Ricoh Aficio SG2100n

Ricoh SG2100n Featured

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You’d normally be used to seeing Ricoh printers in corporate and business environments rather than your average home, but it seems like the SG2100n GelJet printer may actually be trying to break this trend. At a respectable price of just £60 it is definitely in budget for your normal home users and small businesses.

The Ricoh printer takes on the normal boring office look for a printer with its plastic build and black & white finish. On the front vertical face you’ll find the control panel which includes an array of easy-to-use buttons and a small LCD display. However the display has no back-lighting so in low-light conditions it’s very difficult to actually read what it’s displaying.

Ricoh SG2100n Screen

Under the control panel you’ll find the 250-sheet A4 paper tray with a small window which allows you to see the amount of paper left without pulling it out.

Moving to the left side of the printer you’ll find the USB and network port hidden under a small hatch. Towards the back you’ll also find the mains power port. There are cable runs for both the USB/Ethernet and mains power cable integrated into the plastic body which means it’ll lie flush with any surfaces you place it against.

Ricoh SG2100n Front

Setting it up was quick and easy process. The cartridges are fitted into the front of the printer behind another removable hatch. They simply slide and click into place. You’ll also have a driver to install (CD or download installer) which again doesn’t take long, and once done you’ll be good to go.

In terms of the printing speed we managed to reach 10/11 pages per minute. We tested with two different test documents one including a page of plain text, while the other had both text and coloured images. The quality of the text test in my opinion was good and not far off what you would expect from a laser printer. It was more than adequate for everyday uses. For coloured graphics and images the results were very good. All colours were vibrant and were filled well with no signs of banding across the images.

Ricoh SG2100n Cartridges

The individual cartridges (cyan, yellow, magenta, black) cost just under £25 each and will manage to yield about 600 pages. This works out at around 4p per/page for mono printing, while for coloured around 13p! This is considerably high.

Despite not having wireless capabilities, Ricoh does have an iOS and Android app available which allows you to easily print straight from a smartphone or tablet. Simply connect your device to the same network as the printer (wired) and you can begin to print your document and images wirelessly from your phone.

Verdict

Despite having quite a good print speed the cost of running the Ricoh Aficio SG2100n is quite high which is enough to put a lot of people off from the get go. It’s also fairly basic with no scanning functionality or WiFi connectivity which restricts you to wired connections only. This probably wouldn’t be as much of a problem in a business environment, but for home and small businesses wireless is a much needed feature.

One think we do like however is the option of the free mobile application which allows you to print straight from your smartphone without having to plug in any wires – and it’s available for both iOS and Android devices!

You can read more about the Ricoh printer by following the link below.

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