Ricoh Aficio GX e3350N

A first look at Ricoh’s Aficio GX e3350N may have users wondering whether they’ve bought a laser printer instead of an inkjet.

It’s a big, deep box with a business-like control panel to the right of a single 250-sheet paper tray that feeds pages out onto the paper tray cover once they’re printed. An optional 100-sheet multi-purpose tray can be plugged in at the back.

The business-like control panel includes a two-line text-only screen and some navigation buttons as well as four lights to indicate status.

Below the control panel is a flip-down door, behind which you slide in the four ink tanks, which are the only consumables in the printer. It can be connected using USB or the built-in network connection and it works with both Macs and PCs.

The printer uses Ricoh’s Gels ink, which is like inkjet ink but slightly thicker. This means it isn’t as wet when it hits the paper, for quicker drying times and faster print speeds. A claimed speed of 12ppm for black and 11.7ppm for colour would put it a head above most £140 inkjets, but we only got 10ppm in our tests, and that was on a long, 20-page document.

HP’s £90 Officejet 6000 produced over 9ppm on the same test using ordinary inks. What that machine can’t do, though, is print on both sides of the paper. The Aficio GX e3350N has double-sided printing as standard and still managed 8.6 sides per minute on the same document, which is quick.

The quality of the prints it produced was fair. Black text was reasonably clean, though there’s some infill of loops in characters such as ‘a’ and ‘e’ in smaller sizes.

Colour graphics were bright and dense and photos came out well on plain and photo paper.

The ink cartridges cost around £25 for black and £43 for each of the colours, but they are large tanks, so the costs per page come out at 1.4p for black and 9p for colour, both of which are better than average.

The Aficio GX e3350N is a novel variation of the small-office/home inkjet printer and its good double-sided print speeds make it a definite contender.