Konica Minolta magicolor® 2430 DL Laser Printer

Minolta QMS 2430DL, as a photographer I am always looking for ways to promote my business. Unfortunately as this involves images, usually color, it can get quite expensive. I was amazed when a local retailer had the 2430DL on sale for $399 after a $100 rebate. I was even more amazed when I saw the output from the printer.

The 2430 is virtually cube shaped about 15" in each direction so it really doesn't take too much desk space – small enough to earn the title 'personal color laser'. Unlike most low cost printers it come with some nice features, including built in networking, and obviously color output. It is also extendible by being able to accept more memory (32MB is standard) and a duplexer unit to let you print on both sides of the paper.

There are two ways of achieving color output with a laser printer, the first is single pass, usually larger units where the paper makes a single pass through the printer and multi pass, where the paper effectively goes past each of 4 different cartridges to make the complete image. The latter is usually now find only in cheaper models and has the drawback of being significantly slower printing color than when printing monochrome. The 2430 is a multi pass printer and while monochrome printing is a snappy 20ppm, color printing is a leisurely 5ppm (still quicker than your inkjet though). Interestingly though the first page out takes only 12 seconds – so the unit is pretty fast to warm up.

I have the 2430 installed on a small network, installation was simply a matter of loading the 4 cartridges and the imaging unit and plugging in power and a network cable. The supplied software lets you locate the printer by MAC address and you can then configure it through a web interface.

For the price, print quality is excellent, I have used a variety of papers from plain copier, to 100lb card stock and have recently started working with Hammermill Laser Photo Gloss paper which can produce acceptable proofs. There is no envelope tray so paper feeding is pretty restrictive, the standard tray is not so much a tray as an adjustable slot in the bottom of the printer that you slide paper into.

It is a good general purpose laser printer for a home or small office, just because it has color capability doesn't mean it can't be used to print monochrome, this with a printer such as an Epson R200 makes an ideal set up – use the 2430 for everything other than final photo prints.

In an ideal world it would have a real paper tray and an envelope feed. It would also cost twice as much…. I regularly use it to print proofs from InDesign and Illustrator and have never run out of memory yet. This printer is a good solid light workhorse.