Rimage Everest II Printer Review

The Rimage Everest II printer was first introduced in the early to mid 2000’s. It was the 2nd generation Everest printer released by Rimage (technology licensed from Alps in Japan). This is a full color thermal re-transfer image printer that is 100% indelible, UV fade proof and waterproof. Far superior to cheaper inkjet based disc printers that will smear and smudge.

The main advantages over the original Everest printer was that the Everest 2 printer had higher quality printing as well as increased print speed. For the purpose of this review and testing we used an autoloader ready Everest II. There are some on the market and on Ebay or other auction sites that are only manual feeding (buyer beware).

The Everest II has been the printer of choice on a wide range of Rimage autoloaders and disc publishing models over the years. Some of the most popular being the AutoEverest II, Protégé II, Amigo II, Autostar II, DL5200, and DLN5200. I believe the Everest II also shipped with some early versions of the Producer III 7100 and 8100 systems.

As far as the basic specification go, the Everest II prints the equivalent of 300 dots/inch using variable dot sizes. The printers weights 45 pounds without packaging and has the following dimensions: 9.7” Height x 9.5” Width x 14.8’ Depth. Print speed is about 1 disc per minute (the first print can take up to 5 minutes counting “warm-up” time). Optimal operating room temp = 59-86 degrees Fahrenheit.

Ribbon choices includes a 1000 print black ribbon, a 500 print color CMY ribbon (by far the most popular choice), and a 375 CMY-W (white panel added) ribbon. In addition I have seen some non-Rimage made compatible ribbons on the internet at discounted prices compared to the genuine Rimage branded ribbons. Although I have never seen or tested one of the compatible options they do work for the Everest II printer, but not the newer Everest III or Everest 600 printers.

As far as testing went for us, we printed CD-r and DVD-r with the Everest II using the manual load option (by hand), also a 300-disc Rimage autoloader, as well as a Professional series 5300n (embedded PC full publishing system with 2 CD/DVD burners).

The Everest II that we used for testing had approximately 25,000 disc printers on the mechanism according to the windows XP print driver. That is a relatively low number of discs compared to what the printer is capable. We have seen similar printers with well over 200k prints. Over the course of a couple of weeks we printed over 1000 discs without any noticeable issues.

This is a durable printer that has noticeable print quality improvements over the original Everest printers. In fact the 300dpi printing is pretty much magazine quality with eye catching color that really pops. It proved easy to setup on our Win XP PC in manual mode. Just a couple of minutes to load the printer driver and CD designer template software. On a side note, you can also print directly from Adobe PhotoShop or Illustrator (and probably many other graphic/print design software packages).

We also tested the Everest 2 printer on a 300-disc Rimage AutoPrinter – technically called an Auto Everest II. The performance was once again very solid. It was easy to set up with the autoloader, and only required a simple movement of the switch on the back of the printer to setting #2. About 500 CDs were printed during this part of the testing and all but one looked identical (one disc had a small dust vertical line running the length of the CD from top to bottom).

Finally we integrated this printer onto a Rimage 5300n. This took about 5 minutes to uninstall the previous printer driver from the embedded PC, and then replace with the correct driver. We also had to switch the setting on the back of the printer to position #3. The 5300N has a bin capacity of 100-discs, and also has two integrated CD/DVD burners for full disc color print and burn capabilities. Once again the printer passed with flying colors and printed over 400 brilliant color discs.

Re-cap: The Everest II prints 300dpi, full indelible color. It is a durable printer that has amazing color constancy as the first disc looks identical to the 100th , or 400th. And it is a versatile printer that can be used on multiple Rimage loaders and duplicators.

Pros – The price.

This printer sells for just $1300 on our website. You can find them even cheaper on eBay. But buyer beware as these are delicate printers that need to be packaged and shipped in a very particular way, with very particular internal and external packaging in order to not get damaged. Plus many printers on eBay are “as is” whereas are our printers are guaranteed to work with at least a 30 day parts and labor warranty.

Cons – Rimage no longer supports the Everest II line

With all thermal re-transfer printers, you have to keep them clean and in a relatively dust free environment otherwise small vertical lines or dust streaks can occur on the printed discs. Spare part can also be an issue, but in most cases we can help you out with that as well.

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