Remanufactured Konica Minolta Magiccolor 2430DL

Average customer rating: 3.5

Works Great--Until It Doesn't
Great color, bargain price
Do Not Purchase This Product!
Consider this color laser printer rather than ink jets

Remanufactured Konica Minolta Magiccolor 2430DL

Manufacturer: Konica
Product Group: CE
Binding: Electronics
ASIN: B000EBPMDU

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| Refurbished & Used | Special Features | Electronics Features | Electronics

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Product Description

This is the Minolta-QMS Magicolor 2430 DL Class A Refurbished Network Color Laser Printer.

Customer Reviews:

Works Great--Until It Doesn't.......2007-01-03

This printer was impressive once I got it up and running (took some time and head-scratching) with my Windows XP operating system. I purchased the printer around June of 2005 and have worked it hard for my business, printing everything from daily invoices and shipping labels to thick card stock and transparencies. Card stock is only reliable about 70% of the time, and you have to hand-feed it to avoid jamming.

This seemed like a great bargain for the $300 price, but the consumables are very expensive (as you'll find with nearly any printer now, inkjet or laser). I've used about 5-6 cartridges of each of the four colors (black, cyan, yellow, magenta) and gone through one drum replacement. The problems I have had have been mainly fussy software issues--sometimes after working for several print jobs, the printer suddenly stops transferring toner to the media for some inexplicable reason and without any errors or definable cause. We've gotten used to just turning the printer off and then on again to reset, probably once or maybe twice a day. The other issue which has developed into a major problem is jamming. It seems that some kind of small plastic part has been removed with nearly every sheet of paper or label stock that has been jammed. Miraculously, we lost a lot of small parts and the printer continued to work fine--until last week one terrible label jam took with it a few more bits of fragile plastic parts and the printer hasn't been right since. The real frustration is the utter inability to really access the area of the jam, and there's no way to replace the parts that fell off. Service costs are as much as a new printer, not surprisingly.

This is an extremely loud, clunking machine with ridiculously long "warm up" cycles and "calibrating" messages. It's not terribly fast at printing, but it did print rather beautifully for most of our needs (black and white as well as color graphics) for a year and a half. Until it didn't anymore.

I'm now looking into replacing old Hubert here with a Dell.

All in all, it's a good starting point for decent quality color laser printing, but I feel that the quality of the machine itself was never intended for the long haul.

Great color, bargain price.......2006-08-24

I have been using this printer for a few weeks and so far I'm thrilled. It's compatible with Mac OS X, Windows (from 95 to XP) and Linux, has built-in network support and a PictBridge connector in front.
The best part is how lightweight it is for a color laser printer. It also has a very small footprint. Inkjets are often deceptive in that respect, because they require a lot of space in front and back for the paper holders; the 2430DL does not need any of that.
Its energy saver mode is extremely economical (1W) and the printer wakes up immediately and can print with almost no warm-up time.
On the negative side, the paper drawer is very shoddy, and the printer is fairly loud when operating (that includes regular clacks and whirrs while in energy saver mode, don't set it up in your bedroom!)

To the reviewer complaining about the toner not fixating on the page: your printer is set to envelope mode. Check the manual (you can download it from Konica Minolta's web site) and flick the two little yellow switches with the envelope icon to the down position: problem solved!

This printer can be found (refurb) for two hundred. Don't pay more. It comes with low capacity toner cartridges (1,500 pages) and you'll find out toner cartridges are very pricey. Ebay to the rescue: you can actually buy toner powder to refill the cartridges for fairly cheap (about a hundred for a four color set) and turn your starter cartridges to high capacity cartridges (4,500 pages). No need to replace the microchip on the cartridges (that's an additional cost): all you need to do is set the "on error" mode in the engine settings to "continue", and voila. The only problem is the orange error light blinking continuously to report the printer is out of toner; if you can live with that, the savings are very significant. Refilling the cartridges is extremely easy.

There is a duplexer option available, unfortunately it costs as much as the printer. The memory extension capabilities are limited: only one standard PC-100 DIMM, up to 512MB (you may be able to reuse some RAM from an old PC)

I couldn't be more pleased with my 2430DL. Printing is extremely fast, even the first page when the printer wakes up from energy saver mode. I have been using HP 8550 color laser printers in the office for a while, and I think the 2430DL not only prints better quality (better color, better uniformity, better resolution) but also does it faster. I thought I might miss PostScript (unlike the more expensive 2450 model, the 2430DL uses a page description language called LavaFlow), but so far it's performed flawlessly printing from Macs and Windows XP.

This is probably the very best color laser value right now, and I recommend it very highly.

Do Not Purchase This Product!.......2006-06-03

Purchase at your own risk!
Product was defective out of the box. Had a defective Software CD and very poor print quality with the first two print pages smudged with traces of black toner.

Consider this color laser printer rather than ink jets.......2006-05-10

This is my second Konica Minolta color laser printer. I bought my first, a 2210 when prices for color laser printers dipped below $1000. It was very easy to set up and use and worked perfectly for many years. This week I replaced it with a new 2430 because the cost of replacing the consuumables which were all running low was more than buying a new printer. The new 2430 is smaller, lighter, quieter, easier to use, feature packed and has twice the resolution of my old printer. I'm using it in a mixed Mac/PC network environment. The included CD contained all the manuals, drivers and software needed for both platforms as well as for Linux. Set up couldn't have been easier. I unboxed it, plugged in the power and network cable, installed the drivers on my computers and began printing. The whole process took about 10 minutes. The images look great and it can handle a wide range of media. A web browser based interface makes administrating the printer a snap. In a home environment this printer will work for years with no need to replace expensive ink cartridges as with ink jet printers making for a low cost per page. Those darn ink cartriges always seem to go dry at the worst time, like when where ready to run out of the house to take our son to shcool and he goes to print his homework but there is no ink. Also there are no nozzels to clog causing incomplete coverage. The 2430 is network ready so it is easy to share with all the computers in the house. Warm up time is very short and priinting is fast. 5 ppm in color, or if you are printing text or stuff that doesn't need to be in color, switch it to grayscale and it 21 ppm. It's much faster than most ink jets and 100% reliable and at under $300 for a factory refurbished model with a 1 year warrenty a very good deal. My only complaint is that the display on the front panel has no light and is a bit hard to read. It is a very, very small complaint as there is very rarely a need to read that display, but a light would be a nice feature. By the way, I ordered the printer from Amazon on Monday and received it 24 hours later. I did not use express shipping, just the standard shipping. My order confirmation estimated delivery time at 7-10 days but I got it in 1 day. What fantastic service. If you print a lot of stuff and want a good quality, hassle free printing solution for your home or small office the Konica Minolta 2430 is an excellent choice. It should give you years of trouble free service at a low cost.

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