Konica Minolta Wins A3 MFP Line of the Year for Third Year in a Row

January 30, 2013 - Hackensack (NJ) - For the third consecutive year, Konica Minolta Business Solutions, U.S.A., Inc. has won Buyers Laboratory LLC’s (BLI’s) most coveted award—A3 MFP Line of the Year. Once each year, Buyers Lab, the leading global provider of information and testing services to the document-imaging industry, acknowledges the vendors whose product lines are determined to be the best overall in their respective categories based on the cumulative results of models tested in BLI’s rigorous two-month laboratory evaluation. By assessing reliability, image quality, ease of use, productivity and a range of other criteria, the tests reveal to customers the products that deliver the best value and performance. Also considered are the breadth of the vendor’s line and its ability to provide quality products suitable to a broad spectrum of customer needs, from low-volume to high-volume.

 

“What Konica Minolta has achieved with a third consecutive A3 MFP Line of the Year Award is nearly unprecedented,” said BLI Managing Editor Daria Hoffman. “In the 26-year history of the award, Konica Minolta is one of only two vendors to earn the award three years in a row and it is the only vendor to do so in the past decade.”

“All in all, Konica Minolta’s current lineup of A3 MFPs includes 12 products that have earned Pick awards—more than any other vendor—and 14 products that have received Highly Recommended ratings,” said George Mikolay, BLI’s senior product editor of A3/Copier MFPs. “It has Picks in virtually every speed band up to 75 ppm in both color and black, so regardless of the speed of product you’re looking for, Konica Minolta is tough to beat.”

In total, BLI has run more than 2 million impressions on these Pick-winning engines with impressive results. “When all currently available tested A3 models are considered from top to bottom, Konica Minolta has the best reliability record of all eligible vendors, proving that it offers the quality buyers consider more important than any other,” said Hoffman. “And the fact that Konica Minolta submits the majority of its units for testing as soon as they are introduced shows that it believes in its products, and that belief is continually backed up by their performance in the lab,” said Mikolay. In addition to providing outstanding reliability, Konica Minolta devices have user-replaceable color drums across every speed band, which means more uptime because service never needs to come in to replace drums.

Top-Notch Performances in Color and Black
Konica Minolta received five individual “Picks” for its business color products, ranging in speed from 36 to 75 ppm, and seven “Picks” on the monochrome side ranging in speed from 22 ppm to 75 ppm. In addition to high productivity across the product line, color print quality is a key differentiator of the color models, with consistent output from start to finish and high marks for both business graphics and photographic images. In addition, tested scan speeds for all 12 “Pick” winners were the fastest or among the fastest for both single-sided and double-sided scans. Modular finishing options enable users to easily upgrade as their needs evolve. “Also, the 80-page capacity of the saddle-stitch finisher is higher than that of all of its competitors,” Mikolay said.

Always Innovative
“Whether with its award-winning My Tab for print driver customization, or by being the first manufacturer to offer biometric authentication, Konica Minolta continues to innovate, with the new control panel interface a shining example,” said BLI Manager of Laboratory Testing Pete Emory. The 9" electrostatic display supports touch-and-swipe scrolling, and automatically wakes up from energy-save or sleep mode when it detects a user approaching the panel. “But what really sets this panel apart from the pack is the ease with which users can choose from three different control panel interfaces,” Emory added. “Users can switch to any of the interfaces on the fly, providing unmatched flexibility in selecting the interface that best fits their needs. Users even have the option of choosing between a touch-sensitive or hard-key numeric keypad.”

Further enhancing this outstanding line is bizhub Extended Solution Technology (bEST), which enables integration of Konica Minolta devices with a range of software applications to help automate and streamline workflow and control costs. “Another plus for Konica Minolta is that it offers its customers a complete line of software solutions that was named last year’s Document Imaging Solutions Line of the Year, as well as production devices such as the BLI PRO award-winning bizhub PRESS C7000,” said Mikolay.

Current Lineup
Konica Minolta’s currently available A3 business color “Pick” winners include the bizhub C364; bizhub C454; bizhub C554; bizhub C654; and bizhub C754. Its currently available A3 monochrome “Pick” winners include the bizhub 223; bizhub 283; bizhub 363; bizhub 423; bizhub 552; bizhub 652; and bizhub 751. Additional models in Konica Minolta’s A3 lineup include the Recommended bizhub 215, and the Highly Recommended bizhub C224 and bizhub C284.

 

“Konica Minolta is pleased to be recognized for this prestigious award for the third consecutive year, as we remain committed to strengthening the bizhub product line even further in 2013,” said Kevin Kern, senior vice president, Marketing, Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. “Customers can continue to count on Konica Minolta for the award-winning technology and document management solutions they expect from us to remain productive and competitive.”

BLI congratulates Konica Minolta on once again winning MFP Line of the Year for 2013.

Stay tuned for upcoming Buyers Lab “Pick” and “Outstanding Achievement” award announcements in the following categories:

About Buyers Laboratory LLC
Buyers Laboratory LLC (BLI) is the world’s leading independent provider of analytical information and service to the digital imaging and document management industry. For over 50 years, buyers have relied on BLI to help them differentiate products’ strengths and weaknesses and make the best purchasing decisions, while industry sales, marketing and product professionals have turned to BLI for insightful competitive intelligence and valued guidance on product development, competitive positioning and sales channel and marketing support. Using BLI’s web-based bliQ and Solutions Center services, 40,000 professionals worldwide create extensive side-by-side comparisons of hardware and software solutions for over 15,000 products globally, including comprehensive specifications and the performance results and ratings from BLI’s unparalleled Lab, Solutions and Environmental Test Reports, the result of months of hands-on evaluation in its US and UK labs. The services, also available via mobile devices, include a comprehensive library of BLI’s test reports, an image gallery, hard to find manufacturers’ literature and valuable tools for configuring products, calculating total cost of ownership (TCO) and annual power usage. BLI also offers consulting and private, for-hire testing services that help manufacturers develop and market better products and consumables.

For more information on Buyers Laboratory LLC, please call 201-488-0404, visit www.buyerslab.com, or email info@buyerslab.com.