Review: Ricoh Aficio GX2500 inkjet printer

The Gelsprinter range of colour inkjets are intended to be a viable alternative to a colour laser printer at a fraction of the cost.

This is possible, Ricoh says, because of several new technologies, from the type of ink to the speed at which the paper is handled.

We were unconvinced about some of these innovations, particularly on discovering that one of them was having separate ink tanks for each colour – something we've seen in plenty of printers.

The printer uses gels rather than liquid ink, which should allow it to produce colour images as cheaply as a colour laser printer does, but with the vibrant photo-realistic colours of an inkjet printer.

A colour cartridge for the GX2500, which can print around 1,000 pages, costs £30, whereas a typical laser toner cartridge offering 4,000 pages costs on average around £80. This works out at 3p per page for the Aficio compared with 2p for a laser printer (both the GX2500 and a laser require four cartridges to print in colour).

We found that colour images and photos were printed very quickly – an A5-sized photo came out in 20 seconds – and its quality was good, if not quite up to the standards of most colour photo printers we have seen.

A so-called Level Colour feature is designed to reduce the amount of colour ink used to print images while maintaining the quality of mono text. However, when we printed a document containing images and text with it enabled, the quality of the text was significantly reduced.

Ironically, given the company's claims of economy, a complete set of replacement cartridges costs a ridiculous £120, which is beyond most home users' budgets. It's possible that cartridge prices may drop as more manufacturers start making them but as it stands that's a hefty outlay. The printer also takes up an area of of 43x43cm, and it weighs a hefty 13kg, both of which are too large for most home users. Unfortunately, while the GX2500 is a good-quality printer, its shortcomings are impossible to overlook, making it impractical for most home users.

Vista compatibility: Yes