Konica Minolta Magicolor 1600W

Konica Minolta Magicolor 1600W

First lets just say that this is definitely one very good buy. I have had this color laser printer for a week and the whole house uses it threw my wireless router. I leave it on all of the time and let it sleep when not in use, it is fast to print when it wakes up. As noted by other people this laser prints very good with excellent colors, but it will not match up to a photo inkjet printer and thats ok with me.

I will continue to use my canon photo printer with Kodak professional photo paper for my professional prints that I need. This Magicolor 1600W laser printer is great for all other printing especially on HAMMER MILL Tidal MP paper. This copier paper has some of the sharpest black text I have ever seen, especially for a low price paper. I have printed about 1000 pages with this paper and no jams at all for 20Lbs paper.

Yes I did try out 8 different papers up to 28Lbs and I still come back to this HAMMER MILL Tidal MP paper for daily use. If you need really nice heavy paper with no see thru print then use specialty paper - like resume paper.

I also found toner refill bottles with high capacity replacement chips - thats 2500 print or 4500 prints depending on who is selling it on ebay or on the net. Average price for toner replacement is $80.00 dollars for all four colors.

Also I would like to note:

To the people who have had color or hardware problems with this laser printer in the first year - send it back and get it fixed or replaced. Especially if you have had problems from the start - you got a bad one. Immediately send it back and get a new one that works. This laser printer works great with very good results and everyone in my family likes its output and that includes me and I am very picky about my output from printers.

That makes this laser printer fantastic for everyday use. I will definitely have to buy another one.

GREAT PRINTER!

Sets up quickly, just hook it up, insert the cd, when that is done, start printing. Warms up fast and prints fast. Does a good job on pictures too.
My last was a Konica-Minolta 2400W and it was great but finally the thing that pulls in the paper wore out. I did a lot of printing with it. I used it to death for about 4 years, my grandkids also printed lots with it so I knew I wanted the newer version of that great printer. I was not disappointed, I am sold on Konica-Minolta laser printers. Also you can't beat the price anywhere that I got with Amazon. Fast free shipping too, arrived on the 3rd day from my order.

Best printer purchase I've ever made

This printer has seriously lived up to its reviews. It's fast, it's cheap, the print quality is great. The only drawback is that it's somewhat noisy.

Good printing, but a few screwy problems

I recently got a Magicolor 1600W, and set it up.

Screwy problem #1: The instructions are essentially hieroglyphics. There are no words, just pictograms that aren't always as clear as one might prefer. Eventually I got it unpacked and installed, and got the drivers installed.

Once installed, the print quality is great, and it prints pretty fast. Not as fast as the big lasers at work, but a lot faster than any inkjet I've ever owned. Looks better on most things than the inkjets as well.

Screwy problem #2: There appears to be no way to print a #10 envelope, or any other North American standard sized envelope. The promotional literature and other stuff says "prints envelopes", but neglects to mention that the user manual specifies that the printer only prints ISO/European DL and C5 envelopes, which aren't commonly sold here in the US, and there's no way that I've found yet to print a regular #10 envelope.

What makes me wonder is that if they made the questionable decision to sell and market the 1600W in the US, without supporting ANY common envelope types, what other bad choices did they make in the design of this printer?

NOT FOR MACS

I purchased this and only discovered after trying to set it up that it is only for Windows; I have an iMac. This information is not prominently positioned in the description. I now have to go through the hassle of packing it, sending it back, and getting a refund.

The worst printer I have ever owned.

I love a great deal & I thought I had gotten one on this <$150 color laser. I purchased this to print brochures & other color graphic advertising material. I have not overtaxed the printer as I may only print 50-100 items every so often. First off the printer seemed OK although it had a few ghost images or smudges that it would sometimes print on the next sheet. then after about the first 100 print jobs all the toner ran out. Now I know laser printers are shipped with starter toner which is incredibly cheap of them but I accept that as common practice, but this is really low & if you buy this unit you may as well order toner at the same time. The first real problem was when I went to change the toner, be very careful with this operation. It has a rotating carousel that the toner cartridges fit into & you change one close the door & hit the rotate toner button to queue up the next cartridge for changing. The rotation stopped & the next color lit up so I opened the door & the printer started rotating again then I was unable to close the door & the whole thing was jammed. During this process I broke off a little spring clip rendering the printer completely inoperable. I then decided since I have all this toner which cost more than the printer to go buy another & try again. 2nd printer also ran out of starter toner extremely quick (about 100 pages, with smudges or other flaws on about 5% of all pages) I very carefully replaced all the toner cartridges & began printing again at first it seemed OK except for the occasional smudge or ghost image from a previous page. then it started jamming & refusing to feed paper, every few copies I would have to remove the paper, fan it out & pray for success. Next the printer spit out plastic that looked like saran wrap & then flaws began showing up on every page. Ii opened it up & saw the roller that gets hot had melted & the surface of it had peeled off, so I went into the closet & removed this part from my already broken printer & swapped them out. Later the same thing happened to the second roller unit, & now 100% of sheets have print flaws in them & the printer crinkles pages about 25% of the time causing me to have to dissasemble & remove constantly. I am now shopping for a different brand of printer even though I have 99% of all toner cartridges remaining. All this trouble has occured with less than 800 pages printed on the second printer & about 150 pages printed on the first, I would say I have thrown out about 200 of those pages due to really bad print quality & felt a bit embarassed about the quality of half of the rest of the pages. The great deal cheap printer ended up costing me about $500-$600 dollars considering I had to buy 2 & a set of cartridges. Thats about $0.70/sheet + paper & agravation.

Save yourself the trouble & find a different printer.

Works as expected

Prints pages of b/w text very quickly. Color prints are vivid.

Can be quite loud when it first boots up, but it's not really an issue for me. I turn it on only when I need to print something.

More than a review, this is a word of caution: This Printer is NOT for MAC

I purchased this printer because it seemed fairly priced for being a color laser printer. I reviewed tons of printers before deciding on this one and I usually check for positive reviews, aside from technical specs. I am pretty sure this printer is good, but it should be listed UP FRONT that it is ONLY PC compatible, which I saw clearly stated on the printer's box upon arrival WINDOWS System... Great, so I had to call customer service, which I had to do twice, because the first person I talked to didn't really seem interested in assisting and I had to pay for the shipping back the company. I acknowledge that I completely overlooked whether the printer would work with my Mac but, come on, nowadays pretty much every printer has dual system compatibility... so I would't really know how to rate this printer, since I didn't even open the box. Other than that, shipping and handling, etc. was pretty quick.

Good printer

good printer, especially for the price, prints good on everything except for adobephotoshop, its got a weird aspect ratio change when it prints directly from it but otherwise its been good with no problems

Excellent at-home laser color printer

I purchased this printer back in December 2010. I didn't actually purchase it due to need - I just stumbled upon it while surfing general printers and had a thought of looking up what color laser printers were going for at the time. When I saw this printer and the price (I believe I paid ~$260 when I bought it), I was amazed that it was so cheap, and decided to take the risk.

The printer is excellent, everything I expected for a laser printer - it compares with the ones I have at my office. Set-up is simple and easy to follow (I am running Windows 7 64-bit), though I do recommend that you read the directions on how to unpack and properly unlock the printer, to be safe.

The printer is small for a laser printer, but still heavy - I think this model is something like 15-20lb. I wouldn't recommend putting on a shelf or desk that isn't sturdy - mine rests under my desk on the floor.

Warm-up takes about 30 seconds - 1 minute. I don't use it often so I leave it off, but if you leave it on it'll always print within 1-2 seconds of sending your doc to the printer. It does also make a little bit of noise, but it is negligable and is only slightly louder than a typical inkjet.

Printing black/white text pages is a speedy and efficient experience. We tried printing a 30-page PDF and it printed everything between 1-2 minutes. The print quality is excellent: text is clean and crisp, even better if you use higher-quality laser paper.

I also tried printing some high-res (400dpi) digital artwork that I'd created to test its color capabilities, and it looks more than satisfactory. Obviously it won't compare with an inkjet printer that is specialized to print graphics, but if you needed to print something in color in decent quality, this printer could definitely do the job. The artwork print came out crisp and the colors came out decent, with minimal dithering.

Overall, I can't say I've really tested the printer to its limits since I purchased it on a whim, but it's nice to have something that you'd only think you could have in the office at home for such an affordable price. I've read that you can print about 25,000 sheets per cartridge, so if you know you're going to be printing a lot of docs at home, I would definitely recommend this printer.