Speed isn’t everything, but you’re only likely to choose a laser printer over an inkjet (with Ricoh sp c250sf lower price and finer photo reproduction) if you want to print in some volume. A 20-page black text document took a total of one minute 40 seconds – around 12 pages per minute (ppm), nowhere near Ricoh’s quoted 20. Ricoh says you’ll get your first print in 14 seconds, but in fact, once the machine entered the power-saving mode that kicks in after one minute’s inactivity, we never managed to get it running in less than 20 seconds, which felt like quite a wait.
Impressive print quality, but slow and costly to run
#RICOH SP C250DN PC#
Scanned images received on our PC were well-balanced and clear. On standard copier paper, text and graphics looked crisp and solid, and color photos, which we’d expect to come out better on an inkjet printer, also looked quite acceptable. We were generally impressed with the print quality. Support for the PostScript 3 and PCL 6 printer languages, along with a generous 256MB of internal memory, means Ricoh sp c250sf should cope easily with any printing job. This is a business-level color laser printer, designed to chum out large numbers of sheets quickly on a regular basis. The scanner on top has a 35-sheet automatic document feeder, and you get Ethernet, USB and Wi-Fi connections as well as fax (assuming you have a telephone socket handy).
Ricoh sp c250sf doesn’t, but it’s actually very reasonably priced for a multi-function printer (MFP). The last Ricoh color laser printer we tested, the C250DN, distinguished itself by being very cheap.