I’ve been handling print orders for six years. In that time, I’ve made and documented 14 significant equipment mistakes—roughly $26,000 in wasted budget. After that, I became the person who maintains our team’s pre-purchase checklist so nobody else repeats my nonsense.
If you’re trying to choose between a Ricoh commercial printer and a Procolored DTG printer, a DTF 1000 printer, or a Focus Alpha-Jet A2 UV printer, this is the comparison I wish I’d had before I spent the money.
Here’s what you need to know: you’re not comparing printers. You’re comparing business models.
The comparison framework I use now
I evaluate a printer in four dimensions: cost per acceptable piece (not cost per page, because a print that doesn’t ship isn’t a print), workflow and floor space, substrate and resolution limits, and small-order friendliness. The last one matters more than most spec-sheet numbers.
1. Cost per acceptable piece
To be fair, a Ricoh commercial printer isn’t trying to be a DTG machine. I was the one trying to make it one. Leased Ricoh units often have cost-per-page contracts, which can be attractive for high-volume standard jobs. But if you let the machine sit, you still pay the lease. I know because I did exactly that in 2019.
A Procolored DTG printer has a smaller sticker price, but the true cost includes pretreatment, white ink that settles, and maintenance cycles. What I mean is, a low ink cost by volume doesn’t mean low cost per garment. The same shirt that took $1.10 of ink can take $2.30 when you burn nozzles before a 47-piece order. On that one, every single hoodie had a faint white line. $890 in redo plus a one-week delay—that’s the real cost.
The DTF 1000 printer has another set of hidden costs: film, powder, and a heat press that cures the adhesive evenly. Plus, a DTF sheet has waste around the image. On big images, waste is small; on small patches, waste is huge.
At least, that’s been my experience with production loads under 200 pieces. If you run long documents, a Ricoh commercial printer often wins on paper. But for custom items, the specialty machines win the “how much did I actually make” test.
Before you buy, check what the same job costs through an online printer. Publicly listed prices in January 2025: 500 business cards ran $20–$120; 1,000 flyers ran $80–$150 through online printers and $150–$300 at local shops. Use that as your baseline. If the in-house machine can’t beat that after supplies, labor, and reprints, it isn’t an investment yet. Prices exclude shipping; verify current rates.
And hidden fees follow the same logic. Setup fees in commercial printing typically run $15–$50 per color for plates, $0–$25 for digital setup, $50–$200 for die cutting, and $25–$75 for a custom Pantone color. Many online printers bundle those into the unit price. When you bring work in-house, those costs don’t disappear—they become your time and waste. The lowest quoted price is rarely the lowest total cost. Based on publicly listed fee schedules I checked in January 2025.
2. Workflow and floor space
A Ricoh commercial printer fits into a normal office and behaves like a machine from this decade. Load paper, pick a tray, hit print. Need a scan? It scans. Need to send documents? It sends. For a standard shop, that convenience is hard to beat.
A Procolored DTG printer doesn’t just print. You pretreat, you print white ink, you print color, you cure. A DTF 1000 printer adds film, powder, and a separate heat press. The Focus Alpha-Jet A2 UV printer needs ventilation, a clean space, and a flatbed area so the table stays square. These are not office printers. They are production stations.
But here’s the counterintuitive part: a more complex workflow can still be faster for the jobs that machine is designed to do. One operator can knock out a one-off mug or a sample hoodie in the time it would take to set up a Ricoh with the right media and a custom document. Complex doesn’t mean slow; it means different.
(Should mention: if you only print paper, buy the Ricoh. If you only print garments, the Ricoh may sit idle. Know which lane you’re in.)
3. Print resolution and substrate limits
The Focus Alpha-Jet A2 UV printer print resolution is one of those specs that sounds amazing in the brochure. But in practice, resolution alone doesn’t make a print acceptable. Ink adhesion, curing force, and substrate prep matter just as much. Put another way: a resolution number only matters if the ink sticks and survives the customer’s first wipe with a damp cloth.
A Ricoh commercial printer on paper is smooth, consistent, and reliable. It handles type well and gives you accurate CMYK without much babysitting. But it prints on paper. That’s its lane. If you put it next to a Procolored DTG printer on cotton, the Ricoh isn’t even competing in the same category.
When I compared the same design printed on a Ricoh commercial printer and a Procolored DTG printer side by side, I realized that print quality is never abstract. It’s quality on a specific surface. On paper, the Ricoh looked sharp. On cotton, the DTG looked like it was made for a museum exhibit.
DTG printers put white ink under color; that’s why they work on dark shirts. The DTF 1000 printer offers another route: print on film, transfer it to fabric, and get a somewhat rubbery result that works on more fabric textures. The Focus Alpha-Jet A2 UV printer print resolution—whatever number is on your unit—is great on rigid surfaces, but you have to manage ink thickness so it doesn’t sit like a sticker.
So yes, the Ricoh wins on paper. The UV/DTG/DTF wins on things that aren’t paper. And the winner in the “what does the customer feel when they hold it” test is the one you calibrated, not the one with the biggest dpi number.
4. Small-order friendliness
This is where I have the strongest opinion. Small orders are not a favor to you. A $200 first order can become a $20,000 annual order if the second order goes well. The vendors who treated my small orders seriously are the ones I still call when the big jobs come.
I get why some suppliers have minimums. Setup costs are real. A plate, a die, a custom Pantone mix—they all still cost money whether you make one unit or a thousand. But that doesn’t mean a small order deserves a bad attitude. Good suppliers (and good machines) avoid punishing small runs.
Ricoh commercial printer? A production toner engine usually wants volume. Some leased plans include a click charge, which is fine for high volume. What I mean is, for a one-off sample, the click charge plus fuser warm-up time makes that sample expensive. But a Ricoh shop can help you understand whether a lease makes sense for your volume—and a good dealer will tell you when it doesn’t.
Specialty equipment is different. The Procolored DTG printer can make a single white cotton shirt without plates and without dies. The DTF 1000 printer can run a 10-piece hoodie order without a dedicated screen. The Focus Alpha-Jet A2 UV printer print resolution lets you do a one-off engraved-look tumbler or a custom acrylic sign at a price that feels reasonable—because the setup cost is near zero.
Small doesn’t mean unimportant. It means potential.
So what do I actually recommend?
It depends on the jobs you’re already losing, not the jobs you hope to win. Allow me to be specific.
- If your clients mostly order paper documents, booklets, flyers, and business cards, buy or lease the Ricoh commercial printer. Get the service plan through a Ricoh shop and keep it fed with quality stock.
- If you’re a small apparel shop trying to service custom garment orders without outsourcing, start with a Procolored DTG printer or a DTF 1000 printer. Then add the heat press before you add a second printer.
- If you keep getting “can you even print on this?” requests, the Focus Alpha-Jet A2 UV printer—or an A2 flatbed in that class—is worth serious consideration. The print resolution matters, but only when paired with proper ink thickness testing.
Online printers like 48 Hour Print work well for standard products and quantities from 25 to 25,000. That’s the line I use to decide what stays in-house. Under 25 pieces, custom die-cut shapes, same-day in-hand delivery, or hands-on color matching—those are the jobs where specialty equipment earns its floor space. The value of guaranteed turnaround isn’t speed; it’s certainty. When you control the calendar, you control the promise.
I went back and forth between the DTF 1000 printer and the Focus Alpha-Jet A2 UV printer for two weeks. The DTF line was safer because I already understood transfer printing. The UV printer felt riskier. The worst case: a machine I couldn’t sell, plus angry clients who expected magic. The best case: a new product line that our competitors couldn’t copy. Ultimately, I chose the UV printer, because I had already built enough recurring jobs to absorb a slow launch. If you don’t have that base, don’t rush.
And if you’re near a Ricoh shop, use it as a resource. Ask for a demo with your own files. Print the blacks, the gradients, the small type. Then decide. Since I built the checklist, we’ve caught 47 potential errors in the last 18 months. The right comparison framework won’t save you from startup costs, but it will help you spend money on the machine that solves the problems you actually have, not the ones you fear.
Leave a Reply