Customer Reviews

Konica Minolta Magicolor 2400W Color Laser Printer (5250220-100)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

This is the second Konica-Minolta Magicolor color laser I have purchased. The first was a 2430DL which I purchased for my office. Basically the printers are the same except that the 2400W does not have ethernet connectivity, or an LED read-out (the printer messages from the 2400W pop up in a window on your computer screen), and the 2400W costs about $100 less.

Printing quality is the same on both units. Warm up time is quick, pages come out fast, and quality is good. Text quality is excellent. We also have a $10,000 color laser at work and the Konica units print text just as well and graphics almost as well.

Obviously I liked these printers enough to buy a second one, however I only give the product 4 stars because neither my 2430DL or the 2400W worked right out of the box and the accompanying "documentation" (if you can call it that) is a total joke.

Installation of my 2400W conked out with a message saying, and I quote: "Put Cyan toner". Huh? I opened up the unit and the magenta toner was on top. The rotate toner cartridge button refused to work and, as I said before, the manual is useless. I had to call tech support. Eventually we discovered that the magenta and cyan toner cartridges were switched. When switched back the unit performed perfectly.

Installation of my 2430DL appeared to work but the prints initially were faded and the toner rubbed off. Another call to tech support revealed that two clips that are supposed to hold the paper tightly against the fuser were not down all the way. When these were seated properly the unit functioned perfectly.

The installation instructions contain one page of sketches that look like they were made by a grade-schooler. Worthless. The thick "manual" consists of only one-quarter of one page of generic information which is repeated a bazillion times in a bazillion different languages, 4 per page. Curious, but utterly worthless.

On the plus side, Konica's tech support is excellent. The calls are toll-free, I only had to wait on hold a few minutes each time, and I got to speak to native English speakers who were very knowledgeable, polite, and helpful.

Here are a couple of other tidbits which may be of interest. The 2400W only connects via a USB cable, which is NOT included. Also, the printer uses 4 toner cartridges: black, cyan, magenta, and blue. The combined cost of theses cartridges is almost as much as the printer sells for at discount office stores. And... the toner cartridges which come with the printer are "starter" cartridges which are only one-third full, so get ready to spend some $$$ on replacement cartridges.

Power consumption on this unit is high compared to my previous home laser (an HP Laserjet 6L). When the Konica unit is switched on my room lights flicker constantly, even when not printing. So I turn the thing off after every use. Normally you can leave it on all the time and it will go into power saver mode by itself after about 20-30 minutes (by the way, you will have to get used to the loud clunk it makes when going to sleep - initially it will scare you because 20 minutes after making a print you have forgotten all about the printer, and, as I say it is a LOUD clunk!)

Both the 2430DL and the 2400W have a paper tray with a complete enclosure, which is very nice for keeping the paper clean and out of the way.

Duplexing is manual. You have to print one side then put the sheet(s) back into the printer upside down for the second side.

So, in summary: some installation headaches, great tech support, worthless documentation, but very nice printing, especially for the money.

I bought that printer because I was sick and tired of ink jets:
* There would always be clogged heads and print output with horizontal bands
* You would use most of the expensive ink cleaning the heads
* The ink would run out in middle phrase without any prior warning, as opposed to the progressive fading of a laser
* You had to wait for the paint to dry
* The result was not waterproof
* Photo quality requires expensive paper

I was almost buying the Oki 5050. The Oki is fast even in color mode and has relatively inexpensive toner. But the 2400W was positioned as a photo printer and was just US$300! I ended up with the 2400W.

This is a great printer for home/home office use. It does print very decent photos even in plain paper. The results are even better with a light (90 g/m2) or matte (167 g/m2) photo paper. My mother stopped complaining that I don't give her enough pictures of the kids.

I have only a few complains:
* The toner is expensive. You can buy a 1500-page "standard" cartridge for US$70 each or a 4500-page "high capacity" cartridge for US$120 each. Since I don't print a lot of stuff, this is ok with me. Interestingly, the set of 4 "standard" cartridges might cost more than a brand new printer - that comes with the same cartridges!
* It cannot print a photo at full page size (Letter, A4) at maximum resolution (2400 X 600) because of lack of memory (it's not expandable); I have to settle with the still decent 1200 X 600 resolution. The most you can get at full resolution is 1/3 of a page.
* It does not come with an Ethernet print server and is incompatible with the Linksys PSUS4 print server that I bought.

Both of the last issues above are addressed at the 2430DL that costs about US$100 more, so I think you should consider that model instead.

We decided to purchase this printer for our small business to take the load off of our all-in-one inkjet. Originially we were going to get a monochrome laser, but for the price of this printer, it was hard to resist the upgrade, and the color is occassionally usefull for our purposes. Anyways, to the machine itself.

The Printer is well packaged, but the documentation is very poor. English is sparce in the manuals, hard to find, and lacking in information. The tech support is good, however. The printer comes all set up and ready to go, except for the lack of an included USB cable, which I found disappointing, since the box does not state this. The initially driver installation process is finicy, but the installation guide is clear enough to walk you through it.

The printer does a fantastic job with monochrome prints. The warm up time is only 5-10 seconds, and the pages come flying out with perfect quality. The printer has large capacity trays for it's price point, which makes it nice for small businesses. I talked to a tech support technician before I bought, and one thing he told me was to set the printer to B&W mode when I was printing purely B&W documents, as to not waste color toner and time. I set the default to B&W, and change in printer settings as needed.

Now the color is not perfect photo quality. It is great for most business purposes, and can produce good color drafts much more effectively than an inkjet on fast draft. Colors are fairly vivid, and pixilation is not overly noticable. And although the paper tray is adjustable, I could not get it to setup to print properly on precut 4x6 photo paper, though standard sheets work flawlessly.

The biggest scare about purchasing this printer is networking. I want to clear this up. No, there is no ethernet jack, but the printer can be shared over a network with other comptuers using windows, and the disk to put drivers on the other computers. Follow the windows steps, not the drivers steps. However, error messages, etc. are all displayed through the status program, which only works on the computer the printer is directly hooked up to. I have also heard this printer does not work with a print server, but sharing does work, at least with Win2000 and later, probably Win9x.

Although the printer is not overly loud for a laser, it makes some strange clunking noises occassionally, that almost sound like it is breaking itself. You get used to them over time, however.

Overall, this is a great printer for the home user who needs a primary black, but occassional color printer, or a small business. This is not a large scale network printer, but for the price, it's speed, print quality, efficiency, and small scale ability make it a great choice for many looking for the benefits of laser.

I read as many reviews as I could before purchasing this printer, but after having owned it for 7 months, and dealing with Konica with 5 service calls and having it replaced once, I cannot endorse this product whatsoever.

I understand printer life, I have owned several through the years, and I understand that they basically give away printers to make a profit on the toner. That given, the sensor design for this printer is a significant irritation to the consumer and Konica tech support has been, sadly, rude. It is supposed to be a helpful feature that you are notified when supplies are running low. But, even though there is still life in the cartridge or drum, you get a pop-up warning that it is low and you are forced to override the pop-up again, and again, and again, which is silly when you want to simply print documents. You can get a couple hundred pages after a sensor goes out(preset on the cartridge based to go off at a set time), but you will have to override this pop-up for every single one. Konica does not see a problem with this, and suggests you just replace the consumable ($80 for toner, $150 for drum). They don't care there is still product left which you paid dearly for, the sensor is god. I do not think a design that allows a sensor to override what the consumer can see as still beautiful printing and harasses them on each page is something to continue using. Yes, it may be low, but let me use the remaining in peace! I am an easy-to-acquire loyal customer to gain but two times I have had technicians who were flat out rude and left me speechless that they were even hired to represent a company. I have even had a follow-up call about a product replacement (leaking toner cartridge) and when I told them the sensor chip fuse was blown and didn't register a fresh cartridge (producing it's own constant set of error messages) they were just happy it wasn't leaking and ended the call! But at least he was cheerful about it! So sad to say first reviews I read were very promising for this item, but none were by people that actually used it for awhile and so were not accurate. It makes a great print, but design features cripple it from being a product to recommend.

I bought the Konica-Minolta 2400W recently. Initially, the toner did not stick to the paper when using the "plain paper" setting. However, it did stick when using the "thick stock" setting.

How I solved the problem: It seems like the printer is set to print on envelopes out-of-the-box. To get it to print right on plain paper, I opened the top cover. I found two grey "clips" with envelope figures on them (on each side of the fuser [caution - hot!]). These clips were originally in the envelope position on my printer. I flipped the clips out of the envelope position to the normal position. The printer worked fine after this. The review by "Wildcatter" was helpful in solving this problem.

The printer prints great, but not as good as my old Epson Stylus Color 900 ink jet did on special paper. However, the speed and, hopefully, the cost per image will make up for this.

I owned this printer less than a month and sent it back.

For: 1. Great price for a color laser printer.

2. Nice looking copies, especially photos.

3. Fast color photo printing.

Against: 1. Power consumption. It uses 11 amps of my 15 amp circuit when on. (Spec found on pg 87 of the PDF manual) It is like having a small space heater on all the time.

The lights flicker while the element stays hot. So I let it go into standby, which solved the flickering. When coming out of standby the power surge killed my ups (on the same circuit, but not powering the printer). Unless you have two circuits in your home office, beware.

2. No Surge Protection. The printer should not be plugged into a surge protector or ups. This is not stated in the manual, but you are told this by tech support when you call to complain about the flickering lights.

3. The time from warmup to print is 45 seconds. If you are only printing a couple of pages in black an inkjet is just as fast or faster. And the print quality isn't enough difference to be noticable for text.

4. Envelope printing. Typically home users print one or two envelopes at a time. To print an envelope, you have to take out all the paper, put in your envelope, move the slide, open the top, move two levers, close the top, and print. When you are done, reverse the process. In my HP inkjet, you put the envelope in the slot in the output tray and print.

According to the manual (pg. 23), "laser" envelopes only, lest they seal shut during printing. Staples has no such thing.

5. Lables. Precut or perforated lables need not apply. Whole uncut sheets only. (Pg 24)

6. Printable area. Normal margins = .157" all around...except for legal paper in color mode, when the bottom margin = .409". Since the printer is normally in color mode, it is one more thing to change when printing on legal and you need all the print area you can get or need an even print area.

7. Noise. It is extremely noisy when starting up or coming out of standby with a lot of loud clunking.

8. Tech Support. When I called about the power surge when coming out of standby (that caused the computer to reboot) I was told, "Don't put in standby."

On the second call to tech support for this problem I was told "Plug it directly into the wall socket, not a surge protector or ups."

When leaving it on caused the lights to flicker (Call 3), Tech Support Level 1 kept putting me on hold and relaying my questions to a Level 3 tech and relaying the answers back to me. The solution to the flickering lights...plug it into a different circuit. (Not an option in my home.)

Conclusion: For the average home office user that doesn't print a lot of color photos, get a good color inkjet. (I am partial to HP). For most printing needs it is just too much hassle.

If you do print color photos, just make sure you have a seperate circuit to plug it into.

I recently purchased the Konica Minolta Magicolor 2430DL Color Laser Printer and I LOVE IT! I run a small desktop publishing business from home and needed a reasonably priced color laser printer that would produce good quality products in a short period of time and this printer fits the bill. The text is awesome and graphics are awesome and the speed is just what the doctor ordered. The only problem I have with this printer is that the documentation that comes with it is awful. It's in at least 5 different languages and pretty much, all you can decipher from it once you find the English version is how to set it up. I still don't know how to change out the toner cartridges or even how to troubleshoot if I was to run into a problem. So for the job that it does, I give it 5 stars. It serves its purpose, it's compact and it's reasonably priced. As for instructions and/or tech support, I give it 2 stars. (Lets hope I never run into any problems with it.)

I notice that the current average of reviews for this printer is a good solid three, which is exactly where I would put it. It produces very nice color, but has a serious problem with anything heavier than the usual 20-lb printer or copier paper.

Unfortunately, the bulk of our color printing consists of printing covers for our documentation, CD labels, and some miscellaneous stuff, and that's where the Konica really falls down. If you're using card stock, it just can't pick up the stock from the paper bin, which means you have to stand over it feeding it one page at a time. That's not too surprising; our HP ColorLaser 2550L has the same problem, but it has a much better workaround in the form of a manual feed tray.

The problem with the Konica is that not only do you have to feed the pages one at a time, but you have to be very, very careful about your timing. Basically, the feed mechanism (or feed dogs) stays open too long, so that if you start to feed a sheet before the feed dogs have closed (or popped back up or whatever they're doing in there), the Konica just happily feeds in the page and you end of with half the image on one page and half on the other. This is bad idea. You must also be very firm. This is not a printer that responds easily to suggestion. Not only do you have to feed the stock manually, you have to make sure it's held firmly against the stop at the back of the tray; otherwise, the printer gets confused and unsure; sometimes you get a print, sometimes a partial print, sometimes nothing.

Still, if all you want to do is print just a few copies on card stock or photo paper or you need to print only 20-lb paper or lighter, the Konica is a fine printer at a decent price.

This printer is great! The noise that many complain about is minimal and not all that annoying. It makes noises as it adjusts the cartridges. The printer is fast, easy to use and makes just super prints.

I had no problem installing it, but did NOT use the CD that came along. I had earlier downloaded the drivers from the Konica/Minolta site and just ran the setup file that came with them.

Yes, my lights do flicker a bit while it is in "use" mode, but that is short term before it drops to standby. The time that takes can be adjusted, too, from 5 minutes to whatever. Mine is set to 15 minutes. Not a big deal.

The first toner cartridges (that come with the new machine) are only good for 1500 pages, but the next cartridges you purchase will go for 4500 pages. The replacement color carts run about $120 and the Black runs about $90. Expensive, yes, but not any more than the darn ink jets that dry out in 6 months and are no good. These don't dry up. I don't print too much and have never gotten more than about 600 prints from an ink jet before it dried up.

I bought this printer at Staples for around $300 on sale and it is worth a whole lot more.

Why on earth would anyone buy a clunky, smearing color inkjet when you can go laser? Or why would you buy a B&W laser when you can go color for very little extra? This is a fine home printer, and I use it in our small business with good results.

This is the 2nd color laser I've owned. The first was a gigantic Tektronix that I paid $4000 for in 1998. This one prints at least as good of quality of photos and brochures, etc. as the old one, but takes up much less room.

Comments:

(...)

2. I can't get it print colors as they appear on the screen...pictures print well, but seem too dark. If I had more time to mess with it, I could probably fix it, but my old Tek printer had the same problem.

3. Doing envelopes is no big deal, but they get crinkled.

4. Don't even THINK of putting this on your home network. It just isn't networkable. I settled for a USB 2.0 A/B switch box to share the printer between two machines. Disappointing.

5. I've had my printer plugged into an RCA surge protector from Walmart for months without a problem, so I'm not sure why other users have had such problems.

If you're considering a color inkjet or B&W laser, I'd suggest you look at the Magicolor 2400W instead.