Ricoh SP C250DN Wireless Color Laser Printer (407519),Silver

PREFACE:In my case, taking a chance against some of the negative reviews about this printer may be paying off. I already own a Brother HL-3070CW and a Brother HL-3170CDW. The former has been working reliably for me now for at least a couple of years now. I just wanted to know if I could get another relatively inexpensive auto-duplexing color laser printer that could give me a little improvement in print quality when it came to images than my two Brothers could and if it could handle duplexing light card stock better than my HL-3170CDW did. Of course, I wanted the new printer to also connect wirelessly and handle print requests from my other computers operating on Windows 7 and 10. I had originally been looking at HP and Canon for the solution, until I came upon this printer on Amazon. Another important concern for me was the replacement cost of toner, as well as the reliability and ease of maintenance of the device.THE CONCERNS:I almost dismissed purchasing this printer brand and model after reading the negative reviews by others on Amazon as well as other sites about the difficulty they experienced with setting up the printer for wireless operation, maintaining its connection and awakening it from hibernation. Other complaints noted were that the instructions were difficult to follow, the cost of the manufacturer's replacement toner was expensive, frequent paper jams or its inability to easily set and use its manual feed.MY RESEARCH:Be advised that this printer is sold on Amazon by multiple vendors and advertised under varying prices and described as Ricoh SP C250DN, Ricoh Aficio SP C250DN and Ricoh 407519. After careful scrutiny, most of the complaints about the printer's operation appear to be from purchases made up to and including the year 2016. I learned that many of these concerns where since corrected by the manufacturer through firmware version 1.04 which is what this printer was shipped out with. Checking the Ricoh website further revealed a newer firmware upgrade available, version 1.05. Instructions on how to upgrade the firmware yourself are included with the free download on the Ricoh website. When it comes to the cost of the manufacturer's replacement toner ... having owned other laser printers in the past ... this is always a major consideration. What may help is knowing that through other independent tests which I found online about this particular model when compared to other better known printer brands and models offering the same capabilities, the Ricoh surprisingly did well. YouTube is a great resource for such tests results and reviews as well as Google. Cost per page seems to be among the most economical even considering the fairly high cost of its toner replacement cartridge. IMHO, what I believe makes the cost of the replacement cartridge high is the inclusion of the drum unit built into the cartridge. My Brother printers use individual drum assemblies which cradle the toner cartridge as a separate replaceable unit. The replacement cost of all four of the manufacturer's toner cartridges for this Ricoh printer is actually more than double the cost I paid for the printer with it's starter cartridges alone. Of course there appears to be ways around this in order to save. Amazon as well as other web resources offers third party solutions, but since I haven't any experience with them with this printer I really can't comment on whether they are acceptable alternatives or not. Since I plan on using this printer as a backup or only for those times when I need to print better quality images than my Brother printers, I can justify the cost of the toner cartridges.MY EXPERIENCE:I absolutely had no trouble understanding the instructions on upgrading the firmware to the newest version, connecting the printer wirelessly to my wifi router/access point and installing the necessary drivers. In all fairness, my wifi router has WPS capability and uses a WPA2-PSK security protocol. It's the easiest way to connect almost automatically per the instructions provided. Since it worked flawlessly ... I didn't bother connecting any other way. Both the firmware upgrade and wireless setup took about a couple minutes a piece and required rebooting the printer. If you use another method to connect to your network, your experience will most probably be different. The suggested method of upgrading the firmware is by direct USB connection and requires that you install the usb printer driver on the host computer before you connect the usb cable to the printer. Newer Universal Printer Drivers and how to set the printer to them are also downloadable from the Ricoh website. I chose to stick to those offered on the included CD shipped with the printer. They work fine for my needs.This Ricoh SP C250DN does have a slight but noticeable improvement printing images than both my Brother printers. The toner is shinier and its colors are deeper and richer even just using its default settings. Images on the Brothers seem to be paler or more washed out requiring additional tweaks which may bring about unwanted consequences like color shadowing or less of a natural look on some graphic images. To my delight, the Ricoh seems to better handle printing both sides of light card stock better than my Brother HL-3170CDW which jams no matter what paper thickness I set it for. The printer also offers the convenience of being able to clear up any jams from the front and by temporarily unloading the toner cartridges from the top. Since the drum unit is also a part of each individual cartridge, the paper path underneath can be easily checked for any obstructions.I wouldn't suggest you sit next to this printer or place it on a desktop next to important paperwork by it's vent-side. While operating, it's noise level, though tolerable may be too loud or annoying for some people. Both of it's downward blowing side vents can be rotated forward or backward independently, but only slightly. You'll need to setup this printer atop a fairly solid stand and give some room vertically as well. It weighs over 50 lbs and sit a bit high when compared to other printer brands with comparable functions.CONCLUSION:As of this date, I haven't had a use for the manual feed, so I really can't comment on that, but I have printed a few 2 sided jobs using the bottom tray, including light card stock with no issues. I haven't done any envelope or legal size printing and the manual feed, since I use my Brothers for that. My new Ricoh printer's internet connection is solid and I am experiencing no problem with it waking up from it's sleep state. A word about printing envelopes and legal paper on the Ricoh. Apparently, you will need to open the front cover and lower the green tabs from paper position to envelope setting on the vertical feed unit to lessen the chances of wrinkling the envelope as it passes through. You will also need to remove a replaceable back cover where the lower tray sits in order to allow for the expansion of the paper tray to accommodate legal size paper. All the instructions for these procedures are mentioned clearly in the included owner's manual. Other complaints like the printer's size, noise level when operating and the fact that it has side exhaust venting were issues that don't bother me or interfere with its use. Only time and future use will reveal whether this printer earns a respectable rating when it comes to maintenance and reliability overall. To be on the safe side, I purchased a three year extended warranty just in case. Based on all the boxes that this printer ticked off my wish list, my intended use and the price point, I'm hoping that this Ricoh SP C250DN proves to be one of my best purchases of the year!.

I purchased this as a home printer about two and half years ago. I have literally printed about 200 pages of black and white documents and approximately 20 color documents. Remarkably, i already had to spend about fifty dollars to purchase another black toner that the printer decided was out and refused to continue operating. Once the toner was replaced it worked as expected for about two more weeks then the paper began to jam. I have changed to weight of the paper, fanned the paper prior to inserting, tried putting more paper, tried putting less paper, and cleaned the cork advancer- nothing seems to help. This machine jams once every three pages. it is ridiculously annoying. I have this humongous printer in my home office and I would still prefer to drive to the nearest mail store just to print things. These paper jams have made this computer not only useless but an annoying piece of junk. I have spent way too many hours trying to fix it and the only thing that helped was breaking off the little plastic tabs in the paper tray that are supposed to hold the stock paper in place. Now it only jams once every 5 pages. I truly regret buying this product and I do not feel inclinded to purchase another Ricoh printer every again. I wish this product had more reviews when I purchased it two and half years ago. I would throw this printer away but I figure I might need it when someone files a class action suit against Ricoh for selling this printer.

This printer is sufficient for general, low-quality prints, but fails for producing high quality black & white or color documents. On a black and white print with large areas of black (borders, graphics), the black is splotchy and varies across the page. The color is okay, but the resolution is rather poor compared to our HP Color LaserJets that we had in the past. It does not print good enough to produce a very nice-looking page of photographs. I realize that it is not a "photo printer", but other budget color laser printers do better than this. I also realize at the price I got, it is just a budget color printer and I probably should not have expected a 5 star printer anyway.The bypass try pulls the paper in unevenly. Not only that, sometimes it does not grip the inserted paper very well and so starts printing with an offset of 1/2 to 1 inch, requiring a reprint. For that same reason, 2-sided prints do not align back-to-front properly. Also, it is not smart enough to allow a printer override of the bypass tray--the user MUST select the tray prior to printing and there is no override once the tray is selected.Although the printer comes with a "Universal PCL" driver which is more up-to-date than the basic PCL driver, the printer itself is NOT configured properly by default. You must first set the printer mode to "Universal PCL" printer, otherwise it will still prints but will not always behave correctly, like it will not properly select the tray or it will only print Color and not B&W from some programs, etc. Once the printer mode is properly set the printer behavior seems to match the driver settings as desired, but it took a lot of wasted paper and time to find this feature which is not obvious.Although I did not see a resolution stated on the Amazon listing, for this same model, Ricoh's own website and many other listing for this printer state 2400 x 600 dpi. The actual settings for the printer have only 600x600 1bit, 2bit or 4bit. I could not find any details on the resolution in the documentation, but I suppose the different "bit" settings simply refer to some interpolation setting. I could not see any difference between the 1bit, 2bit or 4bit resolution settings... it always print the same low-resolution, low-quality photos. "2400x600 dpi" is just a dumb marketing label and does not reflect the true resolution capable of this printer.