Konica Minolta Business Technologies has won Buyers Laboratory's (BLI's) most coveted award - A3 MFP (multifunction printers) Line of the Year Award - for the third consecutive year. In the 26-year history of the award, Konica Minolta is one of the only two brands to win the award three years in a row, and it sets the precedence as the only brand to do so in the past decade.
Once each year, Buyers Lab, the world's leading independent provider of analytical information and services to the digital imaging and document management industry, awards brands 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.
Based on a range of criteria, such as reliability, image quality, ease of use and productivity, Konica Minolta's MFP line tops BLI's tests as the MFP line that delivers the best value and performance. The breadth of the brand's line and its ability to provide quality products suitable for a variety of customer needs, from low-volume to high-volume, are also taken into account.
Konica Minolta's line-up of A3 MFPs includes 12 products - more than any other companies - that have earned Pick awards - which are awards that give special recognition to the hardware and software products that provide the most outstanding performance in BLI's unique evaluations twice a year. In addition, 14 products have received 'highly recommended' ratings.
BLI recognises Konica Minolta as being ahead of its competition, in the areas below:
High performance in colour and black-and-white printing
Konica Minolta received five individual "Picks" for its business colour products, ranging in speed from 36ppm to 75ppm, and seven "Picks" on the monochrome side ranging in speed from 22ppm to 75ppm.
In addition to high productivity across the product line, the quality of its colour print is lauded, along with the product line's consistent output from start to finish. The MFPs also garner high marks for both business graphics and photographic images. In addition, the scan speeds for all 12 "Pick" winners are the fastest or among the fastest for both single-sided and double-sided scans. Moreover, modular finishing options enable users to easily upgrade as their needs evolve.
Innovation
Konica Minolta's relentless dedication to innovation makes the brand stand out from the rest of its competition. It is the first manufacturer to offer biometric authentication on its MFP, and its My Tab for print driver customisation is an award-winning technology in itself.
Another key innovation that impressed the BLI panel is its new control panel interface. The nine-inch electrostatic display screen features the flick-and-drag function, which is common in today's smart devices. In addition, the intelligent and intuitive screen automatically wakes up from energy-save or sleep mode when it detects a user approaching the panel. It also allows users to choose from three different control panel interfaces, and gives them the option of choosing between a touch-sensitive or hard-key numeric keypad.
Last, but not least, enhancing the product 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.
Current line-up
Konica Minolta's currently available A3 business colour "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 line-up include the recommended bizhub 215, and the highly recommended bizhub C224 and bizhub C284.
Speaking locally, Andrew Griffith, product manager for office products at Bidvest company, Konica Minolta South Africa, says: "Today's printer market is a neck-and-neck race, so winning the award for outstanding MFPs for the third year in a row is a major accomplishment. The bizhub product line was developed to offer high quality monochrome and colour output, while offering consistent output from start to finish and maintaining an attractive cost of ownership. BLI not only proved those features, but also recognised them as being outstanding in their categories."
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