Sp 150 red light is on. The Ricoh printer has a red light and does not print. Software installation

General information

The Ricoh SP 150SU MFP that arrived at our laboratory combines the functions of three devices: a monochrome printer and copier, as well as a color scanner. This model is designed for use at home or in small offices.

In addition to the model in question, the SP 150 series includes the SP 150 and SP 150w printers, as well as the SP 150SUw MFP (devices with the w index in the name are equipped with a built-in Wi-Fi adapter which allows you to set wireless connection with mobile devices).

All SP 150 series devices use laser electrographic printing technology with a resolution of 600 dpi. The maximum print speed declared in the specification is 22 A4 pages per minute.

The SP 150SU is equipped with a flatbed-type scanning module based on CIS technology, which is located in the upper part of the body and allows you to work with originals up to A4 inclusive. The maximum hardware scan resolution is 600 ppi.

Construction and design

The minimalist design of the SP 150SU (as well as other devices in this series) is made in the spirit of modern trends. The case has the shape of a parallelepiped with rounded vertical ribs. The outer panels are made of light-colored plastic, while the top cover and feed tray are made of black plastic. The combination of details in two contrasting colors gives the compact MFP a stylish look that will perfectly fit in both a simple office interior and a cozy home environment.

It is worth paying attention to one of the features of the SP 150 series - namely, the possibility of ordering batches of devices with a unique design of the top panel. For this segment, such an offer is still the only one on the market.

Paper is fed from a vertically oriented folding tray, which is located at the rear of the case and can hold up to 50 sheets. In the closed position, it does not protrude beyond the dimensions of the case and prevents the penetration of dust and foreign particles into the MFP. To bring the tray into working position, it is necessary to slightly tilt back, and then pull up the telescopic panel and fold its upper part. Inside the tray there are moving width stops that prevent the sheets from being skewed during feeding into the path of the printing mechanism.

There is no output tray in this MFP: the printed sheets exit through the hole in the bottom of the front panel and fall directly on the desktop surface. This decision made it possible to simplify the design of the device and make it more compact, as well as make the most efficient use of space in the workplace.

The lid of the scanning module tablet is attached to the far long side of the housing at two points. The design of the mounts allows you to lift it above the surface of the tablet if necessary, which is convenient when scanning magazines, brochures and other thick originals. The inside of the lid has a foam pad with a white hard pad.

The cover can be fixed in a vertical position without obstructing the feeding of sheets from the tray. This can be useful when scanning and copying books and thick magazines that you have to hold on top with your hand.

On the right side of the front panel of the MFP, two small round buttons are installed one below the other. The bottom one is used to turn the power on and off, the top one is to start copying. Each of the buttons has a built-in indicator light: the top one is green, and the bottom one is two-colored (which can light up red or green). According to their readings, you can determine the current state of the device and diagnose emerging malfunctions (instruction with decoding of light signals is included in the delivery package).

The rear panel has connectors for power and interface cables.

There are small ventilation grilles on the left and right side of the case. A fan is installed under the grille on the left panel, which ensures the evacuation of heated air from the device case.

The dimensions of the MFP with a closed tray are 350 × 275 × 137 mm. The device weighs 7.5 kg.

Expendable materials

The Ricoh SP 150 Series is available with Standard and High Yield Integrated Toner Cartridges with claims of 700 and 1500 pages, respectively. The package includes a standard capacity toner cartridge.

The design of the media supply path allows you to load paper with a density of 60 to 105 g/m 2 into the MFP. Permissible sheet sizes - from 76.2 × 116 to 216 × 355.6 mm.

Installation and connection

As recommended in the user guide, when installing the MFP in the workplace, you must leave 10 cm free space to the left and right of the walls of his body, as well as 20 cm behind. In addition, you need at least 40 cm of free space above the top cover to easily open the input tray and scanner cover, and to replace the toner cartridge.

The MFP is connected to the mains using a standard power cable, which is connected to a three-pin IEC C14 connector located on the back of the case in a small niche.

After the device is provided with power, you need to connect it to the PC. The interface cable is connected to the USB Type B socket, which is located on the right rear panel of the case.

According to the recommendations in the user manual, before connecting the interface cable from the MFP to the PC, you need to install the drivers and software from the supplied CD or from the file downloaded from the official Ricoh website.

Copy without a PC

The machine allows copying with default settings without connecting to a PC. To do this, just place the original on the flatbed and press the start copy button on the front of the MFP. This will print one copy of the original stacked on the flatbed at a scale of 1:1.

If the MFP is in Ready mode, it takes 15 seconds to copy one page. If you start this operation in sleep mode, it will take 30 seconds to complete.

It is also possible to obtain five copies in a row - for this you need to press and hold the copy start button on the front panel of the MFP for 3 seconds.

Drivers & Software

Before connecting the MFP, we installed on the PC a complete set of drivers and proprietary software from the supplied CD. After connecting the interface cable, the MFP was recognized and displayed in the hierarchy system devices. A small disadvantage is the need to reboot the OS after installing the software.

Now let's get acquainted with the interface of the print driver and the settings available in it. The driver window has three tabs: General, Advanced, and Printing Profiles. On the left side, all tabs display brief information about the current settings and an icon with the selected layout layout.

In the "General" section, you can select the type and size of paper, page orientation, adjust the print quality, set the required number of copies and a number of additional options.

The list of available paper sizes includes several standard sizes, as well as a manual setting option. When the latter is selected, a dialog box is displayed with fields for entering the length and width of the sheet in the selected units.

The drop-down lists of print quality settings allow you to select one of two resolutions (600×600 or 1200×600 dpi), as well as the type of output document - text, image, or custom. When you select the last item, an additional window with brightness and contrast adjustments is displayed on the screen.

In chapter general settings Manual 2-sided printing and layout functions are provided. The latter allows you to place two, four, nine or 16 pages on one side of the sheet, as well as print large format images on four, nine or 16 sheets for subsequent gluing.

When outputting multiple copies of a document, it is possible to print in collation. There is also a toner save mode.

In the "Advanced" section, you can activate the function of automatically nesting the printed document on the media of the selected size, or set the scale manually in the range from 25 to 400% of the original size.

It also provides the functions of printing booklets, embedding a "watermark" (this can be arbitrary text or bitmap), as well as adding headers and footers with various information about the document.

It is also possible to manually change the print density.

At the bottom of the tab, there are options to skip blank pages, print text in 100 percent black, and output an inverted (negative) image.

The Printing Profiles section provides a list of previously saved profiles. Under it there is a button for deleting the selected profile.

Together with the drivers, a proprietary utility (in the manufacturer's terminology - a virtual control panel) Ricoh Printer was installed on the PC, which allows you to control the current state of the device, change its settings and perform various operations.

On the left side of the Ricoh Printer panel, the current status indicator of the device and the toner level scale (the latter are very approximate and change in 10% increments) are displayed. Above them is a drop-down list for selecting a device - which can be useful if you have several devices connected to one PC.

At the top of the virtual control panel there are four round icons for selecting the main sections: "Print", "Copy", "Scan" and "Settings".

The "Print" section provides options for printing to a file, as well as saving page images of printed documents as images in JPEG, PNG, BMP or TIFF formats.

In the "Copy" section, you can set the number of copies (from 1 to 99) and select one of five density gradations. In the additional settings window, which opens by clicking on the corresponding button, it is possible to select the type of document (text or photo), copy scale (from 25 to 400% of the original size), resolution (300 or 600 ppi), original size, type and the paper size you are using. If the sizes of the original and the paper being used are different, scaling is automatically performed to fit the media size. There is also a function to place two, four or nine pages of the original document on one sheet.

The ID copy mode allows you to sequentially scan two sides of a plastic card (or two pages of a passport) and print them on one page.

In the "Scanning" section, you can select the type of document (text, photo or text and photo), color (color, black and white or one-bit), change the brightness and contrast, select the resolution from several fixed values ​​​​(100, 200, 300, 600 or 1200 ppi) and set the size of the scanned area.

To start scanning, just click on the "Scan" button. When the image input is completed, its icon appears in the scanned document window; the "Print" and "Save" buttons become available. Double-clicking on the icon opens a pop-up image viewer.

In the "Settings" section, you can set the timeout before automatically switching to sleep mode (from 1 to 30 minutes), change the password for accessing the device, and set other settings.

Performance

During testing, we conducted a series of tests to evaluate the performance of the MFP.

According to the data obtained, the warm-up procedure during a “cold” start takes about 50 s.

If there are no jobs, the MFP automatically switches to sleep mode after the time set in the settings. At the same time, the indicator installed in the power button starts flashing slowly (in standby mode, it is constantly on). If the MFP is in sleep mode when a print job is started, it takes 16-17 seconds to warm up.

It takes 9.5 seconds to print a one-page A4 document with the normal quality setting, and 10.5-11 seconds with the good quality setting. To output a 10-page text document The MFP took 35 seconds.

The maximum print speed measured during testing was 22.6 A4 pages per minute, which fully corresponds to the value declared in the specification.

When copying documents using the Ricoh Printer's virtual control panel, it takes 16 seconds and 24 seconds to produce one copy of a 1:1 A4 size original at 300 and 600 dpi, respectively.

Due to the fact that this model has a scanning module based on CIS technology, it takes very little time to warm up when switching from sleep mode: according to the results of the tests, only 4 seconds.

As shown by our measurements, it takes 14-15 seconds to scan originals of A4 format with a resolution of up to 300 ppi inclusive in color, and 12-13 seconds in monochrome mode. When choosing the maximum resolution (600 ppi), the execution time of tasks increases noticeably. So, to digitize an A4 page in monochrome mode, in this case, it will take 18 seconds.

Scanning a 10×15 cm color photo card with a resolution of up to 300 ppi inclusive takes 7-8 s, and a black-and-white one takes 6-7 s. It took 24 and 10 seconds to digitize the same original with a resolution of 600 ppi in color and monochrome modes, respectively.

Thus, we can state that the performance of the Ricoh SP 150SU model corresponds to the characteristics stated in the specification and allows you to fully meet the needs of the target audience - small offices and home users.

Print quality

To evaluate the quality of the prints, a test image was used containing text samples, as well as a set of scales and graphic elements. Printing was carried out with various quality settings (with a resolution of 600 × 600 and 1200 × 600 dpi) in the "image" mode.

The Ricoh SP 150SU handled text printing without any problems. On the received prints, samples of inscriptions typed in two fonts different types(with and without serifs) size from 3 to 12 points, read without the slightest difficulty.

Shaded areas, a circular rosette with alternating black and white sectors in 1° steps, as well as thin concentric circles of black on a white background and white on a black background were also reproduced without noticeable defects.

In the light part of the gray wedge, there is a slight stepping - most likely, this is due to the use of a raster with a regular structure to reproduce halftones.

Differences between test prints made with different settings resolution turned out to be so insignificant that an inexperienced person is unlikely to be able to notice the difference with the naked eye. The only benefit of a 1200×600 dpi print is slightly less noticeable aliasing on thin curves and slanted lines.

We then printed another sample of the test image, activating the toner save mode in the driver settings. As it turned out when compared with two previously output prints, the inclusion of the toner save mode has the most noticeable effect on the reproduction of images and halftone solids. Photographs on prints in this case look less contrast and not so saturated, and some uneven filling is observed on uniformly shaded areas. As for the text, all samples are still read without problems.

Based on the analysis of the received prints, we can state that this MFP, even with minimal settings, allows you to make prints with a quality that is more than sufficient for everyday home and office needs. When outputting text and documents from large quantity graphics, you can confidently select a resolution of 600 × 600 dpi and a toner saving mode in the settings. Setting the resolution to 1200×600 dpi may be required only for printing documents with a large number of halftone images, as well as diagrams and graphs with thin lines.

Conclusion

It's time to take stock. As we were able to verify during the tests, the Ricoh SP 150SU model is extremely simple and easy to operate and maintain. The compact body can be placed directly on the desktop, and its two-tone design will harmoniously complement both office and home environments. With low noise levels, this MFP will not interfere with nearby users.

Despite its modest dimensions, the Ricoh SP 150SU model has good performance and allows you to get the first page of a document in less than 10 seconds after sending a print job. We also pay attention to the convenience virtual panel The Ricoh Printer management software comes with a simple and intuitive interface that lets you manage print settings, as well as copy and scan.

Of the shortcomings that were identified during the testing process, we note the ability to use additional settings copy only when connected to a PC.

Based on the results of the tests and taking into account the subjective impressions obtained during the tests, we can state that the Ricoh SP 150SU MFP is best suited for periodic printing of not very voluminous documents, as well as for occasional scanning and copying of originals various types- including individual pages, brochures, booklets, certificates, etc.

It should be noted that due to the design features and a small resource of toner cartridges, the use of this MFP for inline input, copying and printing of documents will not be economically feasible.

Thus, we can recommend the Ricoh SP 150SU model for use at home and in small offices, the specifics of which are not related to the need for streaming scanning and copying, as well as printing a large number documents.

The Ricoh SP150 printers and MFPs are a completely new printing platform in which Ricoh engineers have taken into account the shortcomings of previous devices (SP100 / SP111). Together with the new platform, the device received new hardware and software. If the previous generation of service machines used hidden opportunities supplied with the Smart Organizing Monitor utility, a new utility called CE Tools has been developed for the Ricoh SP150.

The CE Tools utility is not supplied with the machine and is available only to authorized service centers. The utility weighs only 1.8mb and does not require installation. The functionality of the utility is quite wide and allows you not only to reset errors, but also to perform a full diagnostics of the device. The structure of the utility is very well thought out, and after a couple of minutes of talking with the utility, you get the feeling that you are not working with it for the first time. The utility is connected exclusively via a USB cable; if it is not possible to connect to the device, the utility reports this.

I used this utility only once, when I received a device from a client with an SC542 error. The reason for the error was that the lace chips got into the oven, it led to the fact that the temperature sensor did not record the temperature set for the specified time interval and, as a result, error SC542.

Instructions for resetting error SC542 / 541

Resetting the error is quite simple, open the utility, enter the “Output Check” section, select “FusingSCReset” from the drop-down list and press the “On” button.

I must say right away that I will not post a link to the utility. Resetting the error is the final operation, and you need to start with a full diagnostics of the fusing unit (stove). It is necessary to remove the stove from the device and make sure that there are no foreign objects, damage to the Teflon or pressure roller, make sure that the temperature is taken correctly by the temperature sensor, ring the thermal fuse, and so on. And only after the stove has been diagnosed and, if necessary, repaired, you can proceed to reset the error.

Summing up.

First of all, I would like to address the users and “ system administrators”, install a complete set of drivers and utilities from the disk, not the stubs that winwdows installs in automatic mode. The devices do not have a display and all errors are displayed in the attached utilities. All calls to the office begin with everyone saying - The red light is on and the printer is not printing.

As for the reliability of the printing platform itself, this platform seemed to me much more reliable than the more advanced 200 series. I have not yet encountered a false operation of a temperature sensor, and there are more than enough devices for maintenance, I even resoldered torn USBs. By the way, the glass in the scanner is not glued, but rests on plastic stops, as in A3 format copiers. In the Ricoh SP150, the case is not rigid enough and if the user handles the device carelessly, the scanner glass flies off the stops and blocks the scanning ruler.

As for the stove itself, it is very reliable in design, but unfortunately the Teflon shaft sits on bushings, and not on rolling bearings, as in the Ricoh SP325.

Ricoh recently launched a new series of monochrome printers and MFPs. Visually, the devices look very modern, and are inexpensive.

It so happened that the next purchase from the supplier coincided with the arrival of the new Ricoh SP150 series at the warehouse, and I decided to take it for myself for testing. The printer turned out to be so successful that it stayed on my desk for only a few hours, after which the client, who refills our Lexmark E120, bought it. Nevertheless, I managed to take a number of photos and examine the design of the printer in more detail.

About design.

Compare Samsung dimensions ML 1615 and Ricoh SP150 - front view

Size comparison Samsung ML 1615 and Ricoh SP150 - rear view

The first impression when I took the printer out of the box was that it was SMALL. Just some kind of “nano printer”. The design is made in the style of the latest generation iphone smartphones, i.e. white glossy plastic, smooth shapes. Next to such a printer, even super expensive mobile gadgets will look harmonious. In order to make the size of the printer more clear, I photographed it next to the Samsung ML-1615 printers. As you can see, the printer is half as high, and also slightly smaller in width and depth.

A look inside the Ricoh SP150

To be honest, I was afraid that these were regular miscarriages like the Ricoh S100/SP111 with structural problems with paper feed. But my fears turned out to be in vain, this is a completely different printer, despite the fact that the paper is still inserted from above, the paper feed mechanism itself has been brought “to mind”. As you can see in the photo, the pickup roller is now mounted on a metal rod, and not a plastic twig as in the SP100. The paper pickup roller is controlled by a clutch, not obsolete solenoids. The pickup roller itself has a design and size that is classic for Ricoh devices; we can safely say that this roller will not lose its properties throughout the entire life of the printer. The location of the sensors has also changed and now there should be no false jams.

About the cartridge and chip.

The cartridge in the Ricoh SP 150, despite the similarity with the SP100 cartridge, is somewhat smaller. This was done primarily due to the reduction in the size of the device itself, and of course to prevent the cloning of the cartridge. The cartridge has on board a standard chip from Ricoh SP111/SP200 with its own firmware. The device supports two types of cartridge - 700 pages () and 1500 pages (SP150HE). As usual, all the difference is only in the firmware of the cartridge chip and the amount of toner loaded. Despite the fact that the cartridge has a small volume and is not positioned as refillable, Ricoh engineers did not reduce the diameter of the phototube. Given the wear resistance of Ricoh photo rollers, we can safely say that the cartridge will withstand at least five refills without a serious loss in print quality.
You can use the same toner as for Ricoh SP100/SP200. This is either original toner or universal Samsung toner. There are no external covers in the cartridge for filling the toner and pouring out the waste. However, the classic hidden plug for refilling the cartridge is present under the cap. Interestingly, the cartridge has a structural similarity with the SP100/SP200, but the springs in it are clearly from the Ricoh SP3500/SP311. There is a plastic “identifier key” on the front of the cartridge, I think this is a reserve for the future. How they will personally carry out a small marketing change in the device and “the identifier key will be shifted”.

Summing up.

In my opinion, the printer turned out to be very successful and, at first glance, very reliable. I really hope that it will seriously push the unsuccessful ones out of the market. samsung printers on 101/111 cartridges, as well as its clones from Xerox. The printer does not have a full-fledged electronic filling on board, that is, it is a GDI printer. But with such affordable price you can close your eyes to this shortcoming.

PS. While writing a note (a month has passed), this client came to refill a Ricoh SP150 cartridge. The client was pleased with the printer, and put his Lexmark in the closet as a backup printer.

PS. A colleague from GoldPrint posted a video on the official channel youtube about the device Ricoh SP150, which will be useful to people involved in refilling cartridges.

Hello dear readers of my blog!

In today's review, you will get to know one of the representatives of very inexpensive laser printers, which is now being sold for a promotion for about 3,600 rubles.

This is a company printer. Ricoh models SP 150. There are other models in this series - with Wi-Fi and even an MFP, but I will talk specifically about the SP 150. The model is quite affordable in price and should be ideal for home use or small offices.

Japanese company Ricoh- is not a newcomer to the market of copying and printing equipment, however, it is not very well known to an ordinary household user, which is surprising, since the company Ricoh has been present in our country since the times of the USSR! Well, whoever wants to can find it on the Internet interesting information about Ricoh, and I will only add that the company now owns even the world-famous Pentax brand, which has released and continues to release many famous models of cameras and lenses. By the way, all the photos in this review were taken on a Pentax camera.

Specifications

GENERAL INFORMATION

Model name:Ricoh SP 150

Warm-up time:25 seconds

First page out time:11 seconds

Print speed:22 pages per minute

Dimensions (W x D x H):351 x 266 x106 mm

The weight:6.5 kg

Power supply:220 - 240 V, 50/60 Hz

A PRINTER

Printer language:GDI

Print resolution:Max. (1200x600dpi)

Interface:USB 2.0

Supportoperating roomssystems:

OS Windows:Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 10

Mac OS:Macintosh OS X v10.8 - v10.11

Virtual control panel:Windows, Mac

PAPER HANDLING

Paper size:standard paper tray A4, A5, A6, B5, B6

Maximum input tray capacity:50 sheets

Paper density:60 - 105 g/m²

ENERGY CONSUMPTION

Power consumption:Max: 880W

Working power:350 W

Ready mode:50 W or less

Sleep mode:1.2W

EXPENDABLE MATERIALS

Cartridge resource (standard):700 prints

Cartridge resource (increased):1500 prints

Resource starter cartridge:700 prints

Resource estimation method Supplies: ISO/IEC19752

Packaging and equipment

Laser printer Ricoh SP 150 was delivered to me for review by a transport company, so its packaging was abundantly wrapped with yellow adhesive tape. It was not possible to get rid of it painlessly, so the box does not look very photogenic.

The packaging shows an image of the printer and briefly lists its main characteristics that are of the greatest importance to the consumer - the type of connection, the height of the case, the volume of the paper feed tray. It also says here that when the toner save mode is activated, it saves 50%, while the printed text and graphics become slightly less contrasting, but do not lose much in quality.

As is customary with normal manufacturers, the packaging of the printer is very high quality and has color printing. The cardboard is thick, inside the box the printer is fixed with foam inserts. The complete set consists of the printer itself, a set of documentation and a disk with drivers, a power cable and USB. Particularly pleased was the presence USB cable, because usually printer manufacturers, even the most eminent ones, “forget” to complete the printer with this necessary accessory and then you have to buy it separately, because at the time of ordering the printer you don’t think about the little things at all.

The USB cable is 2 meters long, which is sufficient for most printer placements in a home or office environment.

The printer, like the fuses on a fighter weapon, is pasted over with adhesive tape stickers, all of them must be removed before turning on the printer, and inside the printer as well.

Appearance

a printer RicohSP150 is a rather compact, and because of this, seemingly very heavy device, the side walls of which are made of almost white plastic, but its upper part is made of black.

The front of the printer has a power button, which hides a multi-functional LED, as well as a slot for exiting the printed sheets of paper from the printer path. The modes of the LED glow are quite diverse, but they are listed in detail in the Operation Manual, so I will not describe them.

On the back of the printer, there is a socket for connecting the power cable and a USB socket. There is also a plate with the name of the printer model and its electrical characteristics - supply voltage (220-240 V AC), maximum printer power consumption (880 W) and current (5 A).

On the right side of the case there is a hole with a grate through which cool outside air enters, which is necessary for cooling the heated

during the printing process of printer parts. There are also slots on the bottom of the printer, also designed to provide additional air intake, so the printer must be installed so that all of its rubber feet are on a flat surface.

Well, in order for the hot air flow to come out, a small fan is installed on the left side of the printer.

The paper support cover is located on the top of the printer body. To insert paper into the tray, this cover must be lifted.

To access the cartridge as well as decide possible problems with a paper jam, you need to lift the entire black top of the printer from the front edge.

The starter standard cartridge is installed in RicohSP150 already initially, no protective tapes need to be torn out of it. As you can see, on the right, closer to the front edge, there is a blue lever inside the printer, it is you who needs to pull it up to the stop if the paper suddenly gets stuck in the printer, then carefully pull the sheet out of the input tray or from the output tray, depending on where you can see jammed paper.

Even inside the printer, in front of the cartridge, if you look closely, it is drawn what needs to be done in this case. This whole procedure is also described in detail in the instructions, so I will not dwell on it.

Cartridges for everything 150 series of printers and MFPs Ricoh the same. They are very compact in height, just like all other laser printer cartridges, they have chips to remember the toner level. Before putting the cartridge into operation, you need to shake it left and right 5-6 times to even out the toner level. This is also written in the instructions, so first read it, and then connect the printer.

The paper size limiter allows you to set the desired size from A4. The edges of the limiter are simultaneously shifted relative to the center. Printing takes place on the top side of the sheet, that is, facing the person looking at the printer.

The side non-printing margins of the printer are relatively narrow, only 4.2 mm.

Under the printer's top lift-off cover RicohSP150 glossy plastic surface.

The printer in working condition looks modest, but very neat.

Software installation

The software can be used from the included CD or downloaded from the company's website. Ricoh. In the case of self-download, you will have to download 229 MB of data, which is quite a bit in the age of mass distribution. unlimited internet. Run the installation file SETUP.EXE, accept the license agreement and go! You can choose two types of installation, I personally chose the "Quick installation" option.

Be sure to run the installation according to the generally accepted rules - first start installing the software or drivers, and then, when the program asks you to connect the USB cable and turn on the device, then do so.

Here is the printer installation and completed, the printer appeared in the list of installed devices.

Now, by clicking on the right mouse button, you can go to the printer properties and see the options for printing settings.

From here you can also print a test page. She printed beautifully.

Scanned originals printed on a laser printer Ricoh SP 150 pages, available through Yandex-disk at the link:

Pages scanned at 600 dpi, one file at 1200 dpi and saved in compressed TIFF format, six files totaling 196 MB.

If you go to the print settings, then everything will be visible here the widest possibilities adjusting the print options for yourself. I also recommend enabling the toner saving option, while the print quality practically does not drop, but the savings can be 50%.

Settings for paper type, print quality, type of content to be printed, print quality, multi-page printing, duplex option...

In additional options - scaling, printing headers, footers, watermarks, booklets ...

All this needs to be approached thoughtfully, it is costly and time consuming, so it really saves that you can create many of your profiles, in which all options will already be set for a specific printing task.

By the way, after installing the printer, the RICOH Printer shortcut appears on the desktop, launching which you can see the control panel (the MFP has two more options added to it), but it has dubious benefits for the printer.

Checking print quality and speed

Before printing, if you go to the printer settings, an image of the page is displayed on the screen, how it will look when printed, this is very visual and convenient.

When testing, we used test images that we managed to find on the Internet, as well as one full-size source of a photo of our own production. On the left is a thumbnail of the original image that was printed from, and on the right is a thumbnail of the scanned printed sheet. Scanning was carried out on an HP ScanJet G4010 scanner. After scanning, the images turned out to be less contrast than they really are, but the scanner settings are already to blame. It can be seen that the test image did not print completely due to the printer margins, but this can be corrected in the settings so that the image is scaled to the page.

The Ricoh SP 150 renders halftones quite well, although this is done due to rasterization by dots of different diameters.

Well, a real photo with a resolution of 14 megapixels, printed at a resolution of 600x1200 pixels.

Finally, check the performance of the printer. The manufacturer announced a print speed of 22 pages per minute, let's check if this is true. We will print a page with 5%

filling with toner, this is an average parameter for the bulk of tests and calculations. For a more accurate measurement of speed, we will use the formula for the number of copies printed: Y=1+(2*X), where X is the printer's declared performance in pages per minute. One is added because it is the starting one and we will not take it into account later in the calculations. From the above calculations, it turns out that 45 sheets need to be printed on the Ricoh SP 150. For objectivity, a video of the printing process was filmed.

And what happened? And that's what!

Warm-up time: 21 sec (claimed 25 sec),

First page out time after warm up: 4 sec,

Print speed 44 sheets: 1 min. 56 sec, that is, the actual speed corresponds exactly to 22 ppm.

Well, thanks to Ricoh for an objective reflection of the characteristics of the printer.

Conclusion

Generally, laser printer Ricoh SP 150 proved to be very positive: it prints qualitatively and quickly. Another big plus is that it works quite quietly. When my cat saw him at work, she didn’t run away, although she was a terrible coward by nature, but sat on her hind legs in a gopher pose and, with eyes as round as saucers, looked at how the pages crawled out of the printer. At first glance, the resource of a starter (regular) cartridge of 700 pages seems small, but you can purchase a double-capacity cartridge and believe me, it will last for a very long time in home use. In addition, this is the fate of all cheap printers - manufacturers are trying to make money not on the printer itself, but on the further sale of consumables for it. It is for this purpose that special chips are placed on the cartridges, making it impossible to reuse the cartridge without tricks. All cheap printers have low-capacity cartridges, but those who have to print a lot usually choose from more expensive models that are designed for a large monthly load.

Still, in my opinion, the printer really lacks a paper output tray. After all, if the printer is placed somewhere on the edge of the table, or on a shelf, then all the sheets will fall on the floor, because usually there is very little free space on the table.

a printer Ricoh SP 150 can be recommended for use by students, schoolchildren, representatives of creative professions, private doctors and in general to all people who periodically need to print several dozen pages. What will be its reliability, time will tell, but in any case, the printer is quite cheap and should quickly pay for itself.

All photos of the printer from the review are available in higher resolution in my album.

pros

> quality workmanship and good Ricoh pedigree,

>print is very good quality with good halftone reproduction,

> USB cable included

>low price.

Minuses

> there is no output tray for paper,

>Paper input tray capacity is only 50 sheets.

Many consumers turn to our service center, reporting problems with Ricoh SP-150 printers. At 5% page coverage, the cartridges can print either 700 or 1,500 sheets. If more capacious cartridges were installed, although they were used by default for 700 pages, then the installed chip may simply block printing. Your printing device automatically calculates the fill percentage and the number of pages that can be printed.

Before contacting us with such a problem, there are several other factors to consider. Think about whether anyone other than you could use the printing device, what was the fill rate. Often when examining the equipment, it turned out that more than 1,500 pages were printed on it (although the customer said about 700) or the fill factor was set to 10%. All data is stored on the chip.

Our specialists can perform a detailed decoding of all chip records, set it up for correct and economical operation,