Product Reviews

After giving the Ricoh AP505 (reviewed issue 64, p155) the thumbs up, we were looking forward to putting the lower priced AP305 through its paces. Although the AP305 lacks the embedded Fiery colour-matching capability and A3+ paper handling capability, the two printers are actually pretty similar. Both units boast 17ppm mono and 5ppm print speeds, feature a top true resolution of 600 x 600dpi, and each has the same front-panel display featuring adjustment keys with obscure symbols.

Ricoh claims on its Web site that the Aficio AP305 is aimed at the 'general office'. However, priced at £3,995, the general office must either have a generous budget or an acute need for a colour laser printer. It also only comes as standard with a 250-page sheet feeder, which is a bit on the mean side. As a network laser printer serving a number of users, high paper capacity is a top priority.

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Optional paper cassettes are available, fortunately, with a 500-page tray available for £220. 10/100BaseTX network connectivity is supplied as standard, but with no embedded Web server, and the management software is a little feature-bare compared to the Lexmark, Xerox and HP offerings.

In our speed tests the AP305 performed very well, producing the 50-page text test at a rate of 17.5ppm, half a page per minute better than the claimed rate. The 24-page mixed text and graphics test, which combines a variety of fonts with colour photographic images slowed the AP305 down from a claimed 5ppm to 3.47ppm. But despite this, it's the fastest unit on test overall. This is mainly due to its incredibly quick single-page test times.

In terms of quality, it produced acceptable output using the the photographic rather than 'vivid' mode. However, the quality was marred by white speckles where toner didn't adhere to the page. Single-colour transitions were performed smoothly but this wasn't the case for multicoloured blends, where some stepping was introduced. Paradoxically, we found the AP305 able of producing one of the best photographic outputs of the bunch, something that dragged the overall speed/quality score back to a respectable level.

This isn't a bad printer, but for A3 colour printing it can't compete in terms of features or quality with the HP 8550N or Epson's EPL-C8200, while for out-and-out value the HP 4500DN beats it hands down.