Sharp primes black-and-white MFP for the office

Sharp is one among a raft of vendors seeking to replace traditional printers with MFPs (multifunction printers). To that end, the company has sweetened its black-and-white AR-M355N Digital Imager by including a bundle of software for sending and managing documents over the network. My fully loaded test system also came equipped with extensive paper-handling features, including a finisher that folds and saddle stitches booklets, and extra components to turn scans into faxes and file archives.

In general, the AR-M355N is plenty fast for an ordinary workgroup or office, performing near its 35-ppm (pages per minute) engine speed under certain circumstances. In my test, the machine printed multiple sets of a simple 10-page text document at 33.1 ppm and copied them at 33.7 ppm. And it printed multiple sets of my graphics test pages at 28.0 ppm and copied them at 28.5 ppm.

That said, the AR-M355N makes a single print or copy much slower. It printed the text-document test file once at a speed of only 20.0 ppm, and its single-set graphics printing speed dropped to 10.2 ppm. Copying results showed similar drop-offs.

The AR-M355N’s printed text really impressed me. It looked clean and sharp at all sizes, even on type too small to read without a magnifying glass. Copied text had slightly wobbly edges at magnification, but it wasn’t noticeable to the naked eye. Printed grayscale photos had good detail and shading. Copied photos, however, looked grainy and washed out. Scanned text and graphics resembled copies.

Although any first-time AR-M355N user can easily make a simple copy, understanding the machine’s deeper features takes some concentration. That’s partly due to the control panel design. For example, sometimes the menus show two sets of OK and Cancel buttons: one to accept or areject the current setting and one to accept or reject all settings you’ve changed. Although this is more efficient than making you back out one step at a time, it can be confusing to the uninitiated.

Other functions are simply poorly designed. For example, the Image Send button initiates fax and scan-to-network jobs, which requires an extra step to narrow down; also, with some on-screen buttons it’s hard to distinguish the label from the button.

The AR-M355N’s depth of copy features deserves praise. For example, you can erase the edges and the center of an original to avoid black borders and gutter stripes. You can also stamp page numbers, dates, a watermark, or an ad hoc text message on the document, define which pages and where on the page to stamp, and apply formatting options.

Sharp’s mechanical design also has strengths. The automatic document feeder has its own scanner lens, so the machine captures both sides of a page in one pass without flipping the paper over. The sturdy trays are easy to adjust, and they automatically detect paper size. Also, you can set up multiple machines on the network to roll jobs from a busy machine to another machine.

Sharp’s other admin features are competent but not exceptional. An internal Web site allows you to check the machine’s status, create scan-to-folder links, and adjust settings and user privileges from a Web browser. Most MFPs don’t offer enough granularity in defining which users can access particular settings, but the AR-M355N’s Key Operator mode is a little more refined. You can allow or block access to editing address books for fax and scan-to-e-mail, for example, and lock down network settings.

The machine I tested lists for $16,995 with three extra paper trays for a total of 2,000 sheets in four sources, a seven-bin output sorter, and a finisher that folds and saddle-stitches booklets, plus a 10-seat license for the document management software.

Sharp’s AR-M355N Digital Imager makes available the whole suite of capabilities essential for sharing documents in a modern office. The configuration I tested straddles the worlds of a print center and a document management system, which inflates the price. But the unit’s core components are sound, and you can modify the configuration to meet your organization’s needs.