Ricoh AP3850C Toner
Aficio AP3850C Toner Cartridges

Ricoh AP3850C Printer Review

The Ricoh AP3850C is a color laser printer designed for the large, high-volume office environment. Its color printing speed and quality are both excellent, and its many configuration options make it a very versatile printer.

The upfront cost of the AP3850C is somewhat high, especially compared to laser printers geared toward smaller offices. However, the AP3850C has the fast speed and large paper capacity to handle a large office of high-volume users, and its inexpensive laser toner cartridges give it a low cost of ownership over its lifetime.

Paper capacity is impressive. The printer can be configured two ways initially, with either a 2,000 sheet input tray or three 500 sheet trays, one of which is a multipurpose tray. This allows more flexibility in media types and sizes. Additional drawers can be added to printer if more capacity is needed, expanding it to a maximum of 3,100 sheets. The AP3850C also has impressive processing power, with its 700 MHz Pentium III processor and 128 MB of RAM, which can be upgraded to a maximum of 256 MB if needed.

With the included ethernet port, it is simple to connect the AP3850C directly to an existing network and share it across multiple computers.

Ricoh AP3850C toner cartridges come in the standard color configuration of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. Each Ricoh AP3850C cartridge has a capacity of 10,000 pages, which towers over most of the competition including LaserJet 3500 toner and are very affordably priced, resulting in a low cost per page.

Print speed is impressive, at 38 pages per minute for black and 28 pages per minute for color. The printer uses a 1200 dpi printing engine for extra sharp prints. Text quality is excellent, with sharp and detailed characters even at small font sizes. Graphics and photos are generally good, though some colors can be slightly inaccurate.

Overall, the Ricoh AP3850C is an impressive printer that can handle the needs of a large, multi-user office, and has the expandability to meet varying needs.