$20K printer for $600
Written: Nov 18 '00
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Pros: inexpensive PRO quality. VERSATILE.
Cons: noisy, some surmountable color banding problems.
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| Dicty's Full Review: Alps MD-5000P Printer |
I don't believe most people realize what caliber of machine they are looking at when they see the Alps MD5000p next to the consumer inkjets at the local computer shops. This printer can do dye sublimation printing, something that you ordinarily can't touch for less than US$20,000. A professional review below called the 75c per page for dye sub expensive. That is false. Dye sub usually costs several DOLLARS per page. The Alps cost is dirt cheap. Add to that the fact that the Alps dyesub printer prints at 600dpi - our Kodak 8500 and most others only do 300dpi! One negative point is that the Alps dyesub prints suffer from an artifact of printing from a narrow ribbon; the resulting prints have a slight banding pattern across the image. It's often not noticeable and often invisible and inconsequential. A real problem is a pinkish/greenish banding pattern visible when printing large grayscale images in dyesub mode. This is caused by using C, M, Y ribbons to make black/gray. Don't blame Alps for that; that's how dyesub printers and professional printers make black/gray too. Presumably it results from a problem with the driver controlling color intermix. Professional dyesub printers come with calibration software to correct this. So far, it make it impossible for us to use dyesub for grayscale work. I use 2400dpi "vphoto" mode for that instead with admirable results!
It will do laser quality printing using a ribbon. I examined the text output under a microscope and found the text blacker than out of our lab laser printer. Also, the character serifs were sharper and cleaner. The laser output looked spattered on the page by comparison under the scope. It is expensive to print text this way tho' since you are using up black ribbon instead of relatively inexpensive laser toner. The point is though, that if you want a home or light-duty class printer and can't afford both a b/w laser and a color dyesub you can get the alps which does both.
I'm a research scientist at UCSD. When we publish our data, we need a professional quality dye sublimation printer to output high resolution, publication quality figures for submission to scientific journals. Consumer inkjets just don't cut it. When our old Kodak dye sub 8500 broke down, we found a new printer would cost way more than we could afford. I found this Alps printer on a review site and then demo'd it at a store. The quality is amazing. Even if you don't use dyesub mode, the 2400dpi mode is beautiful and could be called photo-like (or at least as photolike as inkjet output). The prints, dyesub or 2400dpi are both waterproof and fadeproof. I have noted some odd smearing occasionally on dyesub prints if they are handled too much soon after they are printed. Otherwise, they appear permanent quality. People have mistaken my dyesub prints for actual photographs especially since they are on heavy stock glossy paper, virtually identical to Kodak photograph paper.
Some negative points: Slow print speed, tho' this is normal for 3-pass dyesub printing. You'd wait just as long even if you spent the $20,000 for a big-boy dyesub printer. Second, it's noisy, not as bad as a dot matrix tho'. I'm willing to live with it for the incredible print quality.
Third, it does what a pro printer does so the various options, ribbons, and settings can confuse the first time user. But once you understand this printer you'd never give it up.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 600
Operating System: Windows and Macintosh
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Epinions.com ID:
Dicty
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Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 0 members
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