Customer Reviews

magicolor 4695MF Multifunction Printer

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The part of the page where it printed correctly, the PostScript printing was very good, as good as professional printers; and the printer is fast. Fax and copy also work well. Over the years, I have used numerous dot matrix, inkjet, mono laser and color laser printers - including Dell 5100cn and Brother MFC-9840CDW Color Laser Multifunction Center with Wireless Interface and Duplex and this is the best print quality I have seen. It even printed the custom A4 size notebook paper for Livescribe 4 GB Echo Smartpen which prints on very few PostScript laser color printers.

But everything else about this multifunction machine left a lot to be desired.

The brand new printer came with three defects: 1). The front access panel did not close in a new machine. Replacement front door sent by Minolta was worse, we had to hold it with a tape! 2). There were smudges on one side of the page. 3). Background printed a reticular sort of pattern. Adorama, from whom I purchased this has very limited hours, they do not answer calls after 1 PM on Friday until Monday morning.

The documentation that came this machine wass VERY POOR. There was one installation guide with all cartoons but no text! No Quick setup guide either. The quick reference card has color cartoons, no text. But there is multi page legal jargon text Safety Guide!

What you need to read - like how to install and use the machine -is not there: and what you don't read - legal safety jargon & how not to use the machine - has multiple pages. HOW LOONY?

But if you have worked with these kind of machines, you know where the power cord goes and where the network cable goes etc. So you can figure that part out. The network installation was easy on the Windows XP but not on Mac. I could not get it to install on Mac. It boggles my mind that they would build a machine with excellent print engine and yet have such poor quality in everything else like documentation, software, finish, construction and support etc.

Integrating all the multiple functions and features into a unified software is probably very hard and i have used HP, Dell, Brother, Samsung and Canon multifunction machines. The only company that has nailed the software part is Canon. They have beautifully integrated faxing, scanning, printing, and copying in Canon Pixma MX310 Office All-in-One Inkjet Printer (2184B002). Unfortunately, Canon does not make commercial grade color laser printers.

Printing, faxing and copying work fast on this Minolta Magicolor 4695F but I was not able to get the scanner part to work. Finally Minolta sent a service technician to my office and he said the front access panel could not be closed because of twisted latch, smudges on the side were due to a torn belt and the background noise in print was due to heat problems. He blamed all the defects on reseller Adorama or shipper UPS and said one of them had dropped the printer somewhere and ruined it. Adorama said that Minolta printers have very high defect rate and almost 20% were returned! Of course, I was one of those 20% and returned the machine to Adorama.

Would you really want to buy a multifunction machine with 20% defect rate?

I have this printer for 2 years now, I love the quality of its color output, but the printer quality and design gave a lot of headaches. I am glad that I have bought the service plan. It needs repair and service too frequently. But overall, I feel no other choice, becasue the Magicolor produces real intense, vivid photo quality prints on 28-pound regular paper. My other Brother HL-4070 CDW Color Laser priner produces faded printout, night and day difference. So I am stuck using this one for brilliant printout for colored brochures.

Just like the other owner, I have replaced this printer once and have the Konica-Minolta technician in my office MANY times to repair and service. I have never have an office printer that requires so much on-site serivce!! You really cannot own this printer without buying the extended warranty service. I have already changed fuser, transfer roller, transfer belt, and exhange the entire unit within two years.

I have to say that the 3-year extended service is really worth it to own this printer. Without it, it will be too expensive and I will have thrown it out.

Overall, there is no other printer that prints better photographic quality than the Magicolor with 9600dpi resolution. I like the output so much that I bought another Magicolor 5670EN. It is based on similar design. I have similar problem with that machine too. It seems to be the beast of the basic design. Well, until I find another 9600dpi color laser priner, these Magicolor printers are what I am tolerating for now.

I purchased this printer to replace an Epson AcuLaser CX11NF which developed three major problems. I considered the Canon imageCLASS MF8350Cdn, the Dell 2155cdn, the Dell 3115cn, and the Xerox Phaser 6180MPF. I wanted something that wasn't necessarily the best of the best but something that was durable, well designed, and would last a long time. As this unit is designed to be a workhorse and a large workgroup printer, had it not been for the 50% off retail price, I would not have considered it.

As some reviews indicate, this is a hulking machine at 121 pounds and has an unusually high monthly duty cycle at 250,000 pages. It was delivered on a palate and was very difficult to move. It is a team lift and REQUIRES two people to put it into place. You WILL need help moving the box and then lifting and putting the printer into place - there is no question. It is not a good idea for even the strongest individual to try and move it themselves because aside from being heavy, it's very clumsy and awkward to move because of its size, and if you aren't careful, you can damage the carton and the printer.

The unit was well-packed, however, and once you carefully remove all of the packing materials, which are numerous, assembly couldn't have been easier. It would've been nice to have words with the instructional pictures of removing the packing materials, Konica. The unit ships with everything including the toner cartridges in place. The only required assembly is popping the output tray in place and attaching the appropriate cables, depending on your desired installation. The panel over the controls is pre-installed with an English panel but it also comes with 4 additional panels in different languages if your language isn't English.

Included also with the printer are printed installation instructions, an adhesive pocket for the printer with a Quick Guide to put in it, 4 discs (CDs and DVDs - 2 for drivers depending on your OS and one each for applications and documentation), and a phone cable to connect it for faxing. It comes with no USB or network cables, so you have to supply those yourself.

PC setup is not automatic but very easy and quite intuitive. The setup is unlike most. You must click on the Konica Minolta splash screen items to install the drivers for the each part of the machine - printer, scanner, and fax - separately. The setup doesn't install each one right after the other - you have to do that manually. Also, when it comes to the applications, you must install each of those one by one from the additional disc. What's nice is you can pick what you want to install and not have everything under the sun on the disc installed by default.

Speed is as advertised. It's very fast at both black and white and color and is as fast if not slightly faster than my Epson AcuLaser CX11NF when it printed in black and white. It duplexes from both the ADF and the printer very well and very fast.

Output quality is excellent. The monochrome output quality is outstanding. The color output quality is excellent and could easily be considered photo quality. I compared its output with the HP® Color LaserJet Pro CM1415FNW Multifunction Printer and the results are very similar. Both machines are neck and neck depending on the image type but the Magicolor 4695MF is a heck of a lot faster.

Faxing is very easy and if you configure it to print a transmission verification sheet when sending, it not only gives you a detailed report but also an image of the first page of what you faxed.

Scanning is one of this machine's pitfalls. It's very slow. The design of the unit is good but the software and/or TWAIN driver is NOT. Scans are very slow as the driver transfers each page as it scans. The rate of transfer, at least across the network, is hideous. This is because, for whatever reason, the image files the software creates are HUGE - even PDFs - and there is nothing you can do about it. Color PDFs are especially large. My guess is no compression is being used. I've seen similar problems with other low-end scanner and inkjet multifunction software, but given this is such an advanced machine, it should've come with better scanning software. Overall, the proprietary scanner software LinkMagic interface is decent. Paperport utilizes LinkMagic as a bridge to import scans and communicate directly with the scanner (WIA driver won't work) anyway, so Paperport isn't much help if at all. Neither LinkMagic nor Paperport allow you to create searchable PDFs and you are told by Paperport that you must purchase OmniPage to enable this functionality.

The front controls are very intuitive and easy to use. The 4695MF has a large array of diagnostic tools should you have a problem.

I also purchased the stand which adds nice height to the printer and security that other stands won't collapse due to the weight of this machine.

There is one characteristic about it to which I am having difficulty getting accustomed. The whole unit warms up no matter what function you're using. Even if you're printing, the scanner light turns on and even if you're scanning, the whole printer warms up. On the flip side, it is Energy Star compliant, so it quickly takes its operation level down in stages and into standby mode.

It's also worth noting that the toner system is VERY sensitive to this unit being moved. I ran into severe quality issues when the unit was put in place and again when the stand arrived and it was transferred to it. It was recommended by Konica Minolta that the toner cartridges be removed when moving it.

Overall, this is a well-built, excellent multifunction. The only thing Konica Minolta needs to improve is the TWAIN driver and scanner software.

UPDATE

After a series of severe quality issues right from the start, the unit was declared DOA by Konica Minolta. From the very first page, the magenta toner had issues. Magenta toner was being released all over the page. This became intermittent. However, then every color image contained on printed pages appeared blue and I discovered the cyan toner also had issues. A review of the printed demo page confirmed it was indeed the printer. Konica Minolta believes it may have been a board inside the unit that was damaged but rather than trying to endlessly service the unit and find out the problem, Konica Minolta replaced it.

The replacement unit was shipped promptly, delivered, and has no problems to date.

ONE RECOMMENDATION - LASER PRINTER 101

After you (1) put the machine in place (2) are done setting up the machine (3) remove the toner and imaging drum protective tabs but BUT (4) BEFORE you turn on the machine for the very first time, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND carefully removing each toner cartridge and evenly distributing the toner inside each by rotating each cartridge backwards and forwards and side to side.

It's something most laser printer manufacturers have recommended doing since the advent of laser printers and something the instructions from Konica Minolta don't tell you to do most likely because the toner cartridges are already inside the AIO.