Copiers - any other hardware worth looking at?

[pete]

We're up for renewal on our copiers. Currently mostly Konica with a solo Canon and a few Kyoceras.

 

Looking at:

 

• Canon (but have concerns about reliability)
  
• Kyocera (have some, seem decent and robust. Probably not using the same supplier though as evidence of mis-selling and stupid print accounting software)
  
• Ricoh (maybe, Ricoh direct messed us about with a trial and likely ruined their chances)
  
• Sharp (no experience, but heard good things)
  
• Toshiba (as above)
  

and what I care about is:

 

• Hardware reliability
  
• Parts availability. Functional, robust supply chain.
  
• Working back office functionality (billing, ordering, account manager competent and contactable)
  
• PaperCut compatibility.
  
• Decent Postscript drivers
  
• Ideally integrator has experience of PaperCut with N+1 sources of truth for authentication. I'm happy to go direct to PaperCut with queries if need be, but since I have to pay the copier company for PaperCut support it would be nice if they could provide it.
  

Edited February 27, 2024 by pete

[JRA]

All Sharp here, work fine and engineers VERY swift to attend (same day if they can.)

 

PaperCut works like a charm with it, very happy.

[Olliedawg]

2nd recommendation for Sharp with Papercut. As JRA said, anytime I have needed an Engineer, they are fairly swift getting here, usually same day!

[HarryMonkey]

Have a look at RISO too.

[smurfomatic]

Agree with @HarryMonkey - at my last place, we had RISO copiers that were hammered for five years and barely had an engineer callout. As they're not laser they're also cheap to run as well as quick.

[willtech]

+1 for Sharp

[Jamman960]

Both sharp and Toshiba worked very well at my last place, avoid Kyocera like the plague - I’ve experienced them with 2 suppliers and they’ve been pretty unreliable, que jokes about offering engineers a room vs barely seeing engineers with tosh/sharp

[Guest Guest]

We have Sharp directly from Sharp.

 

The devices are very reliable, however, when we’ve required a Tech they’ve been on site either same day or next

 

We’ve had our account manager for years, he’s great and did us a really good deal on last renewal (allowed us to retain one of the low use MFDs at the end of lease at no cost to us)

 

They also provided our interactive screens, again they did us great deal and the screens have been rock solid

[3s-gtech]

I don’t want to incite anything litigious, but we had copiers that our cousins in the USA use as a generic trademark.

 

They were atrocious, and this week, six months after getting rid, I’m finding that the bloody drivers have somehow come back from the dead and gone berserk (hundreds of instances, app notification popups etc). Windows Update most likely trigger.

 

Hateful rubbish. Awful support. Rude call centres. Broken supplies ordering. Good techs, but getting them out was tough, and the copiers broke all the time.

 

I could make a better photocopier using my scrap box. Or from something dead.

[DrCheese]

Konica and Kyocera are fine.

 

Never ever EVER consider buying *any* photocopier via anything other than a proper framework agreement tho. Unless you enjoy being exploited at every opportunity.

[MrEprise]

Both sharp and Toshiba worked very well at my last place, avoid Kyocera like the plague - I’ve experienced them with 2 suppliers and they’ve been pretty unreliable, que jokes about offering engineers a room vs barely seeing engineers with tosh/sharp

 

We have Kyocera devices as the mo but they're up for renewal soon. They've actually been quite good and we rarely see the engineers. I'll be sorry to see the back of these as they've been a load off my mind & our MAT are likely to go with the absolute cheapest they can get their hands on (Canon probably which I don't rate particularly high on reliability; at my last School, I saw the engineer so often, I thought he was living there!)

[MatthewL]

I've used various ones over the years but also installed and removed many too. Personally for me its Sharp any day, they are the most user friendly machine, come with more features out the box, integrates really well to PaperCut that anyone could do it.

 

Toshiba are a good solid machine and would quite happily use them but for me personally their user interface and web page just let it down but the touch screen is second to none its responsive, both are solid build machines too.

 

Availability of any machines parts can be due to supply chain issues and there have been some of them and could well be in the future but if you use a good quality paper not the cheap recycled stuff and have them in a good environment they will keep going.

 

I have 40+ Sharp's on my current estate, some are now on their 2nd or 3rd replacement over the last 10-12 years, we've had ours monies worth out of them. I must of installed in the region of 2000+ Sharp machines in a 8 year period back when I was doing them in a previous job, just features like unable to remove the toner till its physically empty stops them been swapped between machines just silly little things put them ahead of the game. Toshiba may slightly be better print if you wanted either in a professional print room but for the majority you cannot tell the difference.

[Aprice]

Always liked the newer Toshiba machines, just worked and look quite nice.

 

I've worked with some ancient Kyocera's that just worked, school had bought them refurbished for something like £150 each with a decent price per click. Nobody could justify replacing them as they just didn't go wrong enough to be a problem.

 

Couple of Ricoh machines, which were fine.

On the other hand Riso, is a nightmare. We've got an ongoing case with it just dropping off the network and PaperCut falling over on it, needs a reboot every time. PaperCut client isn't really fully integrated, so scan to email doesn't work via PaperCut. I'm sure it might be cheap to run, but it isn't a great machine and winds us up!

Edited February 28, 2024 by Aprice

[timbo343]

Word of advice, do not go Konica or Develop with Embedded Papercut!

 

We have a fleet of these and once Embedded papercut on the device you cannot get the device to send out notifications from this list of warnings from under the Device interface > Maintenance > Status Notification Setting:

 

- Replenish Paper Tray

- JAM

- PM Call

- Replace Staples

- Replenish Toner

- Finisher Tray Full

- Service Call

- Job Finished

- Remove staple scrap

- Hole-Punch Scrap Box Full

- Waste Toner Box Full

- Drum Unit/Developing Unit Life

- Fusing Unit Yield

- Transfer Roller Yield

- Transfer Belt Unit Yield

- Virus detected

 

This would be useful because we would be alerted to the device if the waste toner box was full, or there was constant Jam, or whatever.

 

Our Print supplier is refusing to assist with this and state "well the device is reporting back to us". Yes it is but we want to know when a one of the above happens on the device without getting you involved! My question was "are you alerted when the finisher tray is full". They couldn't answer my question!

 

So if you are an active onsite support team and want to know when something from the list above goes wrong with a MFD, stay away from Konica / Develop with embedded papercut.

 

Happy to be proved wrong though!

[Linfit]

Would definitely look at RISO - our five year old ones have just been like for like replaced and they have been solid as a rock. They are in public spaces, get hammered and just carry on going. Few calls outs and when we have the engineers are quick and effective. Very cheap to run as well. Its inkjet so not super good quality, but perfectly OK for day to day. Integrate well with papercut and they set it all up for you, we use them with our Net2 keyfobs. One of the best decisions we made to get them.

[PotNoodleTech]

Happy with Ricoh&papercut there are several of our MFD's that have never had an engineer call in 5 years, not one. We just fill with paper and feed them the odd toner and they're happy as larry.

 

Every other school that I talk to that doesn't have Ricoh have plenty of horror stories and weekly/monthly engineer calls. Reliability is key here not just initial price.

[ASA-Simon]

I'm surprised so many mentions of RISO. The quotes we had last time we went through renewal were crazy. The cost of one machine was the same price as kitting out the whole school with 5 x copiers from Sharp. Cost per page was great but you would need to be printing huge amounts to make up for the big increase in rental.

 

No big complaints about Sharp. They have been fairly reliable.

[CrootUK]

Richo and Lexmark for all our schools via ASL on papercut

 

It’s super hard to say anything positive about a printer, but they’re OK more reliable than I’d like to admit.

 

ASL are great though..

Edited February 28, 2024 by CrootUK

[pete]

Thanks everyone.

 

Follow up queries:

 

• Does anyone have copiers that auto-order replacement staples (I suspect this is a unicorn, but...)
  
• RISO kit - how fixed is the ink these days. Google (and many university "here's how to use a RISO machine" help pages) imply it's still more like newsprint.
  
• RISO again: If I need to print a lot of full colour, are they still feasible?
  

Edited February 28, 2024 by pete

[Andycat]

We've been Canon for 8 years, with Uniflow. Been pretty painless once setup!

[Linfit]

Thanks everyone.

 

Follow up queries:

 

 

• RISO kit - how fixed is the ink these days. Google (and many university "here's how to use a RISO machine" help pages) imply it's still more like newsprint.
  
• RISO again: If I need to print a lot of full colour, are they still feasible?
  

 

The print quality is adequate - you need to see samples in hand I think to judge if its OK for you. We wouldn't use it for presentation quality stuff or anything that was needed to last long term, but most printing in schools is effectively disposable and its fine for long runs of exam papers and such. Its not newsprint - it doesn't come off in your hands. Our repro person uses it for long runs of booklets for use in class and doesn't have any issues. You do get bleed-through if printing colour on both sides to a certain degree. Advantage for big print runs though is that they are very fast.

[ITGuyNW]

We had a demo of RISO before Christmas. If you want fast bulk prints and not bothered about quality, its fine. When we were looking at contracts, we were going to have a cheap, high quality colour printer to go with it.

[drutt]

We've been with Ricoh through LEA framework for over 10 years, 6 of that was using Safecom, something that was chosen during the BSF period, it did its job but im much happier now with Papercut - PaperCut deploy makes managing printer deployments and access so easy. The engineers are great, usually out same day if you log a call before 12pm.

Only downside really is the automatic toner ordering and restrictions on when they can send out toner, if we have a high use period it can leave our reprographics department in a panic.

[PotNoodleTech]

Only downside really is the automatic toner ordering and restrictions on when they can send out toner, if we have a high use period it can leave our reprographics department in a panic.

 

Your account manager should be able to get you a buffer stock delivered if you are running into issues regularly. Have a word with them.

[rob_coles]

+1 for sharp and paper cut.