Ricoh Aficio C242SF review

SCANNER

The MFP’s scanner interface looks a bit elderly by the standards of its Epson and Canon rivals, but it’s easy to use and has all the options you’re likely to need. A preview scan took 26s from cold but just 10s if the scanner had been used recently. The general tab lets you select the resolution you wish to scan at, switch between colour and black and white and choose cropping options. An Advanced settings tab allows you to adjust gamma, sharpness, brightness and contrast.

A 150dpi scan of an A4 document took 13s while a 300dpi scan of the same sheet took 17s. The scanner interface remained open and retained previews between scans. A 600dpi scan of a 6x4in photo took 14s and even a 1,200dpi scan took just 25s. Even though scans are so quick, their quality wasn’t bad at all. There wasn’t as much fine detail as you get from more photo-oriented scanners, but contrast between similar tones was reasonably good and colours looked fairly natural. Text on our low-resolution 150dpi scan was clearly legible too.

The MFP costs £368 and comes with 1,000-page starter cartridges. It has fairly low print costs if you buy high-yield 6,500-page black or 6,000-page colour cartridges, which cost £118 for a black cartridge and £123 for each colour cartridge. A mono page works out at 1.8p and a page of mixed colour and black printing at 8.1p. There aren’t many additional consumables, but total cost of ownership for light use is a rather hefty £846 due to the relatively small starter cartridges. However, the MFP is much better value for high-yield users. If you go through 2,000 mono and 1,000 colour pages every month, the TCO is a middling £3,936.

CONCLUSION

The Aficio C242SF’s print quality isn’t the best and colour print speeds are conspicuously slow, but although its interface isn’t exactly bursting with innovation, this is a functional, workmanlike laser MFP that met all of our expectations and is reasonably cost-effective for heavy users. However, if you’re after a workgroup laser MFP, the Xerox WorkCentre 6605DN produces better-looking prints, has a great interface and will cost light users much less to run.