new printer- Magicolor 2450 - opinions

[Guest]

I noticed Minolta have released a new printer, the magicolor 2450.

Does anyone have any opinions or seen any print samples from this printer ?

 

[Miss Perspicacia Tick]

I noticed Minolta have released a new printer, the magicolor 2450.

Does anyone have any opinions or seen any print samples from this
printer ?

IMNSHO, I wouldn't bother with any of the lower end KMs - the quality is
questionable (and, yes, I've seen samples) and the running costs are
ridiculous (unless you refill, which is quite tricky, as the screws in the
tanks are rather small and quite easy to lose - at least they are on my
aunt's 2300).

£400 is very low end for a colour laser - heck I've got an inkjet which cost
more than that! And, like low-end inkjets, a set of OEM tanks will, very
easily set you back more than the unit (they're £120 for each colour and
£100 for the black).

You need to look at the total cost of ownership (TCO). They state 4,500
pages per tank at 5% coverage. As that's not realistic (who prints on 5% of
a page?) you need to mark it up - I usually say 75% as a high end figure.

If you're printing text then that works out at just 300 pages from a black
tank, or 33p a page. Compare this with my Canon - I reckon I could get at
least 500 pages at 75% from a black tank and I can buy OEM tanks at £5 each.
You can work that out. IOW, I could print 33 pages for the cost of printing
one from the MC2400.

Colour: - Same deal, 4,500 pages at 5%, or 300 at 75%. That's 40p a page,
but you have to multiply that by three (because, obviously, there are three
colours) - that's a whopping £1.20 per page!

My Pixma, OTOH, has colours which cost £35 for 7 and I reckon that, if I am
just printing diagrams, webpages, graphics, but not photos (because, let's
face it, if you wanted a laser to print decent photos, you'd be spending a
damned sight more than £400. The best photos I've ever seen from a laser
were from the Phaser 7750 - and that costs the better part of £8,000) - if I
said I could get 500 again (that's probably being optimistic) but let's just
say for sake of argument I could, that's just 7p a page.

And that's not forgetting the drum cartridge will will last just 3,000 pages
at 75% and will set you back between £120 and £150, depending on where you
buy it. So, by the time the drum needs replacing you could have spent a
whopping £4,600 on replacement cartridges! Factor in the cost of the printer
in the first place and you could have bought a Phaser 6500 which would have
vastly superior output and cost considerably less to run.

That's being rather over-simplistic, but you get the general idea. Lower end
colour lasers will cost you a bloody fortune!

 

[Bob Headrick]

[snip]
You need to look at the total cost of ownership (TCO). They state 4,500 pages
per tank at 5% coverage. As that's not realistic (who prints on 5% of a
page?) you need to mark it up - I usually say 75% as a high end figure.

If you printed out the typical email or other text page it would probably be
less than 5% coverage. Text has surprisingly little coverage, and 5% is a
reasonable figure for black coverage. Color coverage tends to be higher.

Regards,
Bob Headrick, MS MVP Printing/Imaging

 

[me]

You need to look at the total cost of ownership (TCO). They state 4,500
pages per tank at 5% coverage. As that's not realistic (who prints on 5% of
a page?) you need to mark it up - I usually say 75% as a high end figure.

Pardon? My Xerox having done 50 odd thousand pages comes up at about 6%
coverage on black pages.

I had a magicolor 2200 and my usage was within about 10% of their quoted
figures.

 

[me]

I noticed Minolta have released a new printer, the magicolor 2450.

Does anyone have any opinions or seen any print samples from this printer ?

The other post about total cost was a bit OTT. But how much printing are
you looking at doing?

 

[Guest]

The other post about total cost was a bit OTT. But how much printing are
you looking at doing?

I wasn't planning on doing a huge amount of printing just the prefer high
quality
colour output.

I noticed that the dpi on this printer is different from the magicolor
2430DL, which has 2400 x 600 while
this new one is using a different print engine 600 x 600 x 4 which kind of
confused me.

 

[Miss Perspicacia Tick]

I wasn't planning on doing a huge amount of printing just the prefer
high quality
colour output.

I noticed that the dpi on this printer is different from the magicolor
2430DL, which has 2400 x 600 while
this new one is using a different print engine 600 x 600 x 4 which
kind of confused me.

And you think you'll get "high quality colour output" from a colour laser
costing less than many inkjets?! What reality are you from, exactly?!

 

[ClubCX]

They all have an optical resolution of 600dpi. The other numbers refer
to software enhancement which supposedly improves the image quality.
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to help with Minolta's printers.

If you go to their website, you can upload files for them to print on
any of their printers and return to you by mail, free of charge.