How to Choose the Best Production Printer for Your Business

A production printer is a high-volume, professional printing machine that provides exceptional-quality color prints. Even in this "age of the paperless office," specific types of businesses rely on these printers for everyday operations.

In comparing machines, there are three top brands that offer these special machines: Xerox, Konica Minolta, and Ricoh. We've done a comparison of several machines from each brand, including models that might suit a smaller business and models that suit an enterprise-level office.

Xerox production printers

Xerox is one of the leading manufacturers of business machines and their range of monochrome and color production printers has developed a reputation for combining the latest print solutions with the reliability, performance, and high-quality output print companies need.

• For a small print business, the Xerox Color 560 is an entry level model that still delivers 60 pages per minute in full 2400 dpi color, and is ideal for businesses that need to produce up to 50,000 pages a month.
• If you're looking for a high volume black and white printer, the Xerox 4127 is quite happy delivering up to 700,000 pages per month, and allows you to print on a variety of different sizes and media at up to 125 pages per minute.

Konica Minolta production printers

Konica's Bizhub black and white and color production printers are capable of print speeds of between 55 and 150 pages per minute, making them perfect for a high output print environment.

• A Konica printer provides excellent image quality at a high speed, with a variety of finishing options. The Konica Bizhub PRO 1051 is one of Konica's top black and white production printers. With a monthly page volume of 3,000,000 and print speeds of up to 105 pages per minute, it can be configured with 40 different finishing options and print on media as thick as 350gsm.
• Konica's color production printers are equally as impressive. The flagship color production printer, the Konica bizhub PRO C65hc, has revolutionary color technology to provide the highest quality prints, and will deliver 300,000 pages per month at speeds up to 65 pages per minute

Ricoh production printers

Ricoh offers a wide variety of production printers. Ricoh's Infoprint range use rolls of paper rather than sheets, which helps to improve the speed, quality and flexibility of these models.

• For small businesses with a need for a compact black and white printer that can deliver continuous forms printing at speeds up to 154 impressions per minute and high quality 600 dpi resolution, the Ricoh Infoprint 100 is ideal.
• For more demanding print environments, the top of the range Ricoh Infoprint 5000 is available in three different platforms that will provide your business with all the flexibility it needs, as well as print speeds of 128 to 220 meters per minute in full colour 720 dpi.

With the flexibility, reliability and performance that will allow you to maximize your productivity, it's not difficult to see why Xerox, Konica Minolta, and Ricoh are a popular choice in the production printer market.