RICOH AFICIO SP C240SF: Flexible machine

This all-in-one laser printer prints 1,000 to 2,500 prints from one set of consumables,and has got all necessary ingredients needed in a small office environment. You get network and USB direct printing with an automatic duplexer that optimises the page utilisation,cost effectiveness and provides a faster throughput.

At 30 kg,this Ricoh machine is pretty heavy. The weight coupled with its dimensions of 420 x 493 x 476 mm make it a somewhat static piece of furniture. It has got a substantial build though which gives it a solid,sturdy look. The control panel is on the front slope with a total of 47 buttons,which means you can easily handle all your activities from the panel itself.

This MFP can comprehensively handle all modes—print,copy,scan and fax. The maximum input capacity is a whopping 751 sheets (including the 500 sheets of the optional paper tray) and the maximum output capacity is 150 sheets. There is a 35 sheet holder ADF which is very helpful in the auto-duplex mode. The device can only be shared in a workgroup through Ethernet as there are no wireless or cloud-based printing features available.

You can install this device via USB or Ethernet at your office. The installation of drivers can be easily done with the help of the bundled disk. In our evaluation,we found that the speed of the printer and copier were

almost identical in both colour and mono modes. For colour prints,the C240SF took 16 seconds for the first page and produced a total of 15 pages.

The availability of automatic duplexer optimises the productivity through efficient use of time and pages. However,the copying did take some time—the first copy took about 32 seconds,and we could get only 12 colour copies per minute. The performance gets marginally better for monochrome pages with 31 seconds for the first print and 14 pages in a minute. We found that the ink impressions for both monochrome and colour were of exceptional quality-crisp and clear text with distinct and natural looking colour graphics. The scan quality is good with 12 seconds taken to save it. You can choose to save your scans to a PC,on a network folder,a USB disk or even email them.

The output can be saved in PDF,JPG,PNG,and TIFF formats.

There is no Wi-Fi support provided but you can use network printing through Ethernet and also can simply print using a flash drive.

Bottomline: The overall performance of the device is very compelling although there is a slight lag in the copy function. Also,it doesn’t provide wireless printing functionality.