Riso (UK), the leading digital printer manufacturer, announces its recently launched HC5000, the world's fastest sheet-fed full colour A3 inkjet printer, has been bestowed BERTL‘s prestigious ‘Best Award for Innovation' while the Buyers Laboratory Inc. (BLI) has given it a ‘BLI Recommended' rating, based on independent and rigorous product testing in their respective laboratories. BERTL and BLI are today the two most respected, independent laboratories within the digital imaging and office equipment sector worldwide.

Following independent tests of the machine carried out by BERTL, the organisation has recognised the HC5000 with an innovation award due to its unique potential to open up an entirely new market segment for low cost digital colour printing, especially for the commercial printer/CRD/print for pay marketplace. The HC5000 was selected after painstaking analysis of hundreds of digital imaging devices, software and management utilities in the worldwide marketplace. BERTL covers the entire digital imaging and document management arena, including colour and black & white multifunction printers, back office production devices and colour, wide format devices, digital duplicators, document scanners, software and utilities.

Based on an intensive two-month laboratory evaluation of 14 performance parameters, BLI ‘recommends' the Riso HC5000 for monthly volumes of up to 75,000 impressions. In fact, during the evaluation, the HC5000 completed the 125,000 impression durability test without a single misfeed or product service requirement. This exemplary performance resulted in the machine being awarded ‘excellent' for reliability and truly sets the HC5000 apart from traditional competing technologies as paper jam situations are a major issue for most printer products. The HC5000 was tested for colour print quality, black print quality, print productivity, ease of use, administrative utilities, feedback to workstations, ease of network setup, print drivers, applications compatibility, feature set, security and accessibility features, ink yield and value, receiving very positive ratings for all the parameters.

Richard Thompson, Managing Director, Riso (UK) comments: "These verdicts by the two highly respected industry organisations validate what we have been saying all along. We are challenging the traditional high investment colour print sector by providing a real solution for everyday office and ‘one-hit' marketing colour communication. The HC5000 is a truly unique product in the market today."

The HC5000 offers a print speed of up to 105 A4 pages per minute and a monthly duty cycle of up to 250,000 pages. With a cost per page that's equivalent to black and white, it has created a new market that the company calls ‘Communication Colour' which means affordable colour printing for everyday communications.

Customer feedback from the initial installations has echoed the findings of independent laboratories, with praise being heaped on the machine in terms of the low cost and incredible reliability offered from the FORCEJETTM printing process, the engine that drives the HC5000, combining a powerful print engine, line inkjet system and high-speed paper feed system.