Product Reviews

Ask the owners of most small companies if they'd like a colour laser printer, and they'd probably say: "Yes, please!" Then they'd say: "but..." A colour laser is far and away the best device for printing out large runs of high-quality colour documents. Running costs are substantially lower than those of an inkjet - and laser printers are far quicker, too. The but comes in when you remember colour lasers have a reputation for being frighteningly expensive.

All that could be about to change with the Minolta-QMS Magicolor 2300W - the first colour laser we've seen that costs under £500.

Bigger businesses with networks should be aware that the machine doesn't have a direct network point. You can connect it to your PC using either a USB or parallel port. Whichever method you choose, you'll probably want to make sure the laser sits as far away from your desk as possible - it's very noisy. The Minolta is also huge, measuring 345x470x385mm. Much of this bulk is unavoidable, though, as colour laser printers are far more complex inside than their smaller, black-and-white counterparts.

Getting the printer ready to print is easy, as the toner cartridges are already fitted. The software driver installation proved more problematic. I was unable to print even though the driver seemed to be correctly installed. Bizarrely, after restarting the PC a few times the driver managed to sort itself out and I was off!

Looking after a colour laser is more complex than maintaining a black-and-white printer. When a toner cartridge is empty, you need to tell the driver which cartridge you want to replace. The printer will then rotate its internal carousel that holds the cyan, magenta, yellow and black

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toner hoppers. When your desired cartridge is lined up with a special opening, you can remove it.

Generally, I was impressed with the quality of the output. The first printing test was a black-and-white A4 newsletter. The driver was tripped up by the two grey panels behind the newsletter's headline - these should match, but the Minolta produced two distinct shades. Aside from this, the page looked superb. Pictures were life-like, and free from errors or banding. Our business report test was outstanding. Blocks of colour were solid, without any unsightly bleeding from one colour into another.

So how does it compare with an inkjet? I laid out the Minolta's prints next to those of the HP PhotoSmart 7150 (reviewed in our April 2003 issue) which costs £122. The difference was marked. In areas with blocks of solid colour, the HP's inks soaked into the paper, revealing the paper's grain. Colours on the Minolta were solid and constant.

The Minolta's text printing results were also excellent. Text was well-defined, and the edges of letters were razor-sharp, with no feathering. The only area in which the Minolta lost out to the HP was when I printed out an A4 colour picture. Here, the colour laser's results were grainy and indistinct. This compared to a vivid page produced by the HP, albeit on special photo paper.

The Minolta is a sprightly performer too, mustering 16 pages a minute when printing in black and white. A colour report took 28 seconds to appear, though - slightly slower than the quoted 4ppm. Feeding it a high-resolution A4 photo occupied it for two full minutes, this compared to six minutes for the same picture on the HP.

But the real benefit of a colour laser is low running costs. New colour toner cartridges for the Minolta-QMS cost £45 and lasts for 1,500 pages. A black cartridge costs £55 and lasts for 4,500 pages. If you consider that colour lasers produce their best results on normal paper as opposed to the expensive glossy stuff, the potential savings offered by a laser soon mount up.

For photo-quality reproduction, the Minolta loses out to quality inkjets. If, on the other hand, you want to print large volumes of business documents quickly in colour, and at minimum cost, the Minolta-QMS Magicolor 2300W makes perfect business sense.