Cool Color Laser for Under $700

The speed and quality of a color laser at a breakthrough price.

Minolta-QMS first introduced the Magicolor 2300DL a couple of months ago at $799, marking the first time a networked color laser had dipped under $800. Now it has a new printer for small and home offices at an even better price: just $699. And the unit still offers laser speed for text and color graphics, as well as good overall image quality.

To achieve its low price, the Magicolor 2300W uses your PC's CPU, rendering images directly from Windows' low-level Graphics Device Interface. The printer won't work with a Mac, and it lacks PostScript or PCL support, though that won't affect documents. It has no ethernet port, so you must use Windows networking or set up a print server to share it. It attaches to a PC by either its USB 1.1 or its parallel port.

We compared the 2300W with our top-rated color lasers, and its print quality impressed us (see print samples). Text looked crisp. Color graphics displayed a few minor artifacts such as misalignment; glossy photos had bright, natural colors, but--like other lasers' photos--had visible dithering and were less sharp than a photo-quality ink jet's output. At 11.5 pages per minute, text speed was on a par with that of much pricier lasers; but at 2.1 ppm on color graphics, it was half as fast as recent Best Buys. Still, if you now use an ink jet for color graphics, the new 2300W will be a nice step up.

HP will offer its own $799 color laser, the LaserJet 1500, by the time you read this; other vendors may follow. Meanwhile, if you're after a fairly fast, well-priced color printer, consider the 2300W.

Buying Information

Minolta-QMS Magicolor 2300W 4.5 stars (4/28/2003) Price when Reviewed: $699 Current Prices (if available)

--Paul Jasper