Color MFPs prove capable and costly

Ricoh's control panel can be overwrought. Making a copy requires at least two steps: choosing a mechanical button for monochrome, two-color, or four-color mode, then pressing the Start button. You set a scan's resolution and color in one window but set its file format in a different window. And in some views it's hard to distinguish dialog-box tabs from -- yes -- subtabs, such as the stack of windows in the Edit/Color Creation area.

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After you've learned your way around, however, you'll be impressed by the system's capabilities. For example, the Job Cancel allows you to change the number of copies before killing a job. One scan setting is tuned for copying maps, and another for copying degraded copies of copies. You can crop or knock out parts of an image by entering x, y coordinates on the control panel. You can also combine duplex, N-up, and rotated images into one document and then assign page numbers, date stamps, and watermarks. You can give your documents a colored background using a canned color or one of 15 that you can mix and name yourself. You can also transform colors completely -- for example, turn a gray sky blue or convert all the red cells in a spreadsheet to black. On a more practical note, you can set up scan-to-folder destinations at the control panel by browsing the LAN as if you were at a PC.

Ricoh made some regrettable mechanical decisions. The Aficio 2238C's auxiliary tray is sturdy, but its plastic finger-like extension to support tabloid-size paper popped off repeatedly. The four 500-sheet main paper trays feel flimsy. We like the trays' automatic paper-size sensors, but their stick-on paper-size labels are potentially messy.

The list prices we gathered for this review should be taken with a grain of salt. The $20,210 price tag on our test configuration seems steep, however, for a color MFP with no offset-stacking or stapling capability as standard equipment.

Sharp AR-BC320 Color Imager

Sharp's AR-BC320 scored well in features and ease-of-use. If its MSRP means anything, it's also one of the more economical choices we tested -- which could persuade some offices to overlook the machine's shortcomings in speed and output quality.

Our test unit augmented the standard 500-sheet letter-size input tray and 250-sheet tabloid-size auxiliary feed with two 500-sheet, tabloid-size trays and a duplexer. The top of the printer incorporates the standard output tray. Other feeders and finishers are also available. The paper trays feel flimsy when you pull them out and act finicky when you push them in. Also, they cannot automatically sense paper size.

The scanner/ADF that sits atop the AR-BC320 cannot telescope to accommodate thick documents, and it has to flip pages to scan duplex. Some MFPs we've tested have dual scanners to capture both sides simultaneously. We do appreciate the red light that flashes when we forget to remove originals from the platen.

The AR-BC320's abundant features appear mostly as soft buttons on the monochrome LCD. You can blow up copies into multisheet posters -- the biggest size is four tabloid sheets in each direction. The Repeat feature puts multiple copies of the same image on one page and has the most layout options we've seen. Active jobs appear in separate print, scan, and fax queues, and you can change their order.