Konika-Minolta Magicolour with magical printed colours (Konica Minolta Magicolor 2350)

Member Name: Diane3

Product:	Konica Minolta Magicolor 2350
Date:	18/08/09 (73 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Vivid colours, reliable, prints beautifully

Disadvantages: Photo printing quality is only 7/10 in my rating

We bought our Konika Minolta Magicolor 2350 laser printer four years ago. We use it at home but I print quite frequently. We decided to buy this printer because it is specially designed for optimal performance in Windows, Macintosh, UNIX, and other environments as well. This was important for us, as I use Windows but my husband is an IT professional and uses several other operation systems on his computers and sometimes also he wants to print something. He worked for a company where there were a lot of printers of this type and he had really good opinion about them. This opinion hasn't changed since then.


Price of the printer and cartridges

When we bought it, it was on offer, so it was "only" £650. It was a serious discount because its full price is £900.

There are four cartridges in it plus the drum cartridge, we had to change the black one once, the others are running quite low nowadays but they will last 3-4 months at least. The original cartridges in it are:
High capacity black toner (1710517-005) costs £75.71
High capacity cian toner (1710517-008) costs £119.52
High capacity magenta toner (1710517-007) costs £119.52
High capacity yellow toner (1710517-006) costs £119.52
Drum cartridge (1710520-001) costs £124.52 (it is for 45,000 pages at 5% coverage)

There are normal capacity cartridges as well. While the high capacity cartridges are for 4,500 pages at 5% coverage the normal capacity cartridges are for 1,500 pages at the same coverage.
So it is worth buying the high capacity one. To persuade you I enclose the prices of the normal capacity toners as well.
Normal capacity cian toner (1710517-004) costs £68.85
Normal capacity magenta toner (1710517-003) costs £67.66
Normal capacity yellow toner (1710517-002) costs £70.01

The prices are from www.tonergiant.co.uk but there are a lot of sites where you can find toners. They keep reproduced cartridges as well for lower prices naturally. We insisted to the brand, so we paid 124.52 pounds for the drum kit. There is a value pack for the cian, magenta and yellow cartridge but we won't buy that one as the colours don't run low at the same time and in our case there can be almost a year difference between the replacement dates, so I wouldn't like to store my money in cartridge and store the cartridge in our house for months.


Size

Sometimes it is the most important factor, so I measured it:
Width: 35 cm (needs further 20 cm for the paper supply)
Length: 49 cm
Height: 40 cm

It is quite heavy as it is a compact machine, it's 27.8 kg.


Features

Media type: plain and thick paper, transparencies, envelopes, and glossy media
Media Size Maximum: Legal (8.5 in x 14 in), A4 (8.25 in x 11.7 in)
Printer Resolution Horizontal in Black and White: 9600 Dots Per Inch
Resolution Vertical in Black and White: 600 Dots Per Inch
Printer Resolution Horizontal Max in Colour: 9600 Dots Per Inch
Printer Resolution Vertical Max in Colour: 600 Dots Per Inch
Hardware Platform: PC, Mac
RAM Memory Size: 128 MB
Printer Technology: Laser
Printer Output: Colour
Connectivity Technology: Wired
Maximum print speed (Black and White): 18
Maximum print speed (colour): 4
Networking Feature: Print server
Printer Interface: Parallel, USB, Ethernet 10/100Base-TX


Advantages

- Easy and cheap to maintain, reliable: As I'm not an IT expert, I won't try to write about the installation or troubleshooting of this printer but write my own opinion as a normal user. I have quite good computer literacy but I don't really like to assemble computers. After 4 years of usage we had no problems with the printer. I had to change the drum cartridge once. Naturally it became empty while my husband was in USA for a month. But it was really easy, even I could change it. :)
- Works well with photo paper (I used with photo paper thicker than normal paper 2-3 times). I printed a lot of photos for the family about our kids and I used thick paper, naturally I had to setup it. The setup menu is easy and user friendly.
- Not so loud: when I turn it on it calibrates and that is quite noisy but afterwards it is okay, my kids slept in the next room and I could print without waking them.
- Prints quickly: naturally it depends on the file's size, but a normal document comes out quickly. For large photos (5-7 MB) you have to wait a few seconds.
- Beautiful, vivid colours: I like that even after four years prints clearly, no spots here and there and has really beautiful colours. We printed our invitation card for our wedding on it and it was really personal and nice.


Disadvantages

As I mentioned I write about the disadvantages I faced during the last 4 years. There are only two of them.
- The display is hardly visible. It has a digital display where there are information about the process, there is a menu, etc. The letters are so pale that I can hardly read them. Daytime it's quite okay but in the evening... As we found the light of this display cannot be changed.
- After 4 years of regular use the paper jams are quite regular too. It is easy to get the paper out, even I can manage it, but it is disturbing. Probably we should clean it inside or replace a part of it. (We have moved recently into larger house and this is not an urgent task on our "to do list".)


Sum up

I am content with this printer and I recommend it to those who use it for printing letters or documents with charts, tables, etc. If you want to print photos regularly, I can't recommend it so bravely. The charts are printed beautifully only the photos are not so good. I would rate the photo printing quality 7/10. Probably the photo paper wasn't suitable for the printer, I don't know but I wasn't fully satisfied with it.
For more details see its online manual: http://ec1.images-amazon.com/media/i3d/01/A/man-mi grate/MANUAL000032193.pdf

Summary: For everyday use

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