IT Pro Verdict

This is a heavyweight machine, which should be able to handle print, copy, scan and fax functions for a good-sized workgroup. Print and scan quality is good, but print isn’t as fast as the spec sheet figures suggest. TCO is likely to be good, particularly before you reach 120,000 pages, when extra maintenance kicks in.

By Simon Williams

published 24 February 2009

in Reviews

Colour laser multifunction printers for workgroups are a convenient and often cost-effective option, as they serve as scanner, copier and fax machine, as well as a networked printer. Konica Minolta's Magicolor 4695MF is a substantial machine designed for relatively high duty cycles and includes both PCL and PostScript Level 3 emulations.

If you're installing the machine you'll know just how substantial, as it weighs 55kg, so is a definite two-person lift. It's not clear why it has to be quite so heavy or have such a large footprint there are A3 machines that take up less desk space. Once set up, though, its conventional lines mean it won't be a stranger to anybody who has used a photocopier before.

The control panel is straightforward, with a 4-line by 16-character backlit LCD display, bracketed on the right by a four-way menu navigation ring and on the left by fax function buttons. To the right of the navigation ring is a number pad for fax dialling and to the right of that are mode buttons for fax, scan and copy, as well as colour and black-and-white start buttons and one for cancelling a job.

At the top of the machine is a 50-sheet Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) and a very large, counter-balanced cover for the A4 flatbed scanner. There's a 250-sheet tray at the base of the front panel, where you load paper in landscape mode, like a copier, and there's a 100-sheet, multi-purpose tray that folds down from the right-hand side for occasional print on special media. The output tray hangs like a balcony from the left-hand side of the machine, further increasing its footprint.

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Although a 500-sheet secondary tray is available as an option, it seems odd not to provide a higher capacity tray as standard, on a machine with a 120,000-page duty cycle. In a busy office, you could be refilling it rather too regularly.

Because of its basis as a copier, the Magicolor 4695MF can perform some neat tricks. As well as fairly normal enlargement and reduction copying, the machine can produce a duplex copy from two scanned pages, enlarge a page up to four pages and repeat a small, scanned image multiple times on a single page.

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