Konica-Minolta 1390MF Printer Review
The Konica Minolta PagePro 1390MF is a multifunction monochrome laser printer designed for the home or small office user. It features well-implemented copying and scanning features, great speeds, and great quality, but for a little more money, competing products, like the color Konica Minolta 5430 that uses Konica-Minolta 1710580-004 toner, offer a lot more.
The PagePro 1390MF can fit into some fairly tight spaces, especially for a multifunction device. It measures 21.5 inches by 19.4 inches by 18.9 inches (HWD) and is light enough to move with a little help. It will particularly appeal to home office users, who need its many features, but don't have room for a bulky machine.
The PagePro 1390MF can print, scan, copy, and fax. Most of these features are well-implemented. Copying, scanning, and faxing make use of the unit's flatbed scanner or its 50-page automatic document feeder for input, which allows automatic scanning of up to 50 pages at a time. The unit also includes OCR (optical character recognition) software for converting scans into editable, searchable text, which is perfect for making digital archives of paper documents.
Print quality is generally very good, but the PagePro 1390MF does have some problems with stylized text. For day-to-day printing of standard fonts, there should be no issues. Print speed is good at around 21 pages per minute.
Not all of the 1390MF's features are well-implemented, however. Faxing is generally intuitive and easy to use, but all faxing must be done at the machine, and only with paper copies. It is not possible to send a fax directly from the computer, so users must print a document first, and then scan and fax it at the machine itself. This is a serious waste of paper and time, and most competing products allow for faxing directly from a computer, so this is a serious oversight.
Konica Minolta PagePro 1390MF toner cartridges come in two different sizes. This is nice for the user since they get to choose how much Konica Minolta 1390MF toner they want to have. The standard Konica Minolta 1390MF toner cartridge comes with 3,000 pages, and the high capacity comes with 6,000 pages. This is a cost saving opportunity, as the high capacity Konica Minolta PagePro 1390MF toner cartridge will result in a lower cost per page than many of its competitors.
Overall, the Konica Minolta PagePro 1390MF is a pretty solid multifunction printer, but for a little more money, competing products offer better faxing options, built-in ethernet, and other nice features, making the PagePro 1390MF a less valuable choice.
