Considering picking up Copystar or Samsung line - your opinion please

[patterson70]

Hello, I sell the Ricoh / Savin products and service them as well as a few others such as Brother, HP, Konica-Minolta, Sharp and Canon. I am thinking of picking up a second line like the Copystar or Samsung and wanted to see if I could get some opinions from Kyocera pros such as yourselves as to which way I should go. Issues such as how easy is it to repair/rebuild fusers and drums and DV units, reliability/longevity of parts, cost of parts, firmware upgrade procedure, etc. Any comments really appreciated.

[Kidaver]

Re: Considering picking up Copystar or Samsung line - your opinion please

Copystar/Kyocera side updating FW is easy just throw it on a usb stick and go from there. You don't rebuild fusers, drums, and dev units. They are all just replaceable and pretty easy on most all models. Cost of parts are reasonable. If you are going with the new models you should be in good shape as they've addressed a lot of the issues they had when the new TA line came out. The older generation B/W models are boss machines and stand up to any other machine quite well. Avoid the first TA color machines like the black plague.

[DWise]

Re: Considering picking up Copystar or Samsung line - your opinion please

I agree with Kidaver, Copystar/Kyocera lines are good machines. Good luck with your decision.

[stevena86]

Re: Considering picking up Copystar or Samsung line - your opinion please

Copystar/Kyocera side updating FW is easy just throw it on a usb stick and go from there. You don't rebuild fusers, drums, and dev units. They are all just replaceable and pretty easy on most all models. Cost of parts are reasonable. If you are going with the new models you should be in good shape as they've addressed a lot of the issues they had when the new TA line came out. The older generation B/W models are boss machines and stand up to any other machine quite well. Avoid the first TA color machines like the black plague.

I agree with this, and bold what I did for emphasis.

Do not buy/use/sell/whatever anything older than the TA3050ci series. The TA300ci and the older KM3225c machines are absolute junk.

[Kyo fan]

Re: Considering picking up Copystar or Samsung line - your opinion please

When comparing it with competition, b/w machines are flawless with long lasting components, quality builds and high toner yields. Color machines are average builds with average color print quality, though newest models are much better. Genuine toner is not cheap, and if you are planning to rent them, you are gonna have hard times beating competition like Konica Minolta in terms of cost per page.

[Max]

Re: Considering picking up Copystar or Samsung line - your opinion please

Colour wise i would stick to konica minolta. I have yet to see anything from Kyocera in a colour range that is better than Konica or on the par at a push. Colour toners are very overpriced especially for the desktop colour printers/mfp.

[Tonerkiller]

Re: Considering picking up Copystar or Samsung line - your opinion please

For office color you cannot beat Kyocera.

[patterson70]

Re: Considering picking up Copystar or Samsung line - your opinion please

Thank you gentlemen for your feedback. Will stay away from the TA300 and KM3225 models and below if I go this way. As far as the firmware upgrade, can you download from the Samsung site the firmware without being a tech? With Ricoh you can't get to it unless you are a tech with a tech ID. This is both good and bad depending if you are authorized or not. Please advise.