With brand-new models of color laser printers now selling for around $300, inexpensive color laser all-in-ones (AIOs) are no doubt around the corner. For the moment, however, the Konica Minolta magicolor 2480MF is one of only three sub-$800 color laser AIOs I’ve seen. It’s quite a capable machine and certainly belongs on your short list.

Like the other two AIOs in this category—the Epson AcuLaser CX11NF and Brother MFC-9420CN—the 2480MF is a hefty beast, measuring 20.9 by 23.1 by 18.7 inches (HWD) and weighing in at 70.4 pounds. Its large size makes it most appropriate for a small office, but I can see the AIO squeezing into a home office, if you have the space available.

Setup of the 2480MF is marginally easier than that of most color laser AIOs or printers because you don’t have to remove the toner cartridges and then reinsert them. Just remove the tape and shipping restraints from the unit, unlock the scanner, snap on the plastic tray extensions, connect the power cord and network cable (assuming you’re connecting to a network), and run the automated setup routine. My one complaint is with the setup instructions, which consist of line drawings without text, an approach that can be hard to decipher.

The 2480MF’s print-engine rating is only 20 pages per minute for monochrome and 5 ppm for color, which translates into predictably slower performance than the Epson’s and Brother’s AIOs, since both have faster ratings. On our business applications suite (timed with QualityLogic’s hardware and software), the 2480MF’s total time was 21 minutes 5 seconds, compared with 18:30 for the Epson CX11NF and 15:55 for the Brother MFC-9420CN. The speed is best described as tolerable, but no match for the competition.

During testing, text was uniformly well formed and highly readable at 4 points when printing commonly used business fonts, including Times New Roman and Arial. Still, the AIO had trouble with one hard-to-print font that uses a thick stroke. This kind of text was readable enough at 12 points, but often some characters were so close together that I literally needed a jeweler’s loupe to confirm there was any space between them.

Read full review here.