Review: ALPS
MD-5000 Micro Dry Printer
Retail under $600. Factory refurbished $499.
The photo to the
left shows the MD-5000 with 7 supplied
cartridges loaded. Dye sub cartridges on top are
blue for easy ID. The ALPS MD-5000 printer uses
a dry printing method using cartridges that
resemble cassette tapes. Up to 7 cartridges can
be loaded in the printer at one time. The
printer comes with “standard” printing
cartridges (cyan, yellow, magenta, black) as
well as photo primer, Finish II, and Econo
Black. The Econo Black cartridge can be reversed
up to 20 times for draft printing. The Finish II
cartridge can be reversed 5 times. The rest of
the cartridges are not reversible. There are
also gold and silver foil as well as metallic
colors available too. The printer will do dye
sublimation with an upgrade kit from ALPS. ($99
from ALPS). Replacement cartridges are very
reasonably priced at $7 to $12 each. I was able
to get a good deal on 4 packs of standard CMYK
inks for $16. (about $4.00 each)
Standard Ink
Printing
Impressive,
high-quality color documents are the result of
Alps' new patented "Micro DryTM
" printers. This next-generation printer
provides crisp resolutions up to 2400
dots-per-inch for both monochrome text and
photo-quality color output. The following
discussion is a brief explanation of this
printer and how it works.
Different
technologies form dots in different ways. Micro
Dry dots are constructed from resins that result
in an extremely fine edge. Laser dots are formed
from toners that usually "powder", forming tiny
satellites around the dot itself. Inkjet dots
are wet droplets that are absorbed into the
paper, so that individual dots sizes increase.
The Alps MD-5000 can form "variable dots" from
10 to 40 micron.
The micro dry
technology produces vivid color prints that
won’t fade, won’t smudge, won’t smear. It will
print on any paper. The text printing on the
ALPS is sharper and cleaner than ink jets and
laser printers. Graphics are nice and sharp. It
will print glossy photos on regular paper. It
will also print transparencies, iron-on
transfers, and mug transfers.
The MD-5000
will print up to 2400 DPI on special VPhoto
print film. The output is jaw dropping. Color
reproduction great. Skin tones look good. On
standard copier papers, a special primer can
used to even out the surface of the paper before
printing photographs. This greatly improves
photo quality on copy paper. The best it can do
on copy paper is 1200 dpi. I recommend V-Photo
print film for photographs and copy paper for
all other printing when using the standard inks.
I should also
mention that the MD-5000 prints one color at a
time. For a picture using VPhoto print film for
instance, it prints cyan, backs the paper up,
prints magenta, backs up, prints yellow, backs
up, prints black and if you are using glossy
finish, backs up, finish. It automatically
switches cartridges between colors. The
registration between colors is perfect. You
couldn’t get better registration on a 7 color
printing press. Quite a feat for a desktop
printer! It takes about 5 minutes to print a 4x6
and about 17 minutes to print an 8x10. This is
longer than it takes an ink jet printer to print
the same sizes but the quality is much better so
I think it is worth the wait. It will print a
page of black text in Econo Black mode in about
a minute.
Dye
Sublimation Printing
Dye sublimation
printers are similar to thermal transfer
printers in general. Like them, they use color
transfer ribbons that provide each of the
primary colors (cyan, magenta and yellow --
black is a composite of all three of these
colors).
Instead of
transferring a dot of colored resin to paper,
the Alps print-head heats up a spot on the
ribbon and turns the solid color into a gas
(that's what sublimation means). The gas is then
absorbed by specially manufactured papers. The
result is a printed output that looks like a
continuous-tone photograph from the photo lab.
Because the
inks and papers are made for each other, the use
of non-dye sublimation papers is not possible.
However, papers are made for a variety of
applications, including photo-mug transfers.
Specifications
Compared to the large and bulky inkjets and
laser printers on the market, the MD-5000 is a
compact printer that will not take up much room
on a desktop. It is about 18.2 inches wide by
11.8 inches deep by 7.5 inches high and weighs
about 11 lbs. 8oz. There is a pullout tray,
which retracts when not in use, to receive the
printed paper. There are no ink cartridges. The
printer uses a variety of ribbon cartridges
which are easily installed in the four cartridge
holders at the front compartment. You can
install up to 7 ribbons, depending on the type
of printing you are doing, leaving one position
open for cycling. There is a high quality black
cartridge, as well as a basic reusable black
cartridge, which can be used over and over
again. There are the standard magenta, cyan, and
yellow cartridges, which are not reusable; a
primer ribbon cartridge that can be used to
prepare many papers for printing, even standard
off-the-shelf photocopy paper; and a finish
cartridge for a glossy look. For dye sublimation
printing, you use a different set of ribbons.
There are also ribbons so you can print with
metallic colors, use silver and gold foil
colors, and print in white.
Mavica
Printing
(Real world
printer tests with Mavica FD91 photos)
FD-91 photos
1024X768 ALPS MD-5000 printer.
Factory refurbished from $280.00 (fantastic
deal)
Dye sublimation upgrade provided by ALPS for
review purposes. (Thanks ALPS!!)
Mac SCSI upgrade from $44.00 (Another great
deal!)
I have used
several ink jet printers from Hewlett Packard
and Epson. While they produce good to great
photos, none of them have been absolutely
stunning. The Epson printers have produced the
best results so far but all the inkjet photos I
have printed are starting to fade with age. The
ALPS MD-5000 however produces absolutely
stunning photographs in dye sublimation mode.
They really look like photographs. I couldn’t
believe what I was seeing. I printed a few 4x6
photos using 4X6 size photographic paper from
ALPS and took them to work to get some reaction
from some other computer people. (We do computer
consulting and programming). I thought for sure
that even though the prints were really good
that computer people would know they came from a
printer. They didn’t. They said "Nice
pictures!". After explaining where they came
from they were amazed! I even looked at them
several times at work because I just couldn’t
believe that the prints came from a printer. 4X6
prints on VPhoto print film were almost as nice.
Now some not so good news. 8x10 prints from the
FD91 are slightly pixelized using VPhoto print
film and standard inks at 2400 dpi. The prints
still look better than my ink jet tries and the
pixelization is not noticeable unless you get
closer than a foot away from the picture. The
color is good. I thought that dye sublimation
mode would do a better job at 8x10 than standard
inks but it didn’t. The standard inks won on
this but I bet if you had higher resolution that
the opposite would be true. I don’t expect to be
printing many 8x10s anyway since the FD91
doesn’t have the resolution to make this
practical. 5x7 prints look great so I will
probably make that my largest print size.
I had some
trouble with some faint blue banding in dye sub
mode. This problem was resolved by replacing the
blue dye sub ribbon. I wonder if consistency
might be a problem with the ribbons. Time will
tell I guess. I also noticed some occasional
very faint vertical line artifacts in lighter
areas of the prints in dye sub mode. The
artifacts are not visible in darker areas. I
called ALPS 24 hour, 7 days a week (nice!) tech
support on this. They told me that this was not
normal and I should clean the printer. They
verified that the prints should have no
artifacts at all and should look like photos.
Well, I cleaned the printer and the problem is a
little better but not fixed so I will probably
be sending it in for repair. (Remember that my
printer is factory refurbished so who knows what
kind of abuse it has had. I haven’t had any
problems with the standard inks. Just dye sub.)
Manuals
There are two
manuals that come with the printer. One is
printed, the other is on the CD. I was not
overly impressed with the manuals. Computer
users vary when it comes to liking printed
material. I have friends that never open a
computer book for software or hardware. On the
other hand, I am a reader and like books and
user guides. With the mass marketing of printers
and the lowering of prices, something had to go,
and it was the quality of the manuals. Since you
can do so much with the Alps--print with foil
and metallic colors; use white ink for printing
on dark paper; print on both sides of the paper;
and print overlays, I thought the material was
not well organized nor complete enough for what
the printer can do. For instance, when printing
silver and gold foil colors with CMYK colors,
the manual states to use the overlay mode if you
have problems. But information on overlay is in
another chapter; the information is scanty at
best; and further information about settings for
this type of printing were found on the last
page of the 89 page manual. This is not just a
complaint I have about this printer or device. I
have been purchasing printers, scanners, and
general computer equipment for over 10 years and
I still have the manuals that came with the
items. In those days, the quality of the manuals
was to die for; you usually got more than one
printed manual; they were extremely thorough,
and actually printed out. You didn't have to go
to the trouble to print out a 100 page manual.
Nowadays, even with the more pricey items, you
are lucky to get a printed manual, much less a
thorough one. Many are skimpy. And if they are
large and you have to print them out from the
CD, it can be time-consuming. Most computer
users are familiar with inkjet or laser
printers, but many know nothing about dye
sublimation printing as most other dye
sublimation printers are priced out of the range
of typical users. I think the quality you get
from the Alps is as good as or better than the
other inkjet and laser printers out there and it
would be an excellent choice for the average
business or home user. A thorough manual
wouldn't hurt to familiarize the computer user
with this type of printing.
Overview
Overall I would
say that the ALPS MD-5000 printer is the most
technologically advanced printer in the consumer
market. It will do things that no other printer
can do for less than $5000. I am very impressed
with the output and assuming that ALPS can fix
my artifact problem in dye sub mode. The printer
prints better than anything else I have seen. I
won’t go back to ink jets after using this
printer. This printer is ideal for Mavica users
considering buying one of the SONY dye sub
printers for Mavica photo printing. You get a
dye sub printer as well as a "desktop print
shop" as ALPS calls it.
The Alps MD-5000 gives you a wide range of
print modes that produce quality prints,
provides sharp images of skin tones, black &
white photos, and the fine detail of a high
quality laser printer but it has a price closer
to that of an inkjet. It is great for brochures,
newsletters, and flyers where you want crisp
text and quality graphics. The reusable black
ribbon cartridge makes it economical for
printing drafts. Also having the inks in
separate containers saves you money. Having
prints that are smear-proof, fade proof, and
water-proof is important for many users. They
can be handled immediately. I did not find the
MD-5000 to be overly slow for the quality of
output. It is slow when you print a full color
page, but all printers are rather slow when
printing full color pages. I would highly
recommend the Alps MD-5000 for anyone seeking
affordable high quality graphic output and
sharp, clean text from a single printer.
ALPS has print
samples available. Give them a call at (800)
825-2577 and request some samples and brochures.
Insist that dye sub samples be included in the
pack since I only have their word at this point
that my printer may have a problem. Visit their
web site at for more information and FAQs about
the ALPS printers. They have a special right now
on "open box" 5000s and 1000s at very good
prices. |
