Konica Minolta named BLI's 'A3 MFP Line of the Year'

SINGAPORE: Konica Minolta has been named Buyers Laboratory LLC (BLI)'s A3 Multi-Function Peripheral (MFP) Line of the Year for the fourth straight year, the first time in the decades-long history of BLI's awards that a manufacturer has won the award for a fourth consecutive year.

BLI, the leading provider of intelligence on document imaging products and solutions, has been putting products to the test for more than 50 years. Line of the Year, the most coveted honour bestowed by BLI, is awarded once a year to the vendors whose products are determined to be the best in their respective categories of models tested in BLI's rigorous two-month laboratory evaluation.

"What Konica Minolta has achieved with a fourth consecutive Line of the Year win is unprecedented," said BLI managing editor Daria Hoffman. "The fact that year after year Konica Minolta continues to surpass the competition is a testament to the sustained quality of its A3 line."

"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."

Further enhancing this outstanding line is bizhub Extended Solution Technology (bEST), which enables integration of Konica Minolta devices with a range of applications that can help to control costs, heighten security and ease burdens associated with document capture, routing and management.

Named BLI's2012 MFP Solutions Line of the Year, Konica Minolta now supports the bizhub Market Place -downloadable apps that allow users to display corporate announcements on their control panel, and to access a library of business forms and templates, check security settings, scan to Microsoft SharePoint and even order recycling boxes and print shipping labels.

Konica Minolta's currently available A3 business colour models include bizhub C364e, C454e, C224e, C284e, C554e, C654e and C754e. Konica Minolta's currently available A3 monochrome models include the bizhub 554e, 284e, 364e, 654e and 754e. Konica Minolta also offers production devices, including the bizhub PRESS C7000 and PRESS 1250/1250P.