Minolta-QMS Magicolor

Looking utilitarian in its square grey case, the Magicolor 2300W is the latest in Minolta-QMS' line of entry-level personal colour lasers.

The price has been kept low by shaving off some of the luxuries, demonstrated by the modest-capacity input tray and the basic panel of status LEDs.

The four toner cartridges are loaded individually into a carousel arrangement from the front of the unit, while paper is fed from the left-hand side.

This toner arrangement makes for slower printing as each sheet must pass through the engine four times for a full-colour document.

In our speed tests, the printer output 20 copies of a black-only text document in under a minute and a half, but took nearly five and a quarter minutes to do the same with a colour text document.

This is in line with Minolta's quoted speeds. A full A4 high-resolution photo printed from Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 took just over a minute, which isn't bad.

More impressive was the print quality: the Magicolor 2300W is a first-rate laser by any standard, and printout results are far better than you might expect from a low-cost device. Text is razor sharp and readable even at 2pt.

Spot colours are clean and punchy, producing exceptional presentation handouts and illustration graphics.

Photo images can't compete with inkjet output, but they come reasonably close and of course you can run out high-quality copies at high speed onto plain office paper - on both sides if you buy the duplex option.

Cost per page is quoted as 1.43p - slightly above average, but perfectly respectable. Just bear in mind that Minolta-QMS does not offer any network upgrade path for the Magicolor 2300W: it's strictly for personal USB or parallel printing only.

Contact: Minolta-QMS 01784 442 255
www.minolta-qms.com

Specifications:

• 200-sheet input & output trays
• 16ppm black only, 4ppm colour
• 1,200 x 600dpi
• 4 cartridges (4,500 sheets at 5% coverage)
• Four colours
• 32MB of memory
• USB 1.1, parallel
• 27.8kg
• 356 x 500 x 392 mm (w x d x h)