A new printing technology has taken on colour inkjets and laser printers in Japan over the past 18 months, with over 200,000 units sold. Called a GelSprinter, it is available in the UK and has launched in Australia today, and is an interesting alternative with cool features all its own.

Laser printers had been around for a while, but were still the expensive holy grail of quality printing, while inkjet printers from Canon, Epson and HP were yet to appear in black and white models, let alone in colour.

Fast forward to 2005, and a new Gel printing technology was unveiled in Japan. Ricoh’s press release tells us that: “Unlike traditional dye and pigment-based inkjet printers, the GelSprinter uses a viscous liquid gel that gelatinises and dries almost instantly upon contact with paper. This minimises bleeding and smudging of images. The gel is also water and sunlight resistant, resulting in increased document durability”.

The three new GelSprinter models

Ricoh says the GelSprinters can print documents at “a maximum of 3600 x 1200 dots per inch (dpi) equivalent”, so text and photos should look very sharp and clear. Each GelSprinter also features an electrostatic belt transfer system. This is designed to ensure that paper is always transported consistently and reliably.

That’s Ricoh’s claim, and simply using the printer for any length of time will quickly verify that, or not. We’ve all seen paper go a bit wonky in inkjet printers as it starts to print, sometimes righting itself, and sometimes not! That’s probably more so the case with older model s than the latest ones, but if Ricoh’s system is consistent, that will be an improvement.