Ricoh’s gel printing challenges inkjets and laser
A new printing technology has taken on colour inkjets and laser printers in Japan over the past 18 months, with over 200,000 units sold. Called a GelSprinter, it is available in the UK and has launched in Australia today, and is an interesting alternative with cool features all its own.
With incredible inkjet printers, the ready availability of colour laser printers and the dominance of multifunction devices that print, scan, copy and (on some models) fax, it’s easy to forget that the dot matrix printed once ruled supreme across the universe.
An amazing advance in the quest for personal home printing, noisy old dot matrix technology evolved to deliver a high resolution printout (from 9 pins to 24), and then to colour printing using four colour ribbons.
Laser printers had been around for a while, but were still the expensive holy grail of quality printing, while inkjet printers from Canon, Epson and HP were yet to appear in black and white models, let alone in colour.
Fast forward to 2005, and a new Gel printing technology was unveiled in Japan. Ricoh’s press release tells us that: “Unlike traditional dye and pigment-based inkjet printers, the GelSprinter uses a viscous liquid gel that gelatinises and dries almost instantly upon contact with paper. This minimises bleeding and smudging of images. The gel is also water and sunlight resistant, resulting in increased document durability”.
We’ve yet to see a printout on plain paper, and we will be asking for a review model to put it to the test, but the gel almost sounds like someone decided to take the ink and mix it with toner to produce a gel! That’s clearly not the way it was made, but it is interesting to think that a gel is one of the few practical alternatives to liquid ink, those dye-sub wax based technologies and powdery tones.
Ricoh says the GelSprinters can print documents at “a maximum of 3600 x 1200 dots per inch (dpi) equivalent”, so text and photos should look very sharp and clear. Each GelSprinter also features an electrostatic belt transfer system. This is designed to ensure that paper is always transported consistently and reliably.
That’s Ricoh’s claim, and simply using the printer for any length of time will quickly verify that, or not. We’ve all seen paper go a bit wonky in inkjet printers as it starts to print, sometimes righting itself, and sometimes not! That’s probably more so the case with older model s than the latest ones, but if Ricoh’s system is consistent, that will be an improvement.
There are three models, the GX3000, GX3050N and the GX5050N at AUD $319.00, $449 and $599 inc GST respectively. The first two print in both colour and black-and-white at “up to 29 prints per minute”, while the GX5050N does both at up to 30ppm.
While this has the standard disclaimer that “Print speed [is] based on high speed mode setting, depending on the coverage and type of document printed”, those speeds are a lot faster than the 8 pages per minute in colour and black-and-white claimed by Canon’s $499 and HP’s $499 and $599 colour laser printers!
All three models also have a built-in duplex to automatically print to both sides of a sheet of paper. Double-sided prints are produced at 75% of the rated single-page printing time. That’s another feature you don’t find on laser printers in this price range.
All three printers have a 250-sheet paper tray, while the GX5050N can take an additional large 500-sheet tray. An optional multi-sheet bypass tray (100 sheets) is also available allowing you to print on a variety of paper stocks and sizes.
There’s also something called the GelSprinter Level Colour mode. Quite how this is works is not explained, but it’s a colour-saving function that allows colour graphic documents to be produced at almost the same cost as black-and-white printers.
This depends, as the Ricoh release reminds us, on the coverage of ink required and the settings. But in the main they’re saying it’s low cost to run, which is a good thing.
The release did not list Australian prices for cartridges, but we found UK prices and have converted them to Aussie dollars. We’ll get these prices confirmed but there’s unlikely to be a huge difference in cartridge costs.
Each printer takes four cartridges, black, cyan, yellow and magenta. The regular black cartridge sells for £28.49, which is AUD $70.41. Each colour cartridge sells for £35.59, which is AUD $87.94. So to replace the cartridges once with regular yield cartridges is $334.23.
All three models are capable of printing up to 1,500 prints in black and up to 1,000 prints in colour – 33.43 cents per print in colour or 22.28 cents per print in black-and-white.
The GX5050N also has the option of high yield cartridges, which can print up to 3,000 prints in black and 2,300 prints in colour, but prices for these are unavailable and we’ll get them in an update soon. All these figures are based on 5% coverage, plain paper. You’ll get fewer prints if you print more densely covered pages or lots of photos and graphics, but that’s true of any printer on the market.
PC based print monitoring software is standard, while the GX3050N and GX5050N have a built-in network port, while the GX3000 can be upgraded with this feature. Each printer is a full “front loader” which Ricoh claims simplifies paper reloading and print cartridge replacement.
It does sound like an exciting technology, but I have to investigate Canon and HP’s per page print costs to see how competitive it really is. On the face of it, however, it’s nice to see a new competitor in the marketplace.
They’ve even won an “Innovation Award” from BERTL, an independent analysis company for the digital imaging market.
It’s unlikely this new technology will see the end of inkjet, lasers or colour wax based printers anytime soon. A new equilibrium will be established, with gel printing owning a share of the market. More aimed at business than home use, your next business printer might just be a GelSprinter.
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