Konica Minolta Sweeps BLI PRO Awards

Konica Minolta devices swept Buyers Laboratory's (BLI) PRO awards, which acknowledge the best-in-class performances in BLI's field tests. Some of the attributes considered when distributing the awards are productivity, image quality, media handling and ease of use. BLI's testing procedure includes generating tens of millions of impressions on production devices from leading vendors over several years. The 2015 BLI PRO Award winners are:

Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A.

bizhub PRESS C1100
Outstanding Color Mid-Volume Production Device

bizhub PRESS 1052
Outstanding Monochrome Light- to Mid-Volume Production Device

bizhub PRESS 2250P
Outstanding Monochrome Mid- to High-Volume Production Device

Winning Performances Spanning Three Segments

While each of the winning devices has particular strengths, all the models share some important characteristics that will be welcome in high-volume production environments. They all display excellent media handling, with very high maximum input and output paper capacities, support for heavy media up to 350 gsm, dehumidifier and preheat features to assist with handling of offset media, a humidifier option to reduce rippling and paper curl, and a high-capacity post-process inserter for workflows incorporating pre-printed color covers, inserts and tabs. They are also productive (particularly with A3 and oversize SRA3 media), easy to use and offer a wider than average range of image quality settings to enable users to achieve optimum output.

The 100-ppm Konica Minolta bizhub PRESS C1100 won BLI’s 2015 BLI PRO award for Outstanding Color Mid-Volume Production Device.

“Usually we see models that excel in one or two areas, but fall short in others,” said David Sweetnam, head of BLI’s European Research and Lab Services. “But with very high ratings across the board in every category, the bizhub PRESS C1100 will be a good fit in mid-volume production environments regardless of whether productivity, image quality, media handling or ease of use is the main concern.”

BLI was impressed with the device's color consistency, text and fine lines and smooth halftone curves across all four colors on coated and uncoated paper. The unit also achieved simplex and duplex throughput speeds at rated speed across the entire supported media range.

Winner of the 2015 PRO award for Outstanding Monochrome Light- to Mid-Volume Production Device, the 105-ppm bizhub PRESS 1052 matched or surpassed its competitors in nearly all of close to 20 speed tests and earned BLI’s highest, 5-star rating for productivity. Notably, it ran at rated engine speed when producing jobs with multi-tray switching and coated inserts, outperforming all of its competitors—two of them by very large margins. It also handled heavy-grade stocks and jobs that involve switching between letter and ledger output more efficiently than many competing models.

Comprising two bizhub PRESS 1250P engines working in tandem and driven by a single Konica Minolta controller, the bizub PRESS 2250P is the PRO award winner for Outstanding Monochrome Mid- to High-Volume Production Device. In BLI’s evaluation, the unit delivered on its promise of 250 A4 ipm in duplex mode, cranking out more than 15,000 images in a single hour of duplex A4 workflow. BLI analysts cited its duplex performance on A3 and SRA3 media, where, over the course of an hour it delivered 8,396 and 7,886 impressions, respectively, equating to speeds of 279.87 and 262.87 A4 2-up impressions per minute, surpassing the performance of competing devices and approaching the performance of some devices with higher rated speeds.

While alternative print controllers are available for some of the devices, BLI tested all with the Konica Minolta controller, which offers a wide range of image quality adjustments; extensive job-building and advanced page-level programming capabilities; highly featured drag-and-drop hot folder functionality; and Konica Minolta’s Tone Curve utility, which provides users with professional-grade custom gray curve programming capability.