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Average user rating:
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Full user review
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8 out of 8 people found this review helpful
3.5 stars
"Best choice to date for this type of machine"
Pros: Best in the category for the money
Cons: Still falls short in some areas
Summary: This machine replaces a Minolta Magicolor 2200 and a SCSI Microtek scanner. I first tried to replace them with an HP 2840 (see my review.) This one is the best of the bunch.
My old printer was a true 1200 x 1200 dpi color laser, which produced slightly better image quality than the 2480 ? but it was big, noisy, expensive to run and error prone. The HP produced the best images (in color & monochrome) ? but was noticeably inferior in sharpness and detail when copying or faxing. The new Magicolor has better specs for copying, but there is still a noticeable degradation in quality. Scanning to my hard drive and then printing always looks better than copying (color and monochrome.)
The first thing you need to know about color laser printers is that they are bigger and louder than their monochrome counterparts. The machines frequently need to ?calibrate? by rotating the color toner cartridges to keep the toner from sticking together. This is an inherently noisy and time consuming process ? but all these printers seem to make a lot of noise when turned on, even when they are not calibrating. So if it sits on the desk, next to you (as mine does) its best left off except when printing or scanning. The 2480 is too noisy to leave running all day - but it is quieter than the other two.
Scanning is much faster than my old scanner. If it?s the first scan and I have to wait for the machine to warm up, the speed is about the same. But subsequent documents go much faster. And this one has a paper feeder, too. Sometimes I have to copy or scan contracts where the originals are flimsy carbon copies. The Magicolor has a LEGAL SIZE flatbed scanner, which is terrific for this task. HP and all the other multifunction color lasers force you to use the document feeder for legal size originals (which in this case would not have worked for me.) And, even with the legal size flatbed, this machine has the smallest footprint of the three.
Also ? though every company says this is their single biggest complaint and request ? none of these machines handles postcards or envelopes particularly well. All can do them; but they say they were intended only for occasional use in this capacity. Repeated use of heavy stock or paper smaller than letter size wreaks havoc with the rollers and other components, drastically shortening the life of the machine. This is a major drawback to all laser printers. The HP as a genuine, straight through paper path for this type of media, which should make it much less susceptible to this kind of problem. Indeed, postcards come out with no curl whatsoever (whereas in the Magicolor they are slightly bent and really need to be stacked under a heavy book until they cool off) ? but the HP jams constantly with this simpler path and produces error messages that halt the job, even when the media goes through successfully ? furthermore, there is no out tray for the straight paper path; it just dumps them on the floor. All things considered, the Magicolor is a more sensible and reliable choice if you intend to use paper sizes other than letter.
The HP drivers were a nightmare. They were difficult to install and slowed my system to a crawl, even when the printer was off. The Magicolor drivers cause no performance impact whatsoever. And no errors, so far, after a couple of months of use. Not a lot of bells and whistles, but they are clean, straightforward and they work.
The HP has a built in fax modem. The Magicolor does not. But this is not as big a drawback as it first seemed. If I wanted to fax someone a copy of a letter that I received in the mail with a cover letter, I would have to print the cover letter, then put them into the paper feeder on the HP multifunction and dial the fax number. Now I just put the pages into the Magicolor multifunction?s paper feeder, scan them to a file, then type my letter and fax both from my computer. It?s actually a little faster, because I can type a phone number faster than dialing it. The HP modem lets you fax at a higher resolution than my computer?s modem, though.
The consumables are for both multifunctions are cheaper than my old color laser printer. One word of warning for the HP machine, though: if you ever have to replace the fuser unit, you are better off replacing the whole machine, as it costs nearly as much. Just the price of the toner cartridges that come with the new machine would justify the expense.
All in all, while there is considerable room for improvement in the Magicolor 2480, it is the first truly usable color laser multifunction I?ve found and the first genuinely viable replacement for my old scanner and color laser printer. On balance, it seems to be worth the price and the trade offs ? though I hope Konica-Minolta will continue to improve it.
- 1 reply to this review
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Hello, I also own this printer and for the most part, I have been impressed. I was wondering if you could help me out with something, however. I previously had the printer hooked up to my desktop computer, which has windows XP and it worked great -- but now I have a new laptop, and the laptop has Windows Vista and I cannot get this printer to install on it. Can you offer any help? Thanks!
