Bake-Off: Eight Color Printers Put Through The Paces

Seventh Place: Konica-Minolta Magicolor 4650dn
First, the good news: The Magicolor 4650dn has one nifty feature the others don't: an LED display on the printer unit that tallies the number of pages that have been printed as each print job is under way. This might not sound important, but in an office where large print jobs are routine, it's a huge help. Don't underestimate this feature. In addition, the 4650dn knocked off a 185-page print job in 8 minutes, 17 seconds, making it one of the fastest units we saw, and color quality was OK.

Now the bad news: The documentation provided us with an incorrect administrator password, a big no-no in the Test Center lab. Also, while management and monitoring can be conducted either by Web browser or through a stand-alone application, the application was balky for us on a PC running Windows Vista.

Starting price on the 4650dn is $699, and Konica-Minolta says VARs in its channel program can expect to attach between 50 cents and a dollar of services for each dollar in product sales. It's not a flash-in-the-pan channel vendor either, as its program was established in 2003.

Eighth Place: Brother HL 4070 CDW
This unit printed 19 pages in one minute, and 185 pages in 9 minutes, 50 seconds, so speed is not its primary selling point.

Its color quality proved somewhat flat compared to the most vibrant of the printers we reviewed, but it was clear. The HL 4070 CDW deployed in less than 10 minutes, provides an LED indicator for toner levels, was quiet—64 db during a print job—and efficient (about 80 watts while working, 19 watts while idle). List pricing on the unit is $499, but we saw street prices as low as $378. Brother is clearly focused on channel sales, selling nothing directly (some of these units are sold by e-tailers), providing demonstration units to VARs, evaluation units for end users, special pricing and market development funds. We'd like to see the company improve either color quality or performance in future product releases.

Bottom Line
In a document output space that remains as broad and competitive as ever, the Test Center finds that Oki Data's C6150 combines features that will help VARs deliver the greatest value to customers with a great opportunity to grow their own businesses. Offerings from Xerox, HP and Lexmark are also very impressive, as are their channel programs—ensuring that while Oki Data might be No. 1 today, it will have to keep fighting hard to keep that position.