If you are in the market for a black and white laser printer, then the Ricoh SP 210 is one of the best choices in the market for a budget buyer. What makes this monochrome printer a top choice for buyers ? Read this review and decide for yourself !
Should You Buy The Ricoh SP 210
The Ricoh SP 210 black and white laserjet is one of the cheapest printers to operate. The cost per page for printing is less that 30 paise. The low toner yield cartridge that comes pre-installed in the printer yields around 1250 prints according to our tests. Print resolution of 1200X600 DPI is supported for crisp prints. The inbuilt tray can hold 150 sheets of A4 size paper and prints 22 pages per minute.
The main selling point for the Ricoh SP 210 however is its price. It costs much lesser than its competitors. Prices are in the range of INR 4000 while competitors are priced much higher.
Tones Saver is an option in the printing preferences that allows you to save toner by making the prints lighter. This is a good option to enable when the printed information is not intended for presentations. The prints tend to be on a much lighter that normal prints but information is easily legible. This mode is only recommended for test prints for personal use.
The printer is rated for up to 20,000 prints a month and being a lazer printer its suited for printing everyday or occasional use without having to worry about the ink drying up in an inkjet.
These features make this one of the best picks in the budget laser printer category. Check its current price on Amazon.in
Ricoh SP 210 Toner Refill Costs
Printer manufacturers usually try to sell printers cheap and charge a lot for the ink refills and cartridges. That is where these companies make their profits. For example a Samsung Lazerjet costing around INR 9000 will have cartridges costing around INR 3000. That is 33% of the printer cost for a cartridge that prints 1000 pages. The same goes for inkjet printers costing 2-4k where refill cartridges will cost you around 1.8k.
Ricoh SP 210 can be refilled at your premises by just buying a Ricoh SP 101S Original Laser Printer Toner Refill Pouch which costs only around Rs.500 and prints between 1500 and 2000 pages. This is absolutely great value for money. You can also use 3rd party tones refills like Print Magic Toner Powder For Ricoh Laser Printer but as always it is better to stick to the manufacturer’s refill since it is inexpensive and quality is assured.
Are Ricoh Printers good ?
Ricoh is a Japanese company founded in 1936 and produced printer and copiers for Toshiba, fax machines for AT&T and the CPU for the Nintendo Entertainment Systems. Ricoh purchased Hitachi printing systems and IBM printing systems division. They have regional headquarters in America, Europe and the Asia Pacific. Ricoh is a 20 billion dollar technology giant, so you can be assured that its products are reliable and quality assured.
Setting up the Ricoh SP 210
The box comes with the printer and toner cartridge pre-installed. A quick setup sheet is included with instructions to set up the printer. The instructions given are simple to understand and replicate. However the instructions to load A4 size paper into the tray is not provided. It took a bit of trial and error to figure it out.
How to load A4 paper into the Ricoh SP 210
The paper loading tray has to be extended from its default shipping state to accommodate the larger but popular A4 paper.
To load A4 paper, the paper tray at the bottom of the Ricoh SP210 printer must be pulled out of its slot. Then release the clips on the upper half of the tray on both sides. Now the tray can be extended to fit the larger A4 paper size supported by the SP210.
We found that loading the A4 papers makes the tray stick out a bit at the back. However this is not noticeable from the front. The compact size of the printer makes up for this small con.
Installing the Ricoh SP210 Laser Printer Driver
The printer is quite easy to set up with the included CD. However if your computer does not have a CD drive you may download the Ricoh SP210 drivers from the official site. Firmware upgrades are also available on the official website to improve the printers performance.
Features of the Ricoh SP210
- Printing Speed: 22ppm for A4 & 23ppm for letter size
- Paper Sizes: A4 and legal
- Startup Time : 25 seconds
- Resolution: 1200 x 600 DPI
- RAM : 128 MB
- Low Toner Yield Cartridge: 1500 pages
- Maximum Print Volume: 20000 ppm
- Input Capacity: Standard tray: 150 sheets; Bypass tray – 1 sheet
- Continuous output speed of 22 pages per minute with first output taking less than 10 seconds, Duplex printing: Manual
- Paper size in standard paper tray – A4, letter, half letter, B5, A5, B6, A6, executive, 16K and legal
- Bypass tray: 100mm x 216mm, 148mm x 356mm
- Input Capacity: Standard paper tray – 150 sheets; Bypass tray – 1 sheet
- Output Capacity : 100 sheets of paper
- Interface: Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2003, 2003R2, Windows Server 2008, 2008R2, Windows Server 2012, 2012R2
- Dimensions 402X360X165mm
- Weight 7.2 KG
- Connectivity : USB 2.0
- Power Rating 220 – 240 V
Alternative Laser Printers to consider
Ricoh SP210SU is another model that is very similar but has the added functions of a scanner, if you are the market for an all in one device. It also has an LCD display for copier functions and is more suited for a business environment.
Ricoh SP210SU Monochrome Laser Printer
Features
- Black and white Multifunction laser printer with scan and copy facility for A4 size, easily refillable at home without losing warranty if refilled with original Ricoh toner
- Original Ricoh refill pouch available, print cost after refilling will be 40 paise
- Printing Speed: 22ppm for A4 and 23ppm for letter size, Paper Sizes: A4 and legal
- Warm up time of less than 25 seconds, duplex print, Manual Input Capacity: Standard tray - 150 sheets; Bypass tray - 1 sheet
- RAM: 128MB
Ricoh SP 111 laser printer is an option, if you are on an even smaller budget. This model does not have a paper tray, so it must be loaded manually according to usage. Its older model the SP 100 used to have paper jamming issues but the problem was quickly fixed with Ricoh releasing the newer model.
Ricoh SP 111 Jam-Free Monochrome Laser Printer
Features
- 16PPM product
- 1200*600 DPI
- High-Speed USB2.0
- Windows XP Home Edition, XP Professional, XP Professional x64 Edition, Vista, Win7, Win8, Server2003/2008/2012
- JAM FREE PRINTER
Samsung ML-2161 Laser Printer is the latest to join the budget laserjet category. However we expect that refilling the toner cartridge will be tough and only official cartridge replacement should be considered. Samsung is known to have chips in their toner cartridges that block attempts to refill the toners.
Features
- Easy Eco Driver
- Compact design
- Up to 20 ppm in A4
- OS Compatibility Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Win7/2003 Server/2008 Server/Mac OS X 10.4 - 10.7/Various Linux OS
- Samsung ML-2161 is not a network printer
Share your thoughts and experiences with the Ricoh SP 210 in the comments below.
