Entered CNET Catalog: 08/16/2003
SKU: 520208-100
Manufacturer: Konica Minolta
Manufacturer description
If good things come in small packages, then the magicolor 2300 DeskLaser has great things to offer. This compact color laser printer sports a streamlined design that makes it a perfect fit for small office spaces, yet it doesn't skimp on performance or features. If you want to add a touch of color to your office, then think about the magicolor 2300 DeskLaser from Minolta-QMS. The magicolor 2300 DeskLaser offers color laser quality and performance in a compact package smaller than many office inkjets. High-resolution 2400 x 600 dpi printing on the magicolor 2300 DeskLaser produces documents that present your business in the most professional way. Even with a small footprint of 49 cm x 26 cm means the magicolor 2300 DeskLaser has the muscle to handle your printing requirements.User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 User Rating:
2.5 stars
out of 2 user reviews
Acceptable printer with many shortcomings
Pros: Good black & white printing, cheap, built in network port, easy to setup, good technical support
Cons: Slow to warm up, color print quality fair, limited paper quantity
Review: I have had this printer since October of 2004. At the time it was the only "affordable" (I paid $599) color laser printer with a built in Ethernet port, which was important to me. Setting the pinter up was simple - effectively, you just plug it in into the network, and if you have a DHCP server setup, it will acquire an address and work. The driver is fairly easy to setup as well - I downloaded the driver from Konica Minolta's website, and installed it from there. The only warning is that you have to set up the printer as a local device when you install the driver, and then configure the network port - Konica Minolta's technical support was very helpful with this.
The build quality of the printer is mediocre at best. The paper "tray" is not a slide out tray - rather, you put a stack of paper into the back of the unit. The tray has a very limited capacity - perhaps 150 sheets of paper. The printer is advertised as accepting up to 250 sheets - however, when I try to put additional paper in, the printer almost always jams. The printer comes with a flimsy plastic piece that is used to extend the tray for 8 1/2" x 14" paper. A similarly flimsy plastic piece is used as a paper guide for print outs.
The text quality of the printer is very good. However, I must note that print cartridges for this device are expensive - around $70 a piece, and the B & W cartridges seem to print about 1000 pages. Further, the print cartridges appear to be keyed to a "page count" as opposed to an actual level of toner, as I have had cartridges that were about 1/2 full register as unusable. I'm not sure if this is a trend in the industry - I hope not, as it is enormously wasteful, not to mention environmentally irresponsible - why force a user to throw out a print cartridge that is half full?
As opposed to the black & white quality, which is good-excellent, the color quality is just fair-average. Konica-Minolta advertises this printer as 2400x600 DPI - however, the 600x600 DPI Hewlett Packard color printer at work prints better color pages.
Lastly, the printer is very slow to "warm up" once you send a print job to it. Generally, the first page will not come out for about a minute. After the printer warms up, print speed is much better, until the printer reenters sleep mode. The B & W print speed appears to be around 16 PPM as advertised, and the color print speed seems to be approximately 3-4 PPM, also as advertised.
All told, while there is not much to complain about this printer, there is also not much to recommend about this printer. It works well, if somewhat slowly. However, it is expensive to operate, given how often print cartridges must be replaced, and how expensive they are. Moreover, I would not recommend this printer to a new purchaser - there appear to be much better ones on the market, and I intend to replace mine around summer.
The build quality of the printer is mediocre at best. The paper "tray" is not a slide out tray - rather, you put a stack of paper into the back of the unit. The tray has a very limited capacity - perhaps 150 sheets of paper. The printer is advertised as accepting up to 250 sheets - however, when I try to put additional paper in, the printer almost always jams. The printer comes with a flimsy plastic piece that is used to extend the tray for 8 1/2" x 14" paper. A similarly flimsy plastic piece is used as a paper guide for print outs.
The text quality of the printer is very good. However, I must note that print cartridges for this device are expensive - around $70 a piece, and the B & W cartridges seem to print about 1000 pages. Further, the print cartridges appear to be keyed to a "page count" as opposed to an actual level of toner, as I have had cartridges that were about 1/2 full register as unusable. I'm not sure if this is a trend in the industry - I hope not, as it is enormously wasteful, not to mention environmentally irresponsible - why force a user to throw out a print cartridge that is half full?
As opposed to the black & white quality, which is good-excellent, the color quality is just fair-average. Konica-Minolta advertises this printer as 2400x600 DPI - however, the 600x600 DPI Hewlett Packard color printer at work prints better color pages.
Lastly, the printer is very slow to "warm up" once you send a print job to it. Generally, the first page will not come out for about a minute. After the printer warms up, print speed is much better, until the printer reenters sleep mode. The B & W print speed appears to be around 16 PPM as advertised, and the color print speed seems to be approximately 3-4 PPM, also as advertised.
All told, while there is not much to complain about this printer, there is also not much to recommend about this printer. It works well, if somewhat slowly. However, it is expensive to operate, given how often print cartridges must be replaced, and how expensive they are. Moreover, I would not recommend this printer to a new purchaser - there appear to be much better ones on the market, and I intend to replace mine around summer.
User Rating:
2.0 stars
out of 2 user reviews
Quality for Slow Speeds
Pros: quality, size, support
Cons: few options, language barriers, smearing
Review: This is a great printer, once it warms up. It takes a long time to warm up and get started but once it does it prints fairly quickly. The paper choices are very small and it is quick to smear ink on cardstock prints and business cards. But if you just keep the paper at a normal quality most of your printing can be done. The ink cartidges are very high, 79.99 apiece for each of the four different colors. All in all it's a mediocre buy, I'm sure you can find lots more for your money.. and watch out because you need an adjustment to the drivers to make your file.. print options to come out in English and not Russian.
