Color printers hit higher speeds

Ricoh could have made the Aficio CL4000DN a little easier to use. The control panel requires drilling down through many menu layers to change anything. The Adobe PostScript driver looks cluttered and has disappointing limitations. For example, it can print watermarks in only three fonts, and only in gray. The printed setup and usage manuals are generally thorough, but the advanced topics in on-screen help files are less so.

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The Aficio CL4000DN's paper handling gets mixed marks. The main paper tray adjusts easily and senses paper size, but it feels flimsy, and you have to flip a lever to match paper weight. Stick-on, paper-size labels are convenient -- until you have to change them. The auxiliary tray is sturdy, but its spring-loaded latch on our unit was finicky.

The many levers and latches inside the Aficio CL4000DN seem daunting at first, but they make sense when you use them. The front opens to expose the paper path; the left wall folds down to reveal the imaging components. Toner comes in big, translucent tubes that plug in to hoppers nesting under the output tray. Xerox's Phaser 6300DN has a similar design, but the CL4000DN's is better because the output-tray-cum-lid is attached instead of loose. A rotating, louvered cover on the exhaust port allows you to direct the printer's hot, smelly air as you wish.

Ricoh prices the Aficio CL4000DN at about $1,200 with duplexer. Adding a 40GB hard drive ($330) and a second paper tray ($390; you can add two of them) makes a fully configured model the cheapest in our roundup by $500. Ricoh's consumables are also among the most economical based on our calculations.

Ricoh Aficio CL7200

The Aficio CL7200 topped our ratings by offering excellent print quality and blazing text speed for a comparatively low price -- considering it's a tabloid-size printer. Cheap consumables sweeten the deal. A spooling issue with one of our test files slowed its average graphics speed, but that's a minor complaint.

The Aficio CL7200 averaged a chart-topping 25.2 ppm when printing text, and the results were exemplary: Letters looked a little light, but crisp, and nearly perfect, even at tiny sizes. Graphics looked great: spot-on color swatches, smooth transitions between shades, and attractive, if slightly soft-focus, photos. Blame the anemic 8-ppm average mostly on our Microsoft Excel test file. The Adobe PostScript driver processed multiple-copy Excel jobs as individual jobs, piling on extraneous processing time. A setting change fixes the problem, but our tests stick to the defaults, as your users are likely to do.

One oddity about the two standard paper trays: One is stuck at letter size, its length and width guides screwed into place. The tabloid-size tray is easy to adjust. The auxiliary tray can handle paper as wide as 12 inches.

As is our other tabloid-size printer, HP's Color LaserJet 5550dtn, the Aficio CL7200 is humongous -- almost 30 inches high -- and weighs close to 200 pounds. The printer has a strong handgrip at each corner, so four people can maneuver it. But as opposed to HP, Ricoh doesn't provide a rolling base; instead, we parked our test unit on a standard lab workbench and had to climb on a chair to read the top-mounted LCD. The left side opens, and the fuser, which is held in place with magnets, lifts right out for clearing paper jams. The right side, however, opens only to 45 degrees, making access somewhat tight. Imaging components behind the front wall are needlessly locked in place behind a plastic arm that must be unscrewed; they also have tiny thumb grips and are awkward to remove, handle, and reinsert.