Citizen Europe has unveiled the new ProRange of printers, which it is targeting at professional business users in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The three matrix printers, which are being manufactured at the firm’s plant in Scunthorpe, South Humberside, include the ProDot 9, which, as its name suggests, is a nine pin printer, with an 80 column carriage, 300chps (characters per second) in draft and 60chps in nearly letter quality (NLQ). The company claims that this printer is about 12% faster than similar products on the market, and has priced it at UKP440. The ProDot 9X includes the same features and functions as the ProDot 9, only it has a wider carriage of 136 columns, and costs UKP560. At the top end of the price range is the ProDot 24, an 80 column, 24 pin printer with a speed of 240chps in draft quality and 79chps in letter quality. This model has an optional colour kit at UKP50 and comes with the ProDisk facility, which comprises a 3.5 or 5.25 disk containing five menu-driven programs to help the user set up the printer more easily by defining and saving configurations. The printers are delivered by the company’s distributors as a package, with manuals and customer support and service included. Citizen stresses that the launch of this new range of printers does not mean that the 120D printer at the lower end of the market will be abandoned – it brought out the new printers in an attempt to up its present 7% European printer market share.
