Hot on the heels of the Lenovo ThinkVision 27 3D I reviewed last month comes Acer’s spin on the same concept. Both are 27in 4K monitors that can jump between 2D and 3D modes, allowing developers to view creations on demand. No need for special glasses or VR goggles; just render and go.

It’s a marriage of hardware and software, and I’ll tackle the hardware first. One pivotal inclusion is a pair of eye-tracking cameras; here, they sit in the top bezel rather than the bottom (Lenovo’s choice), and they work equally well. The second hardware component is a 3D lens that sits above the panel and projects pixels to the left and right eyes as needed. A 3D engine built into the monitor’s electronics takes control of what’s beamed where.

While Lenovo includes a fine pair of speakers in the ThinkVision, they’re nothing compared to the duo beneath the main body of the SpatialLabs 27 View Pro. These provide superb stereo separation in normal use, but their skills come to the fore when you activate Acer’s aptly named Immerse Audio app. This plants you straight into the action, with the only missing direction being from behind you.

The 3D experience

Acer supplies an app called SpatialLabs Experience Center Professional with this monitor, and it’s your direct route to activating 3D effects. The main menu offers you three options: SpatialLabs Go, SpatialLabs Model Viewer and SpatialLabs Player.

SpatialLabs Player is the simplest, as its role is simply to let you turn side-by-side videos into stereoscopic 3D. A YouTube search will bring up a bunch of example videos that have been shot at two angles – one for the left eye, one for the right – and you’ll be impressed by the effects, if not the plotlines. Most of the best videos are ads.

With few movies created in 3D, SpatialLabs Go is there to turn 2D content into 3D in real-time.

It’s designed to work across all apps, so long as they’re in full-screen view, and weirdly that includes Teams, Google Meet and Facebook. But the obvious examples are photos and videos.

I rarely found the effect compelling, but it works best when the engine can clearly detect what’s up close and what’s in the background. Bokeh effects are great, for example, while your shots of the Grand Canyon will look flat even if you head into the settings to maximize the 3D effect.

Super models

In reality, nobody is going to buy this monitor unless they create or view 3D models for professional reasons. Acer, like Lenovo, imagines that its core audience will be architects, 3D developers and CAD designers, which is why it has created plugins for a wide range of 3D software. At the time of writing, this list consists of 3ds Max, Fusion 360, Blender, Inventor, Cura, Revit, SketchUp, Navisworks, ArchiCad, Rhino 3D, Solidworks, form Z, Zbrush, CDB and Bentley iTwin. You can also export scenes from any 3D software that includes an Unreal Datasmith exporter plugin.

You can view pre-made models directly using the SpatialLabs Model Viewer, which is effectively an integration with Sketchfab. Open Model Viewer and you can view a bunch of pre-selected models and maneuver them as if they were sitting in front of you. You can also play around with lighting and backgrounds to add to the realism.

There’s especially good news for Maya users, who can use PiStage to transform their model into 3D while still being able to edit the original file in Maya. So you could work on two screens: one for editing, one for viewing. You’ll need a heavyweight workstation to cope with this, though, while all the other tasks only need a moderately powerful system. For example, my ageing Surface Book with an Nvidia GTX 1650 coped fine, I just needed to wait a few seconds for processing the image.

If you want to know more, there’s an excellent Q&A about the SpatialLabs 27 View Pro online at tinyurl.com/358acerfaq, while the user guide, currently stretching to 56 pages, is at tinyurl.com/358acerguide.

What, no games?

You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned games yet. Ironically, developers can design 3D games on the SpatialLabs 27 View Pro but they can’t play them. That’s because Acer wants gamers to buy the Predator SpatialLabs View 27, which includes Acer’s TrueGame software: this allows you to launch supported games to run in 3D. The Predator is due out later this year at an estimated price of £2,199.

I most recently tried TrueGame on Acer’s Predator Helios 3D laptop, and although there are some misses it still blows my mind months after I first saw 3D games in action with my own eyes. You can view the list of currently supported games at tinyurl.com/358truegame.

There is some good gaming news. Thanks to SpatialLabs Go, you can play games that create a side by side view themselves. One example of that is Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and when I hooked up the Chillblast The Karve it created a smooth, solid 3D landscape. It looks great, but whether playing games in 3D is worth the hoop jumping and GPU demands is another question entirely.

Flat switch

Naturally, this is a nice 4K monitor in its own right. With a gamut that stretches across 89% of the DCI-P3 color space in its default mode and with an average Delta E of 0.56, it performed well in our technical tests. It hit 501cd/m² at its peak, far above Acer’s stated maximum of 400cd/m², and a peak 160Hz refresh rate is not only great for games but also gives Windows a solidity when you move apps around.

Text looks sharp thanks to that 4K resolution, and if you switch the color temperature to Normal then whites look Persil white, too. As with the Lenovo, the 3D lens overlay shows itself as minuscule grey dots on pure white backgrounds, but I soon stopped noticing this. And I never failed to appreciate the levels of detail in photos or 4K videos.

I’m less impressed by Acer’s on-screen display, which is far less sophisticated than Lenovo’s offering (which also works over USB to avoid fiddling with physical buttons). It relies on a joystick and three separate buttons tucked round the back, but it’s easy to hit the wrong one. There are plenty of options, including presets for sRGB and DCI-P3 that lock you down to those color spaces.

Connectivity options

If you’re looking for a cable-free environment, again choose Lenovo. On the ThinkVision, a single USB-C cable is all you need to activate the 3D mode, and it can deliver 100W of power to your laptop, too. That’s a great technical and design achievement because the 3D engine inside the monitor produces heat, and heat affects colour accuracy; the simpler choice is to use an external power brick to remove a heat source, and that’s exactly what Acer chose to do. This means the View Pro’s USB-C connector doesn’t deliver any wattage to a connected laptop.

But many designers rely on a desktop workstation, and they can benefit from 3D effects over the HDMI or DisplayPort so long as they also connect the supplied USB-A to USB-C cable (the Lenovo screen works in exactly the same way, contrary to my original review, but with the benefit of an extra HDMI port). Doing so also gives you access to two USB-A ports on the rear, but these aren’t easy to reach.

You can use the VESA mount – great for medical settings – but most people will stick to the supplied flexible stand. This provides a decent 33° of backwards tilt, 45° of swivel on either side and 150mm of height adjustment. There’s no portrait mode as found on the ThinkVision, nor is it as good looking or well built as its rival, but there’s one final extra in Acer’s favour: it comes with a hood, which reduces ambient light.

Do we have a winner?

Acer has got much right with the SpatialLabs 27 View Pro, even if there are few areas where I can declare it the outright winner compared to Lenovo’s effort. One distinct plus is its speakers, while its integration with 3D creation software is significantly ahead of what Lenovo offers. I don’t like the fact that TrueGame isn’t bundled. Are game creators meant to buy one SpatialLabs 3D screen to design on and another to play on? Isn’t it simply mean not to bundle the software when you’re charging people this much for a monitor? I would have also liked the reassurance of a three-year warranty rather than the typical one year, not to mention a powered USB-C port.

As with its rival, we don’t yet have a confirmed release date or price. Acer estimates the former as late summer/ Q3 and the latter as £2,599. This beats Lenovo’s price by £101, which is welcome, but your final decision may well depend on exactly what 3D software you use.

We've also ranked the best dual-screen monitors.

Ruijie Networks isn’t very well known in the UK; this network infrastructure provider has traditionally focused on the enterprise and carrier markets. Its Reyee sub-brand aims to radically change this perception as it presents SMBs with a huge range of affordable networking switches and products.

The Reyee portfolio comprises modular and fixed-port switches, routers, firewalls and wireless APs, and a key feature is they can all be managed from Ruijie’s free cloud portal. UK supplier Broadbandbuyer takes this a stage further, as it offers a complete cloud provisioning service so you just plug them in and go.

On review is the RG-RAP2260(E) AX3200 Wi-Fi 6 access point (AP), which claims top speeds of 2,402Mbits/sec on its 5GHz radio and 800Mbits/sec on the 2.4GHz band. It doesn’t support the high-speed 160MHz channels but offers a 2.5GbE multi-gig LAN port, which requires a PoE+ power source, and its second gigabit LAN port can be used to network other wired devices.

To give us the full Ruijie cloud experience, Broadbandbuyer also supplied an RG-EG105G-P V2 five-port router and RG-ES206GS-P four-port gigabit PoE+ switch. Provisioning starts before you even see the products: we filled in a secure online questionnaire about our networking requirements, confirmed the product order numbers and received a link to our personal portal, which was prepared with a project ready and waiting.

The products duly arrived and, after connecting them together, they appeared online in our portal’s project workspace. The router was already configured with DHCP services on the LAN as per our request, and the AP started broadcasting our previously configured SSIDs.

To ensure there were no bottlenecks in our real-world speed tests, we temporarily hooked the AP up to the lab’s Zyxel XS1930-12HP 10GbE multi-gigabit PoE++ switch and used a Dell Windows 11 workstation with a TP-Link Archer TBE550 Wi-Fi 7 PCI-E adapter. Performance was good, with large file copies between the client and a 10GbE-connected Windows server returning average close-range speeds of 117MB/sec, dropping to 87MB/sec with the AP placed ten metres away in an adjoining room.

The Ruijie Cloud portal is easy to use and, unlike Netgear’s Insight and Zyxel’s Nebula services, it doesn’t require any subscriptions or extra licence packs. Its home page lists all projects – essentially your sites – and selecting one takes you to a dashboard where the Workspace view shows all associated devices and topologies, with quick action icons for creating SSIDs.

Projects are clearly designed to handle large sites as they support up to 32 SSIDs. Each one can use one or both radios, enforce WPA2 or the stronger WPA3 encryption, apply client isolation so wireless users can’t see each other and set client and SSID upload and download rate limits.

For guest wireless networks, you can present custom captive portals with your own logos, background images and messages. A variety of authentication methods can be applied and if you opt for one-click logins, you can set limits on when and how often a guest can log in.

Monitoring services are outstanding, with the client view identifying devices and categorizing them as PCs, tablets, smartphones, IoT, cameras and more. The Smart Config feature helps create wired and wireless VLANs and apply access controls, while the AI Diagnostics service scans the network, highlights faults and provides root cause analysis.

Network HawkEye provides detailed Wi-Fi experience, load and channel health graphs and more for gateway and WAN status. The Data-Board delivers graphical network reports showing areas such as client summaries, traffic rates, AP loads and captive portal usage, and automated firmware upgrade services are also provided.

Ruijie Reyee clearly has an eye on value as the competitively priced RG-RAP2260(E) delivers plenty of business-class features and an impressive performance. The Ruijie Cloud adds extra appeal as this totally free service offers an incredible range of remote network management and monitoring tools, while Broadbandbuyer’s provisioning service does all the heavy lifting for you.

We also rated the best secure routers.

I Drive Business is a great cloud backup solution for SMBs concerned about hidden costs as its subscriptions are based only on cloud capacity. Available in a wide range of flexible plans, you can start small and scale up as and when you need to.

Prices start at only £56 per year for 250GB, rising to £838 for 5TB, with options to go up to 50TB and beyond. It has even more appeal as all plans include unlimited workstation and server support so you can secure Windows, macOS and Linux desktops, iOS and Android mobiles, Windows Server, Hyper-V and VMware hosts, and business apps such as Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint and Oracle.

Features keep on coming as IDrive’s hybrid backups can secure data to local drives or network shares, apps are provided for protecting Qnap and Synology NAS appliances, and it offers disk image backups, cloning and continuous data protection (CDP). Cloud file syncing between IDrive computers is also included, and subscriptions enable an equal amount of sync space.

The only optional features are cloud-to-cloud (C2C) backup services for Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. These are managed from a dedicated portal, with the MS365 component costing £16 per user per year to secure OneDrive, Exchange, SharePoint and Teams accounts.

Client deployment is simple: you send email invitations from the portal, which provide links for users to create backup accounts, select AES-256 encryption and download the desktop app. Businesses with remote workers will find a lot to like here as the price includes unlimited users, and admins can remotely access their desktop app, create or edit backup jobs, set schedules and run restore tasks.

The client opens with a default backup set for common files and documents. We modified file and folder sources by adding or deleting them in the Backup pane and scheduled tasks for regular intervals. Files and folders can be easily restored using the local agent or web portal, and IDrive provides ransomware protection by retaining up to 30 file versions.

To secure our VMware ESXi virtual machines (VMs), we provided the IP address and credentials of our vCenter host and selected VMs from the list presented. Jobs default to running hybrid local and cloud backups and, for the former, IDrive can use a storage location on the system running the app or a mapped drive.

The same procedures apply for securing local SQL Server databases, while Exchange Server and Hyper-V VM backups need the desktop app installed directly on the hosts. When restoring data to any of these hosts, IDrive requires access to the local backup folder and, if it isn’t available, you can copy the relevant files back from cloud storage using the client or web portal.

The Microsoft 365 protection service is just as easy to use; once we’d authorised access to our account, it immediately started full backups for the four suite components and all users. The dedicated portal can be accessed directly from the main IDrive web console or desktop app and provides an overview of all activities and protected items.

You can’t control the schedule as IDrive automatically runs incremental backups three times a day, but you can run extra manual backups for selected users and teams whenever you want. The portal’s recovery panel is easy to use, and we had no problems finding and restoring items such as emails for Outlook users, OneDrive files and Teams documents.

IDrive Business is a top cloud backup choice for SMBs that want to protect on-premises systems and remote workers. Platform and business app support is outstanding, it’s easy to use and the simple capacity-based subscriptions are incredibly good value.

We also ranked the best cloud CRM software.

A highly modular approach makes Commvault’s Cloud an attractive choice for businesses that want a hybrid backup solution they can tailor precisely to their needs. Originally launched a few years ago as Metallic and now integrated into Commvault’s cyber resiliency and recovery cloud platform, it comprises 16 distinct components so looks to have every data protection requirement covered.

For essential off-site backup, you can use Commvault’s cloud storage as a backup destination or choose from 26 third-party providers including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google. Commvault gives ransomware attacks a hard time, as its Azure-based cloud storage is air-gapped and immutable, with modules now provided for risk analysis and backup content malware scans.

The Security IQ feature presents a security posture rating plus options to enforce extra authorization for restores and deletions. The unusual file activity service alerts you if it detects ransomware attacks and presents the last good recovery point for swift data recovery.

The cloud portal presents a service catalogue list, and selecting a module takes you to a dedicated configuration page. Plenty of help is at hand as each one provides details of all prerequisites and clear setup instructions.

After assigning the systems, applications or services the module is to protect, you choose your storage locations; for hybrid backup, Commvault supports local storage or network shares as the primary location and a cloud repository as the secondary stage. Next, you assign a backup plan that defines your recovery point objective (RPO), backup window and data retention periods.

We wanted to protect the lab’s Hyper-V and VMware hosts, which required the Commvault gateway component installed on a Windows Server host on the same network. Downloaded from the portal, this manages communications between sources and destinations and handles all caching, deduplication and hash tables. For Hyper-V backups, you’ll also need Commvault’s VSA package installed on each host server.

We declared a Synology NAS for our primary backup location, used Commvault’s cloud for secondary storage, and each plan started by backing up selected virtual machines (VMs) to our NAS appliance. On completion, they ran an auxiliary job to replicate the local store to the cloud, and the transfer process is speeded up by only sending deduplicated data.

VMware recovery services are outstanding: we could browse and restore guest files, the entire VM or its VMDK files. The live recovery and live mount services can quickly reinstate a failed VM, with the latter loading them directly from a backup on primary storage.

A fine choice of cloud-to-cloud backup modules are available, and we found the MS365 option a cinch to deploy. You do need to authenticate separately with Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams, but the entire process is handled very smoothly and we had our entire MS365 account backed up in 15 minutes. For item recovery, you select the required MS365 component, choose a recovery point, view all available versions and restore it to the original location or another MS365 user.

The Endpoint module supports Windows, macOS and Linux clients. Once users have installed Commvault’s Edge Monitor app and logged in to their account, it applies your predefined plan. This backs up their system to the cloud, creates a local drive letter for drag-and-drop restores and provides access to a personal self-service web portal.

Pricing could be more transparent, but Commvault Cloud is a great choice for businesses that want a highly customizable cloud backup solution. It offers an impressive range of easily deployed modules so you only pay for what you need, and it has a keen focus on data security and ransomware protection.

We've also ranked the best encryption software.

Businesses worried about managing a hybrid data protection strategy may want to consider Barracuda’s Backup appliances, as they do everything for you. These all-in-one physical and virtual solutions provide on-site backup, cloud replication and full data restoration services, as well as optional site-to-site replication, all managed from one cloud portal.

Barracuda offers a wide choice of hardware appliances, with the entry-level Backup 290 on review presented as a low-profile 1U rack appliance fitted with a single 2TB SATA hard disk. This may not sound like very much, but the appliance’s variable block-level deduplication is very efficient; during testing we backed up 1.7TB of data, which Barracuda squashed down to 331GB for an 82% reduction.

Prices for the Backup 290 start at £2,000, with unlimited cloud storage costing £996 per year. Barracuda’s Energize Update service costs £335 per year, with an Instant Replacement subscription adding a further yearly cost of £480.

To install the appliance, you initially connect a local monitor and keyboard and link it to your Cloud Control account. Barracuda provides agents for Windows, macOS and Linux in the portal, and it’s good value as the price includes support for unlimited clients as well as a number of common business apps.

You use the same agent for all Windows workstations and servers. Once installed, we declared each system as a backup source. The beauty of this solution is that during job creation, you tick one extra box so local backup jobs are automatically replicated to the cloud.

The agent identifies all hosted applications and offered us options to select SQL Server databases and virtual machines (VMs) on our Windows Server 2022 Hyper-V server. An agent isn’t required for VMware hosts as we declared our vCenter server using its IP address and were presented with all VMs on our managed ESXi servers for selection as backup sources.

Once systems are registered, you can assign them to the default backup schedule, which automatically backs up everything on them once a day. It’s easy enough to create custom schedules, assign specific systems and items, and repeat jobs as often as every 15 minutes.

Barracuda employs an “incremental forever” system, which runs one full backup for each host followed by regular incrementals. Ransomware protection is provided as you can use the default retention policy for all hosts or apply custom ones that define the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly periods you want data kept for.

For file recovery, we selected systems from the portal, chose files and folders and restored them to their original location or to another system. The same window provides access to the cloud repository, where the Download option copies the data back to the system running the Cloud Control portal.

We could restore selected Hyper-V and VMware VMs directly from the appliance to their respective hosts or to alternative locations, and if the appliance isn’t available you can download their virtual disks from your cloud repository. An Energize Update subscription enables the LiveBoot feature so you can swiftly restore VMs directly to the appliance if the hypervisor is down.

The Cloud LiveBoot feature has an Instant Replacement subscription and allows VMs to be hosted in Barracuda’s cloud for up to seven days for testing, backup validation and file recovery. Internet outages are covered, too, as the appliance has a local web console that provides restore browser and Live Boot management tools.

Barracuda’s Backup 290 makes light work of managing a hybrid data protection strategy and is an attractive option for time-poor SMBs. It’s simple to deploy and manage, the block level deduplication can make big storage savings, and it offers an impressive range of data recovery features.

We also rated the best cloud computing services.

Acronis’ Cyber Protect teams up hybrid backup services with full-strength cybersecurity and endpoint protection. One subscription takes care of everything, and it’s all managed from a single cloud portal.

Cyber Protect 16 Advanced takes the Standard edition and adds features such as Windows patch management, backup malware scans and an endpoint detection and remediation (EDR) service that provides event correlation, threat containment, incident investigation, kill chain analysis and endpoint rollback recovery. Ransomware protection comes with tamper-proof immutable backups and a compliance mode that stops malicious actors from changing account settings and deleting backups.

There are a lot of activities to keep track of, but the cloud portal helps by presenting a customizable dashboard. You have lots of widgets to choose from, including ones for protected system overviews, backup storage usage, vulnerable systems, alerts, detected malware, patch remediation status and blocked website categories.

Platform support is outstanding and includes Windows, macOS and Linux systems, iOS and Android mobiles, many popular business apps, ten virtualization hosts, and cloud apps such as Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. Agent deployment for workstations and servers is a lengthy affair, though, as they must be downloaded from the portal and manually installed, after which they generate a unique registration code and appear in the portal’s devices page.

Hyper-V virtual machine (VM) backups require a dedicated agent installed on the host, and you now have two choices for VMware systems. You can install an agent VM directly on the host and register it with your cloud account or use the new Windows remote agent.

Applying settings is much simpler. You place similar systems in groups and assign protection plans that include your backup settings, encryption passwords, schedules and all cybersecurity settings. For hybrid backups, primary and secondary storage locations can be assigned. We used local Synology NAS shares for fast local backups and the Acronis cloud repository for off-site storage.

Synology NAS appliances can now be protected by a DSM agent app. It temporarily needed root access to register with our Acronis account, and we could then access the appliance from the cloud portal, create a protection plan and choose the shares we wanted backed up to the cloud.

Along with swift file and folder recovery services for remote servers and workstations, the portal provides an impressive range of restore features for Hyper-V and VMware. You can recover an entire VM back to its original location, as a new VM on the same host or another one. For even faster recovery, a temporary VM can be created on the host from a local backup.

Within workstation and server plans, you can enable real-time malware scanning, apply URL filtering using up to 44 categories, schedule vulnerability assessments, run patch management remediation tasks and enforce removable device controls. When EDR is activated, you can view all incoming alerts from the portal, see lists of all incidents filtered by severity and mitigation status and browse a threat investigation page which provides a kill chain diagram, details of how the attack developed and the processes it interacted with.

Businesses that want all their data backup and cybersecurity in one place will love Acronis Cyber Protect 16 Advanced. Its flexible subscriptions keep costs under control, the EDR service stays one step ahead of cybercriminals and it’s easy to manage.

We also ranked the best free backup software.

The Procolored F13 Panda L1800 is a dedicated DTF printer aimed at enthusiasts and entrepreneurs looking to customize clothing on a medium scale. It’s an accessible and affordable, consumer-friendly printer that also has the wide-format proportions and high ink capacity that will interest established print shops producing up to 50 pieces per day. But first of all, what is a DTF printer?

DTF (direct to film) is a process that prints specially formulated liquid ink onto plastic film ready for transfer onto the surface of fabric using a heat press. It differs from sublimation printing where the dry ink on the transfer paper is sublimated by the heat into a gas that can penetrate the fibers of certain textiles and other materials (for more on this, I reviewed the best sublimation printers out there right now). DTF’s surface printing is therefore less permanent, but also less fussy about your fabric and it has no problem printing on black cloth because it adds white ink to the usual CMYK foursome.

The Procolored F13 Panda L1800 is using an Epson inkjet print head to apply ink droplets to 13-inch (33cm) rolls of transfer film. That means you can print high resolution graphics at tabloid or A3 size width and up to a meter long. This semi-pro printer costs around US$3,000/£2,400 and that includes Windows software, a set of 250ml inks, a roll of plastic film and a bag of adhesive powder (essential for curing your transfers). But if you also want the tabloid-sized Procolored Panda oven that I used to conduct this test, the all-inclusive price is around US$3,400/£2,800. I also added a Panda heat press costing around US$469/£360 to complete my Procolored production line. The printer is available from the official Procolored website here.

Procolored F13 Panda L1800: Design and build

The Procolored Panda L1800 printer feels like a professional tool thanks to its robust all metal construction, while the playful Panda logo makes it look more like a consumer product. Either way, the design and build quality are both excellent. The various metal hinges and flaps are built to last, as are the equally rugged roll holder and paper cutter that bolt on with satisfying precision. The design is quite compact compared to other wide-format fabric printers, while still being large enough to hold 13-inch (33cm) rolls of transfer film for printing tabloid/A3-width sheets up to a meter long. There’s plenty of room for ink in the bottle holder at the right side too. Each of the five bottles holds 250ml of DTF ink. The whole thing weighs just under 40lb (18kg).

Inside the steel bodywork, the long lengths of clear plastic tubing look more science project than polished product, but it all works well enough. There’s no touchscreen interface, unfortunately, just an LED display showing the operating temperature and a few large button controls.

The accompanying Procolored Panda Oven is a simple steel unit for heating your printed film to 120-degrees to cure the DTF ink ready for transfer. It’ll take tabloid-sized sheets so the footprint is similar to that of the printer and the surface is conveniently flat which is handy for laying out and inspecting your work. Again, the metal construction feels strong enough to withstand life in a busy print shop.

Procolored F13 Panda L1800: Features & specifications

The Procolored F13 Panda package includes all the features needed to print from a PC onto fabric via film transfer. The L1800 printer itself can print onto 13in (33cm) rolls of plastic film which are then sliced to the appropriate length (up to one meter) with the included guillotine attachment. You can also feed in regular sheets of letter or tabloid paper when running nozzle checks, but there is no paper input tray.

It’s using inkjet technology to apply specially formulated DTF ink onto polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film. The quoted print speed is a little longer than the average photo printer at eight-foot per hour. I found it took anything between 5 to 10 minutes for a letter-sized design and 10 to 20 minutes for tabloid. Procolored suggests a production rate of 20 to 50 pieces per day which could suit a medium-scale shirt business.

One major advantage of DTF printing over sublimation printing is that it adds white ink to the four CMYK colors which makes printing onto black fabric possible. White DTF ink is prone to clogging, but this printer avoids print head clogging by circulating the white ink, even when not in active use. The only downside is that DTF uses more energy than sublimation as a result.

Procolored F13 Panda L1800: Setup

Setting up the Procolored L1800 printer from scratch takes around half an hour - if everything goes to plan. The roller assembly needs to be screwed onto the machine, so you’ll need a screwdriver, but it’s so intuitive, you might not need to refer to the online instructions. The cutter clips on in a similarly logical way. Loading the ink requires more care to pour the five 500ml bottles into the correct five 250ml reservoirs without spilling any. I spilled a few drops, but the water-based ink is easy to clear up. Each color has to be sucked through long runs of rubber tubing to the print head using the supplied syringe. Once the film and ink are loaded, the printer can be switched on and allowed to reach its operating temperature. DTF printing requires a temperature range of 20°C to 25°C (68°F to 77°F) for stable ink viscosity.

So far, so easy. However, I had real trouble installing the necessary Procolored RIP software and printer drivers. The first hurdle was finding a Windows PC with sufficient USB inputs. With no inbuilt wi-fi, you need to connect a data cable to the printer and have a second USB port free for the dongle that must remain plugged in while running the software. The Procolored software and drivers are delivered on a USB stick so a third USB port is useful. Even then, it took many hours and some assistance by patient Procolored engineers in China before I was printing. Perhaps my problems were down to user error, so I don’t want to put anyone off at this stage, but I do think the software side of things needs improvement and you will need some Windows OS experience to install it. Procolored are still working on Mac software for this product.

Procolored F13 Panda L1800: Operation

Once you’re up and running, printing tee-shirts is fairly straight forward and fun, though I have to admit making a lot of mistakes and misprints along the way. First, you open the Procolored RIP software, adjust your canvass dimensions to suit your shirt size and import your design. When you’ve finished manipulating it with the Photoshop-stye software, hit RIP. If this were a consumer product, that button would be labelled print, but technically, your image is undergoing Raster Image Processing in order to create a bitmap that the printer can read and print.

After a few minutes of printing, you’re rewarded with a warm and moist version of your design on film, which can be sliced off with the integrated cutter. Until the ink is cured, it’s prone to smearing, so you’ll need to be careful as you cover it with the adhesive powder (included). After tipping the excess powder back in the bag, place the film in the oven at 120 degrees. The Procolored oven will automatically rise to this temperature and sound an alarm after 180 seconds when your transfer is cured and ready to remove. It is still a little sticky at this point, so it’s best to get right onto the pressing stage. With your plain garment ironed and waiting on your heat press, place the transfer on it and activate the press. Procolored’s heat press also defaults to the right temperature and automatically re-opens after 45 seconds. Remove your tee-shirt and wait a few minutes for it to cool before peeling away the film to leave the graphic fixed permanently to the fabric.

Procolored F13 Panda L1800: Performance

If you want to print detailed graphics onto fabric with a high-quality finish, you should definitely try the Procolored F13 Panda package. I printed a variety of images onto a variety of textiles to test its performance and was consistently impressed by the results. The five DTF inks are strong colors which combine to make vivid prints with very accurate colors on film and they maintain that boldness when cured and pressed onto garments. What’s more, the colors seem to hold fast after multiple wash cycles. For the test, I used shirts made of 100% organic cotton, a polyester mix and bags made from 100% polyester and found that the initial was the same clean transfer in each case. However, it’s the pieces that fit best in the heat press that transferred the easiest. Items that are larger than the A4-size heat press had to be pressed in stages and a couple of times, the design stretched and failed to transfer.

I chose high resolution test images, and the printer’s 1,400 x 1,400 dpi resolution was able to turn them into crisp graphics, which stay crisp on the cloth. DTF has a resolution advantage over sublimation and thanks to the addition of white ink, DTF printers like this can print on dark fabric with no compromise in quality. Sublimation only works on light fabrics, ideally white. The downside is that DTF requires more equipment for the additional curing stage, but if you can afford and accommodate the curing oven, water-based DTF ink is generally cheaper than sublimation ink.

Procolored F13 Panda L1800: Consumables

The Procolored F13 Panda package ships with a 500g bag of adhesive powder, a roll of PET film, a print head cleaning kit and a set of initial DTF ink (six 250ml bottles). That’s one bottle each of CMYK and two of white, which is more heavily used. Procolored says six 500ml bottles (CMYKWW) of ink can print approximately 800 sheets of A3 (13" x 16") size patterns, or 1,600 sheets of A4 patterns. That much Procolored ink costs around US$300/£200, which seems reasonable, although there’s nothing to stop you buying third party ink which I’ve seen selling for less than $100. In other words, DTF pigment-based ink is affordable and the consumables cost of printing one tee-shirt comes in at well under a dollar a piece.

Procolored F13 Panda L1800: Maintenance

DTF printers need more maintenance than your average inkjet, but luckily the Procolored F13 Panda L1800 will automatically clean its own printhead every 10 hours when left on, consuming about 1ml ink per day. If you’re leaving the printer for more than seven days, however, it’s recommended you empty the ink.

Procolored F13 Panda L1800: Final verdict

There’s a lot to like about the Procolored F13 Panda L1800. The design is logical and appealing and the steel construction feels like it’s built to last. It can print large designs on a 13-inch roll of paper and cut them off with its integrated cutter. I struggled with the Procolored RIP software initially, but once you know what you’re doing, it’s possible to produce enough printed garments per day to satisfy a small business. And the print quality is excellent. By mixing five DTF inks together (CMYKW) it creates vivid and detailed graphics that transfer faithfully onto almost any kind of fabric.

There’s room for improvement too. I found the Windows software unintuitive and it only works while the dongle is inserted. Procolored assured me that Mac software is on the way. The print head is somewhat prone to clogging despite some clever automated ink management and I’d like to see wi-fi and a reset button built into the next edition. There were numerous occasions when the printer wouldn’t connect to my PC, or the ink ran, or the paper slipped, so it’s not perfect. That said, this is a very good DTF printer at a fair price.

For more devices, we reviewed the best small business printers and the best home printers.

• ^ Back to top