The Way We See It
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 |
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| Excellent |
| Good |
| Average |
| Poor |
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| Setup |
8.8 |
| Print Quality |
9.3 |
| Speed |
9.4 |
| Paper Handling |
7.8 |
| Supplies |
8.5 |
| Service/Reliabilty |
8.8 |
| TOTAL |
52.6 |
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In Short: The new Konica Minolta 5450 is the latest and fastest color laser from this manufacturer. It is based on the newest 27PPM color laser engine from Minolta. This new engine is coupled with a feature rich controller powered by a very fast 667MHz processor. The result is a desktop network color laser with industry leading print quality and solid performance. The new magicolor 5450 ships with 256 MB, PS3 & PCL emulations, 10/100/1000BaseTX Ethernet, parallel, and USB ports. The printer was relatively easy to set up once it was unpacked. The four standard toner/ imaging units are large and already loaded in the printer when shipped. In fact all supplies load from the front of the printer which is a plus. Installing the printer on the network proved to be fairly straight-forward. The front panel display has been enlarged to display more information and now includes a continuous toner status display. Printing at clocked speeds up to an impressive 27.3 pages per minute in full color, the 5450 finished consistently near the top of our benchmark tests. The print quality on the 5450 was very good overall. The quality of the black text was above average but the color text was especially great. The 5450 did a very good job printing smooth gradations. There was some slight banding in some solid color areas but we find that to be the norm on most all color lasers and copiers. The 600 dpi engine coupled with Minolta’s resolution enhancement called Photo ART, produces consistently good output and in most cases outshined the other current color laser models we tested. The 5450 has a standard 500-sheet letter size feeder and a 100-sheet MP tray for heavier stock or other sizes. Options for this printer include additional paper feeders, internal hard drive, and additional RAM. Auto-duplex printing is available via upgrade for automated two-sided printing on plain paper as well.
The Bottom Line: The new Konica Minolta is a very fast, network color laser with best in class print quality. With print speeds up to 27 PPM and a duty cycle of 60,000 pages per month, the 5450 is more than adequate for most all office applications. This printer works well in the Mac OS, UNIX, and Windows environments.
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