Konica Minolta gets Buyers Laboratory Line of the Year award for 4th consecutive year

Buyers Laboratory (BLI), an independent authority and provider of competitive intelligence, testing and reviews for the imaging industry, has named Konica Minolta's A3 multi-function peripheral (MFP) family "Line of the Year" for a record fourth straight year.

Source: Konica Minolta. The Bizhub C754e.

Line of the Year is awarded once a year to vendors whose products are determined to be the best in their respective categories of models tested in BLI's two-month laboratory evaluation.

"What it boils down to with Konica Minolta is consistency," said George Mikolay, BLI's Senior Product Editor for A3/Copier MFPs. "Whereas competing lines may stand out in certain speed bands, or in either colour or black, Konica Minolta's engines stand out across the board - in reliability, ease of use and image quality - in virtually all speed bands in both colour and black. No other vendor brings the same quality of performance across its product line to the same degree."

According to Mikolay, "at real-world monthly usage volumes, it would take five Konica Minolta devices before users would experience even a single misfeed a month among them."

He added, "The colour engines were found to quickly process and output users' jobs not only in BLI's real-world jobstream test, but also when printing sets and producing booklets, and scan speeds are the fastest or among the fastest in their respective groups. All of Konica Minolta's tested colour devices received high marks for both business graphics and photographic images, producing bright, saturated colour, natural flesh tones and smooth overall output." 

Konica Minolta's monochrome engines tested this year also earned high marks for printed image quality. "Even in copy mode, text was sharp, fine lines were consistent and halftone levels were distinct across all levels," noted Mikolay.
 
Konica Minolta also elaborated on the BLI "Pick" award for Outstanding 51- to 60-ppm A3 Monochrome multi-function peripheral won by its bizhub 554e A3 monochrome model. BLI's "Pick" awards, presented twice annually, recognise the best performers in a comprehensive suite of tests that cover a wide range of the most important features and performance factors for buyers.

Source: Konica Minolta. The bizhub 554e.

According to the BLI report, the Konica Minolta bizhub 554e won for superior reliability and unsurpassed image quality. "The bizhub 554e offers many great features, but above all, it's proven to be very reliable," said Pete Emory, BLI Manager of Laboratory Testing. The unit completed BLI's two-month, 200,000-impression test with only two misfeeds and no service required.

 

Konica Minolta's A3 business colour models include the "Pick"-winning bizhub C364e and bizhub C454e; the "Highly Recommended" bizhub C224e, bizhub C284e and bizhub C554e; and the bizhub C654e and bizhub C754e. Besides the "Pick"-winning bizhub 554e, Konica Minolta's A3 monochrome models include the "Highly Recommended" bizhub 284e and bizhub 364e, as well as the bizhub 654e and bizhub 754e, which are enhanced versions of models that earned "Highly Recommended" ratings. 

Konica Minolta also offers production devices, including the bizhub PRESS C7000 and bizhub PRESS 1250/1250P.