Best Production Units
As industry leaders for the past decade, we understand that choosing the right production unit can be a daunting task for most businesses; simply because there are too many options on the market. To alleviate some of that stress, we’ve put together a quick reference guide to help you better understand the top choices available in the market. The information in this article is mainly derived from Buyer’s Lab, which has been recognized as the industry’s most trusted resource of unbiased information and includes award-winning production units.
| Top Digital Production Printers:Xerox Versant 280 PressKonica Minolta AccurioPress C14000Xerox PrimeLink C9070Ricoh Pro C7210SKonica Minolta AccurioPress 6136Epson WorkForce Enterprise WF-C21000Sharp MX-8090N |
Xerox Versant 280 Press
Market Entry Date: October 2020
The Xerox Versant is known for its image quality and speed. Its superb color stability and impressive spot-color matching make it ideal for businesses that require high-quality, consistent prints.
This unit is also best in class when it comes to mixed media handling and offers creative prints with its Adaptive CMYK+ Vivid (white, gold, silver, clear) toner kits. Even better, these toners are user-swappable for a hassle-free experience.
However, in comparison to competing devices, this unit lacks a more sophisticated job scheduler and timeline view features as it only displays one job at a time on the Fiery.
| Starting Price* | $40,000 |
| Max Monthly | 750,000 impressions |
| Speed | 80 ppm (Letter); 44 ppm (Tabloid) |
| Color/Monochrome | Color |
| Max Paper Capacity | 9,900 sheets |
| Dimensions | 48″ x 30″ x 33″ |
Konica Minolta AccurioPress C14000
Market Entry Date: February 2020
The Konica Minolta AccurioPress offers the highest control over color stability and is designed to provide consistent output quality. Its Automatic Inspection Technology minimizes the potential for misprints by automatically purging sheets that don’t match quality standards.
Additionally, this unit offers extensive finishing options for businesses that require complex outputs, such as full-bleed banners and multi-fold brochures.
With that being said, this unit is not as user-friendly as some of its competitors as it only offers limited customization of the control panel, and the navigation of the menu system can be perceived as less intuitive for new users.
| Starting Price* | $351,897 |
| Max Monthly | 2,500,000 impressions |
| Speed | 140 ppm (Letter); 80 ppm (Tabloid) |
| Color/Monochrome | Color |
| Max Paper Capacity | 14,140 sheets |
| Dimensions | 63.8″ x 45.3″ x 36.7″ |
Xerox PrimeLink C9070
Market Entry Date: October 2019
The Xerox PrimeLink C9070 is an excellent choice as a light production unit. Its user-friendly interface and customizable options provide a great user experience. It also offers outstanding color-matching accuracy for color-critical jobs.
This unit offers an extensive selection of inline finishing options, making it stand out from the competition. With the Xerox Adaptive CMYK Plus Kit, users can also take advantage of user-swappable specialty toners to create prints that go beyond the standard CMYK output.
However, when making duplex banner prints, the users will have to manually reload the paper as this unit only offers automatic simplex printing.
| Starting Price* | $45,763 |
| Max Monthly | 300,000 impressions |
| Speed | 70 ppm color/75 ppm black (Letter);35 ppm color/37 ppm black (Tabloid) |
| Color/Monochrome | Color |
| Max Paper Capacity | 7,250 sheets |
| Dimensions | 54.8″ x 62″ x 31.6″ |
Ricoh Pro C7210S
Market Entry Date: March 2019
The Ricoh Pro C7210S is an ideal choice for a mid-volume production unit. It is known for its five-star rated color consistency and excellent halftone reproduction. It offers a large, responsive control panel for a user-friendly experience and outstanding overall usability. This highly productive unit maintains its speed of 95 ppm even at its maximum paper weight of 360gsm.
However, this maximum weight support of 360gsm is more limited than competing units. Additionally, this is a relatively expensive unit and might not be suitable for businesses with smaller budgets.
| Starting Price* | $129,029 |
| Max Monthly | 800,000 impressions |
| Speed | 95 ppm (Letter) |
| Color/Monochrome | Color |
| Max Paper Capacity | 16,200 sheets |
| Dimensions | 48.4″ x 52″ x 35.8″ |
Konica Minolta AccurioPress 6136
Market Entry Date: February 2018
The Konica Minolta AccurioPress 6136 is a mid-volume production unit that is known for its user-friendly features. It offers a Scheduler feature that can be used to maximize efficiency and prioritize jobs on a daily basis. It also supports an 18,000-sheet paper input capacity and three inline stackers to reduce the time spent on refilling and offloading paper during jobs. This model is a good option for businesses that require a production unit that is easy to use and can efficiently handle high-volume workloads.
One of the downsides of this unit is that it lacks the ability to bypass jobs that are submitted with media mismatches, which in turn prolongs the downtime until it is corrected.
| Starting Price* | $92,400.00 |
| Max Monthly | 3,240,000 impressions |
| Speed | 136 ppm (Letter); 78 ppm (Tabloid) |
| Color/Monochrome | Monochrome |
| Max Paper Capacity | 18,000 sheets |
| Dimensions | 57″ x 39″ x 35.8″ |
Epson WorkForce Enterprise WF-C21000
Market Entry Date: September 2020
The Epson WorkForce Enterprise WF-C21000 is a powerful InkJet MFP and is a more affordable option for businesses with a smaller budget. It is known for its exceptional finishing capabilities, especially as an inkjet unit. It features heat-free technology and is the best in its class when it comes to high-speed printing and lower power consumption.
However, this unit’s maximum paper capacity of 5,350 sheets is less than what most competitors have to offer, along with a slower scan speed.
| Starting Price* | $29,858 |
| Max Monthly | 400,000 impressions |
| Speed | 100 ppm (Letter) |
| Color/Monochrome | Color |
| Max Paper Capacity | 5,350 sheets |
| Dimensions | 48.9″ x 26.5″ x 29.8″ |
Sharp MX-8090N
Market Entry Date: November 2017
The Sharp MX8090N is an award-winning high-volume production unit and is highly recommended by the Buyers Lab analysts. It is known for its reliability and efficiency. It offers centralized device management for IT personnel with easy-to-use web utility and Sharp Remote Device Manager (SRDM), along with featuring a user-friendly control panel. This unit has an above-average memory, hard drive capacity, and maximum paper capacity. Its full-bleed technology lets users produce booklets on regular 11” x 17” paper. It has a 13,500-sheet paper capacity that minimizes the time spent reloading paper during lengthy jobs. It is also a highly integrative unit, as users can utilize Sharp OSA for integration with network applications and popular cloud services. This unit is unique in that it’s a high-production unit that’s also easy to use, a combination not commonly found.
As far as the size goes, this unit is considered to be on the larger side, so it will work best for businesses that have adequate space available.
| Starting Price* | $53,430 |
| Max Monthly | 350,000 impressions |
| Speed | 80 ppm (Letter) |
| Color/Monochrome | Color |
| Max Paper Capacity | 13,500 sheets |
| Dimensions | 60-1/4″ x 38-3/8″ x 30-1/4″ |
At the end of the day, the process of purchasing a production unit is anything but simple – however, ADS is here to help! With our partnerships with world-class vendors, ADS is committed to bringing customizable solutions to our customers. Give us a call today and speak with one of our highly skilled sales representatives to find out what option works best for you and your company!
*These units are highly customizable, due to which the prices will vary accordingly.
