Product Reviews

With the introduction of the AP305 and AP505 A3 colour lasers, Ricoh is targeting two distinct printing markets. The AP305 provides the budget-conscious small company or workgroup with large format colour and mono output, while the AP505 on review is aimed at companies, such as advertising agencies or design studios, looking for fast colour-proofing facilities. The AP505 is fitted with an EFI (Electronics for Imaging) Fiery controller and, although used by many big names in the printing industry, these aren't often seen at this end of the market. In fact, the only Fiery-equipped workgroup laser we've seen at PC Pro was Canon's CLBP-360PS (reviewed issue 33, p154).

Both PCL5 and PostScript 3 emulations are provided, plus a true resolution of 600 « 600dpi enhanced to a simulated 600 « 2,400dpi with smoothing technology. A notable feature is support for printing on 13 « 18in oversized A3 paper for full-bleed A3 prints complete with crop marks, a highly desirable feature for publishing companies. Standard memory is 32Mb expandable to 160Mb, and Ricoh made the same mistake as many other vendors by stocking up early with memory when it was at its highest prices, so a 32Mb upgrade will set you back £230. However, you can use industry-standard 168-pin PC100 SDRAM DIMMs, and Ricoh sensibly recommends shopping around. A Type B parallel port is partnered by an integrated 10/100BaseTX dual-speed adaptor for the network link. This has a standard RJ-45 port and an AUI (attachment unit interface) so ancient 10Base2 or 10Base5 networks can still connect to the printer using a transceiver.

The AP505 is a mighty chunk of cream-coloured plastic measuring 660 « 475 « 625mm (W « H « D) and tipping the scales at 62kg. Care should be taken when moving it as we found the side panel recesses too small to maintain a firm grip. Underneath, an integral paper tray holds 250 sheets and a bypass tray at the front handles up to 50 sheets. Two optional 500-sheet base feeders (£210 each) bring capacity up to 1,300 sheets, and all the trays handle oversized

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A3 paper.

We expect quality network management tools for printers in this price range but were unimpressed with EFI's offering. We first encountered its Fiery WebTools with the Canon CLBP-360PS and are surprised at how little had changed over two years. The printer is accessed over TCP/IP using a Java-enabled Web browser and provides a simple monitor showing RIP (routing information protocol) status, plus details on the current user and print job. That's all you get, though, as there's no information provided on the status of the printer itself or consumables. Installation on our NetWare 5 network was tedious, as the NDS (Novell Directory Services) print queue, print server and printer objects must be created separately using NWADMIN32. You can view the NDS settings but can't modify them or add new objects, such as users and queues, as you can with HP's superb JetAdmin.

The colour (£379) and black (£230) toner cartridges are mounted in a carousel accessed from a side panel, with each lasting for 15,000 A4 pages. A photoconductor unit (£349) has a longevity of 15,000 full-colour pages, fuser oil (£32) needs a top-up after 20,000 pages, and a waste toner bottle (£20) lasts for 5,000 colour pages. Printing costs are high as an A4 page at five per cent per colour works out at 12p, whereas Lexmark's A3 speed demon, the 12ppm Optra Colour 1200n (reviewed issue 49, p50), can do this for only 7.3p.

Admittedly, LED page printers can't match the excellent output quality of the AP505. The CorelDraw train and PC Pro colour chart showed minimal stepping across colour fades, although grey shades made up from equal cyan, yellow and magenta mixes showed a slight hint of magenta. Marred by a little banding and a lack of vibrancy, detail in photographic images was nevertheless particularly impressive and on a par with HP's excellent LaserJet 4500DN (reviewed issue 51, p169).

Print speed was a mixed bag with a 23-page A4 document heavily formatted and containing large graphics and photographs delivered at 3ppm, while a five-page report with a few colour graphs averaged 4.5ppm. Mono speeds were also below the quoted figure with a 15-page Word document completed at 14ppm.

Ricoh's main competition is from QMS' Magicolour 330 range, which also supports full-bleed A3 printing. The 330 EX comes with a hugely superior hardware specification and costs nearly £1,000 less, but only offers PostScript 2 emulation. Previous experience with QMS indicates that you'll get substantially better print quality and speed from the AP505, while QMS' CrownAdmin offers only marginally better network management tools.