Ricoh C900

[Josh]

I've seen this mentioned a few times in several threads but haven't yet seen a full discussion on it.

On paper it looks great (don't most things!?)... 90ppm, Auto Duplex 260gsm, 1200x1200x2bits, 90ppm, FTB reg +/- 1mm, oh and 90ppm.

But obviously the fact it's a brand new product is slightly off putting.

I'm having a dem on it this week and wondered if anyone else had seen it yet and what your thoughts were?

Ta,
J

[random]

This is excellent news Josh I'm really interested on feedback on this machine. Make sure you take some really hard files to print and let us know about the quality.

[Craig]

I bet your interested Random, the Ricoh and the Xerox 700 are in direct competition with the 6500/6501. Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer!

[lfelton]

Originally Posted by Craig

I bet your interested Random, the Ricoh and the Xerox 700 are in direct competition with the 6500/6501. Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer!

Really? I thought the C900 was meant to be much more expensive than either of them?

I saw this machine at TPE and had a good look at the sample prints. The print quality was not impressive, with the "piled on" shiny toner look, muddy/grainy tints and banded solids. Very much on a par with first generation toner machines and I would expect this current Ricoh machine to find a home in high volume business documents, rather than commercial print. The machine only comes with a Fiery RIP (in fact it is "co-branded" with EFI, i.e. it has EFI badges on the machine itself), which may narrow its appeal as well.

Overall though, it's a pretty damn impressive "first attempt" at a production machine. It wouldn't surprise me if Ricoh's intention was to get limited numbers out in real world installations, and then come up with a v2 PDQ. IMO, Ricoh will be a serious player in the (pretty near) future, but not with this machine.

[Josh]

Yes, I'd agree with that lfelton...

It seems to be priced between the Xerox 5000AP and 7000AP.

All the promo material seemed slightly geared towards CRDs etc but will have to see what it's like in the flesh.

[Craig]

I wasn't referring to price alone but more towards the AMPV of the machine and it's price. It's priced competitive to the 700/6500 (all tho more expensive but in the park) but has a much higher AMPV than both. I guess If I was looking for a true production device with a tight budget the Ricoh would be worth a look at.

lfelton, I did not see the muddy/grainy banded prints you described, the prints I have from Graph Expo look quite nice, as nice as the 700 and 6500, maybe slightly better.

Again their first "attempt" is quite nice, looks like a competitor to me.

[smiller]

I also noticed that the prints from the Ricoh 900 at Graph Expo were about as good as the Xerox 700 and KM 6501. However, I overheard one potential customer questioning Ricoh about the IQ and the Ricoh rep basically admitted that it may not be as good as the Xerox/KM units and he focused on the value for the performance.

I found that curious because to me the limited show samples looked good, but I'm wondering if a broader set of real samples may show something else and maybe that is why the Ricoh rep was admitting as such.

[Craig]

Interesting, smiller, I did not hear any scuttlebutt of the sort. Only heard it referred to as entry level production.

[ssga-cm]

We are looking at the Ricoh C900 along with the Xerox 7000PAP and Canon 7000VP for our in-house print shop. We are averaging 100k+ prints per month and growing; and bringing our offset short run printing in-house as well. How would you compare the print quality and build quality of these three. We're leaning toward Xerox for quality and reliability but the Ricoh looks irresistable from a value perspective.

We print everything from color presentations to 28 lb laser to brochures on 100 lb Xerox Allure, to 8-page saddle-stitched product descriptions (that are now offset, but will be run off the digital press).

ssga-cm

Originally Posted by smiller

I also noticed that the prints from the Ricoh 900 at Graph Expo were about as good as the Xerox 700 and KM 6501. However, I overheard one potential customer questioning Ricoh about the IQ and the Ricoh rep basically admitted that it may not be as good as the Xerox/KM units and he focused on the value for the performance.

I found that curious because to me the limited show samples looked good, but I'm wondering if a broader set of real samples may show something else and maybe that is why the Ricoh rep was admitting as such.

[Josh]

right then... report after the demo:

I've had demo's on Xerox DC250, 700, 5000AP and 8000AP, Konica Minolta 6500e and the Kodak Nexpress so I've got a fair bit to compare it to.

First impression: Large photocopier with big feeders and a stacker. The engine area of the device is larger than that of the KM however it still looks very plasticy. The paper trays in particular seemed quite fragile and had A LOT of side to side movement when opened. The guides you adjust for paper size in the trays also seemed quite light weight.

Moving along the paper path (which is actually a decent size, I'd say similar to that of 5000AP) and the actual build quality in this part of the device seemed quite s****y... steel chassis with ABS plastic coating.

Once the sheet first enters the engine the lead edge is physically knocked up onto four retractable gates... If for example the right edge of the paper is slightly ahead of the left, this allows the left hand side to "catch up" and so brings the sheet into alignment before it's imaged.

The fuser seemed of decent construction with a nice warning sticker instructing that it must be lifted by two people as it weighs 30kg. Unfortunately apart from this the rest of the engine area did seem quite plastic based, the drums in particular looked very very small.

At the bottom of the engine section there's a purge tray whereby if a double feed is detected rather than stopping the device they are fed through and into this. Quite a good feature if you're wanting to leave it unattended.

Fuser, drums and developer were all user replaceable.

The speed of the device is impressive however the image quality is not so.

First of all it's incredibly oily, they've obviously not quite refined the use of silicone oil. Anyone who says this about the 5,7 or 8,000APs either hasn't seen one or hasn't seen a working one. I just really didn't notice it on the Xerox's. The only digital printer I've seen it on was an original non-ap 5000 and even on that it didn't look that bad. On the Ricoh I could smear it around the page with my finger. What was strange though was that it seemed quite random, some jobs looked incredibly flat, others would be completely covered in oil and others would simply have patches. It just wasn't a great look.

The other main issue was with gradients. It just wouldn't do them. Full stop. It basically just seemed to band them into centimeter blocks. This was on a variety of files.

The resolution and quality of pictures did seem ok though. No complaints there.

I have seen other demo machines where the quality hasn't quite been upto par on the day but after a service they perform much better. This may be the case with the Ricoh, it's difficult to say.

Overall I think it's quite an impressive first attempt and should prompt other manufacturers to release faster devices sooner rather than later, it's obvious it's now possible without the price becoming restrictive.

If anyone's got any questions I'll do my best to answer them!