Ricoh BP20 Printer Review
The Ricoh BP20 is a straightforward monochrome laser printer designed to handle everyday office printing tasks when color printing is not a necessity. The BP20 does monochrome printing with quick speeds and great quality in a compact design. Home and small office users will appreciate the BP20's compact design, though if wanting to print in color, a different model would be better that uses HP CC531A toner. With its small footprint, it will fit well on a desk, and its low height requires very little vertical space. Although the unit is such a small size, it includes a generous 250 sheet input tray and a 50 sheet multipurpose tray. An optional 250 sheet paper tray can even be added to expand capacity if needed.
The printer features USB 2.0 and parallel port connections, but no built-in ethernet port. The lack of a direct ethernet connection will likely not be an issue for home and personal users, but office environments looking to share the printer across a network will need to connect through a computer or a print server for network sharing. Print speeds are fast, especially for the price, at 22 pages per minute. This is quite impressive for a personal laser printer, and one of the unit's major selling points. With a print resolution up to 1200 dpi, the printer is capable of sharp, detailed prints which rival resolutions produced by other models, such as those using Q2612X toner. The BP20 supports a wide range of media including envelopes and paper sizes from 3" x 5" up to 8.5" x 14".
The unit's memory can be expanded from its initial 16 MB up to a maximum of 144 MB. The BP20 features a "Toner Saver" mode which reduces ink consumption on all prints when invoked. While there is some tradeoff in print quality, it is very minor, and prints done in toner saver mode are certainly good enough for everyday office printing.
Overall, the Ricoh BP20 is a simple monochrome laser printer that combines fast speed with an affordable price. High yielding toner creates low cost per page, though not quite as much as HP C9720A toner. It includes the necessary features for a personal printer, but keeps the costs low by eliminating unnecessary extras.
