laser paper should be used with this machine. I went out and bought a box of high quality laser paper.

Stats and features -

- wireless ready color laser copier, printer, fax, scanner
- 8 prints per minute for full color and white/31 prints per minute for black & white
- warm up time: less than 45 seconds (varies depending on function)
- Memory: 64MB RAM standard, but can be upgraded to 576MB

This is a space saving model and measures 19 inches wide by 17.4 inches high by 21 inches deep. It weighs in at almost 77 pounds.

Setting up the beast -

I will admit that my husband did this for me, but I sat by him the entire time. It took about three hours to get this thing up and running including unpacking time. Most of this time was spent getting it on the network and that had nothing to do with the machine itself, but rather our wireless network (It seems with two TIVOs and a few laptops plus a MAC all on a wireless network things can get complicated…or maybe he isn't the genius I thought he was….).

One note about setting it up – Make sure and not lose that driver disc that it ships with because the download version online is huge and can take quite some time to get off the internet even with a cable connection. It makes setting up other computers much easier if you keep it handy.

Ease in use between the functions….actually operating it in real life

The operational keypad of this machine is very straightforward and easy to use. I have used it with little effort over six months and never even picked up the manual for directions. It is just laid out logically and easy to understand.

Scan and fax is for Windows users only.

Printing -

I love the wireless capabilities in today's technologies. Being able to print from outside on the deck in the summertime or in bed at night is wonderful. The prints on this machine are beautiful. I have never had a color laser printer, but only the ink jets, and the crispness and professionalism is really apparent. Photos look like photos now instead of washed out pictures and the color does not bleed.

Warm up time for first prints is less than 20 seconds for color and less than 15 seconds for black and white.


Copying

Copying is also pretty amazing – it copies like I am at Kinko's! I used to run to my office if I had a thick contract I needed to copy. I don't bother anymore because this is just as fast as going to my office without the hassle or the gas. It warms up in less than 30 seconds depending on whether or not you are copying color or black and white and output is 21 copies per minute for black and white or 7 for color. Images are crisp and clean and quality is fabulous. You can copy from the scanner bed or the feeder on top for up to 35 pages. You can copy from 1 to 99 copies and resolution is 600 x 300 dpi. There are easy to understand darken and lighten functions as well as reduce and enlarge. I was able to easily blow up my driver's license to make a clear copy for my lender. I have received faxes that are almost unreadable and been able to darken them in order to include them in contracts.

Faxing

My stacks of paper can easily be faxed with no paper jams!!! My final breaking point on my last cheap machine was the fax. I was trying to close a deal at about midnight one night and it took me five faxes to get the other agent the signed contract. I was tired and hungry and had put in a very long day. I strongly believe in having the tools to succeed in anything you do and that was just not cutting it. In fact, it got so bad that anything over two pages would require me to retransmit my faxes.

I can fax directly from the scanner bed or from the feeder on top for up to 35 pages. This machine has 16 one touch fax dials so you can program numbers in for easy faxing and it transmits at about three seconds a page.

You can set up PC Fax functions as well, but I don't need these for my purposes.

Scanning

The capabilities of the scanning function of this machine are big on my list for why I got this machine and why I wanted a professional machine to begin with. Whenever a fax comes in at my corporate office, they scan it to my email for me. No longer are there late nights where I have to run to the office to grab a fax. Not only that, but I can easily forward an email to a client at work or home who might not be able to get a fax as conveniently otherwise. It has saved a ton of time and made my work operate very efficiently. The problem is that the office is not always open so if I need to email a client something when the office is not open, I am stuck going down to my office to email it to myself. Two years ago, I told my husband that I simply had to have this technology at home, and now I have it!

With this machine, I can scan not only to my computer, but also to email. You can even scan to multiple computers on the network as well. Scans are 600 x 600 dpi and can be output to an array of file extensions. I like to scan mine into pdf files, but you can also scan to jpg, TIFF, email, or OCR. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is the really cool way that you can use the bundled software to convert images of the words into text you can edit. Images scanned are very high quality and the software is easy to use. The scanner bed is 8.5 inches by 11 inches.

When the lights go down in the city……power consumption and noise

Power source: 60Hz, 120 V

The lights flickered the first time I used this! I was a little worried, but my electrician assured me it is fine and as long as I have the shredder plugged in somewhere else during use, it will not affect our electricity. During printing, this machine uses 615 watts of power.

As I said before, we are all wireless here, so I do not sit next to the C210sf during printing. I can hear it from my living room, but it does not seem to be overly loud. It does have to come on and warm up if it has been a while since a print, but I don't hear a lot of the noises I heard from previous machines (I used to call that the printer dance). I can use it easily in the middle of the night and not wake anyone, and we never hear the faxes that come in throughout the night.

A word on Consumables….

Consumables, consumables…they must be accounted for.

Consumables were a big factor in choosing a small business machine for me. A lot of the comparable competing models had some amazingly well hidden extra costs to the tune of almost the original purchase price in some cases. As I mentioned earlier, this machine is shipped with starter cartridges included. These are smaller cartridges with a lower yield.

One caution on yield numbers: they are based on a lower coverage than is used for the average print. This means you will most likely use more ink than what they consider in their numbers to calculate the yield. Ricoh calculates the yields using a 5% coverage rate. I think my rates definitely vary, but I would put the number closer to 7-10% for the majority of my prints. Cartridges run between $150 and $200 depending on where you find them. The following yields are at the manufacturer's 5% coverage rate:

Black toner cartridge: 9800 prints
Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow toner cartridges: 6500 prints each

A waste toner bottle needs to be purchased at roughly 11,000 developments. This is about fifteen dollars.

The big consumable on this one and the one that gave me great pause is the photo conductor. It comes in at around $500, but only needs to be replaced every 60,000 developments. It is a lower price than a lot of the other models I checked out, and when I actually thought about how many prints 60,000 was, I decided that the technology would probably become obsolete before I actually got to 60,000 developments. My usage rate varies, but I would consider myself on average a moderate user. Even if I do need to buy this part sooner than I think, the costs on this machine are still lower than those wonderful $50 cartridges that pile up around the cheaper mass market machines. If I think of this part in those terms, it is only the cost of 10 regular cartridges.

So when comparing brands, just make sure and factor in the consumables. Decide what your usage estimate is and what makes sense for you. My personal experience is that I am coming in cheaper and with much higher quality output in addition to drastically less frustration.

Consumables are warrantied against defects for 90 days.

Paper, tray, etc.

The standard tray can hold letter (8.5x11 inches), A4 (8.3x11.7 inches), EXE (7.24x10.5 inches), and B5 (6.9x9.8 inches), envelopes. Double sides prints need to be done manually. Acceptable paper sources are: plain and thick paper, transparencies, labels, envelopes and glossy paper. In order to use legal paper, you have to buy the additional optional legal tray. I personally do not use legal paper for any of my contracts, but if you do use legal paper at all, then this is probably not the machine for you. There is no legal paper feeder and even with the optional legal paper tray, this machine is not set up to maximize its use for a legal paper user.

Additional Options

You can buy more memory up to 576 MB as well as additional larger paper trays or towers and legal paper trays. I find that the standard memory is quite sufficient for even my largest fax or copy stack, and the standard 250 page paper tray is more than adequate for my uses. The maximum amount of paper it can hold with options is 780 pages.

Warranty Information -

The manufacturer warrants this product against defects for one year after purchase date.

Final words…

This is not a perfect machine, but I have been very happy with it for my needs. I have used it moderately for roughly six months and only had one minor paper jam. I am still on my initial lower yield ink cartridges and expect to definitely get through the year with them. The biggest limitation I see with this machine is the lower functional use with legal paper, but as I said this does not affect me. For an entry level professional printer, overall, this was a good buy for me.