For some, it is portability all through and for others it is a flashy LCD that doubles up as a nice digital photo frame. As for the Canon Selphy CP800, the advantage is obvious and is two-fold. It is one of the least pricey snapshot photo printers that we had reviewed of late and it gives you some of the best photo prints we have seen. In the Canon CP800, you will be able to find some striking features that are necessarily a ‘must have’ on every printer, including a brilliant tilt-up LCD to preview images and a fine array of memory-card readers. Watch out, though, that because of its budget price, you may have to shell out extra bucks for some add-on features and is rife with most snapshot printers available online, you need to pay a premium for your photo prints. But if you are an amateur photographer who cannot wait sitting around for those snapshot photos to come out, you will need to seriously consider the Canon CP800. Before we move further into the review, a quick look at some of the points that faired well in our tests:

• Small printer & compact in size
• Easy to set up & use
• Deep black details indicate high contrast prints
• Reasonable print costs
• Simple to use printer controls
• Speed print speed of 58 seconds for a 4 x 6 print
• Reasonable colour performance

And the following things had to be put down as negatives:

• Eats up more space with the paper tray installed
• No editing software, leave alone minimal software package
• Few details tend to get lost a bit in the overall softness of photo prints
• Makes use of     Canon paper only with limited sizes available
• On-printer editing features is not applicable to individual photos
• Issues with red and greens
• Limited colour range

Design:

Physically, the Canon SELPHY CP800 Compact Photo Printer is a plain matte-black or white box which is 177 mm (W) x 134.6 mm (D) x 68.8 (H) mm in size (without any protrusions). Weighing 940g (excluding Paper Cassette & Ink Cartridge), it feels reassuringly solid without being a hulking great box. Remove the paper cassette, the display could lay flat and then there is the paper ‘door’ that folds up and you have a real compact machine in the making. The left side of the front face sports memory card readers. The format support is sufficiently wide: Memory Stick/Memory Stick Duo, CompactFlash and SD/MultiMediaCard. A USB 2.0 port is provided on the left side of the photo printer if you need to plug in flash drives and other forms of USB storage. You will also be able to find a second USB interface to connect to the host computer. There is a paper cassette of clear plastic which inserts into the front of the photo printer through which the paper goes in. Completed prints come out of the rear. The CP800 will be able to print photos of 2 different sizes including 4” x 6” and 2” x 3.5”.

Controls & Connectivity:

On-printer Controls: The Canon SELPHY CP800 Dye-Sub Photo Printer features a number of controls on the machine’s body that are made use of when you are printing from a flash card. You can find from the third left, buttons for menu, power, print button, directional & select buttons and a back button. The menu button is meant for the on-screen menu of the machine, which you can navigate without any trouble using directional and select buttons.

Display: A 2.5″ LCD screen adorns the top of the CP800 and this can tilt up to 30 degrees. The screen seems rather petite comparing with the printer body and the screen is a disappointment as it is not very high in resolution; therefore the images tend to look a bit grainy.

Menus: On inserting a memory card, the Canon CP800 scans the card in a flash and then displays the images it can find on the card, letting you to scroll through the list and choose the ones intended for printing. The menu button can also be pressed for accessing the on-screen menu and this allows you to choose all the images for printing or employ different image editing tools including correct red-eye, auto image enhancement, smooth skin or several image editing tools. The colour modes will let you apply models like neutral, vivid, sepia, black & white and positive film to the photos. You can only apply these to all of the images tagged for printing and not for any individual images. Also available are options to create print layouts of multi-images on one page, add any borders to the photo print or include a date stamp to the photos. We found the menu system simple to use, though the text is slightly difficult to read on the rather petite grainy screen, particularly from a distance.

Media: The CP800 can toil only with Canon’s own paper that comes with three sizes and types: postcard (4” x 6” with tear-ends for handling), labels (eight mini labels on a 4” x 6” sheet) and card (2.13” x 3.39”). The card and postcard sizes are only offered in a glossy finish and there isn’t any matte or any other paper option. The machine cannot work with any other paper sizes or types (including A4 or letter) than the ones mentioned above.

Setup:

Setting up the SELPHY CP80 printer was a breeze and we were able to insert the ink cartridge without the slightest of trouble. There is a plastic flap on the right hand side of the device, open it up and just push it in and then close it. It takes a few moments of examination to load the paper into the cassette into the unit; we had to sort out that the paper’s holders top clear flap needs to be open whilst printing. We tried inserting a USB flash drive and an SD card separately, the printer was smart enough to find the image in no time. The left and right arrows on the control interface should be used to scroll the required image. By poking the Up/Down arrows you can select the desired number of copies and press the Print button.

As the Selphy makes use of dye-sublimation technology to print (in stark contrast to more common inkjet printing), it comes with 256 levels of colour and 300 x 300dpi resolution that most today’s snapshot printers come with. In dye-sublimation printing, the ink is transferred onto the paper by the printer from a continuous sheet of film which is impregnated with ink in the cassette. Inkjets, in comparison spray microjets of liquid ink from a reservoir onto the required page. The biggest advantage of the dye-sublimation printer is that the cartridge also applies a sort of protective coating to the photo prints and this means the prints are reasonably water and scratch resistant.

The dye-transfer transfer roll arrived encased in a two-barrel cartridge which easily inserts through a pull-down door found on the device’s right side. You can find that the barrels are attached about 2-inch apart. On the inside, there is a fresh, ink-packed film that feeds from one roll onto a takeup roll as you use it. When it is in operation, the Selphy can print a picture in passes and pushes the paper out of the back and again pulls it back in with every colour it lays on, thus giving ample clearance behind the machine isn’t optional when it is printing.

Canon features a CD-ROM that has a lot of photo software and this means you can print straight from your computer and lay your hands on some image management. In case your digital camera supports PictBridge, you may also connect it to the printer straightaway without any trouble. You can also go for a Bluetooth BU-30 adapter from Canon that allows you to print directly from a mobile phone which is Blue-tooth enabled and not to mention the rechargeable battery pack (optional) which does a good job for up to around 54 postcard-size prints as claimed by the manufacturer. As for the battery performance, we didn’t get to test out its longevity, but we feel that it should be okay for limited printing when you are away from the power plug.

Though the machine itself does not cost a fortune, going for the extra can actually add to the overall cost. Besides, the price of consumables for this printer is on the higher side. You can get both high capacity as well as standard-capacity photo packs supplied by Canon, but anyway the output is costly! A 4” x 6” photo (ink cartridge and paper) can cost you more than the local drugstore/photo service charge or average photo kiosk and again that depends upon the refill-pack capacity you purchase. (That assumes you are not messing up the Selphy’s consumables by producing prints you do not like – and not all stores will charge for duds). It is a tad higher than some of the other rival snapshot photo printers, including the Epson PictureMate Charm and Sony DPP-F770. Do remember that with the included dye-sub consumables, the photo paper should be sufficient for the ink rolls that you get alongside the package. Therefore the cost per print in the case of this printer model, figures in the paper too. The cost involved in printing is a touchy sort of trade-off. And that you have pretty good photo-inkjet printers to avail of, the likes of all-in-one printers are witnessing an all-time low in terms of price. You always get a better bang (in terms of the capability of the printer) for your bucks by heading in that direction. Nonetheless, in that case, you need to let go of the amazing portability of what a snapshot photo printer like the CP800 can offer. Another available option is obviously ordering your photo prints locally, however you need to collect them at your local drugstore and also you are always at the whim of their work hours.

Performance:

Print Quality: Though the CP800 had a tough time with a few colours, it had no issues whatsoever in giving a deep, strong black in some of  our test prints. The black levels proved deeper than other printers and this means the photo prints will have a fairly deeper blacks and a much wider contrast between the whites and blacks, providing them with more visual impact. The CP800 faired pretty well in creating gradients of the 4 primary colours which looked smooth and clean.  There is only minor apprehension pertaining shading on the black (not much though), where it seems like it is making use of other colours to generate deeper black and this in turn produces bit of red tint nearly three quarters of the way up. But this is just a trivial issue that isn’t visible in most photographs.

When it comes to the edges, the CP800 came up trumps, though the results are a bit soft. A bit of testing revealed that it could be slightly better as it seemed to be a lot less sharp than other photo printers on test.  The edges that are highly magnified looked pretty clear with a reasonable level of detail.

Colour Accuracy: The CP800 seems to struggle with the blues and greens on testing and both of them looked a lot darker than we anticipated. Perhaps, the machine is doing some processing in order to try and make the colours seem more vivid and this process of course is out of our control. A bit of comparison of the colour accuracy of CP800 to that of other printers will throw more light on some issues, but apparently the colours would tend to vary a lot from one printer to another.
Print speeds: Operating the CP800 is a breeze and it takes roughly 15 sec to set up and get ready for printing. For printing a 4” x 6” image, it took about 45 sec when we printed from a memory card and just over a minute when you are printing from a PC. You will be able to find a single quality mode and understandably nothing happens during the first half of the time taken for printing, at least mechanically. Then the print paper goes backwards and forwards all the way through the machine‘s front and rear, till it comes out of the front, all set to please the user.

The time taken for printing is speedy compared to some of the snapshot printers like the Canon Selphy ES40 (that took only 80 sec each for printing the test images from the memory card). It came a bit close to the PictureMate Charm from Epson (50 sec from a flash memory card). It is also a quite performer, though the printer does make some buzzing noise of the volume and grade of an electrically run can opener. You can make use of it all day long (given sufficient paper and ink cartridges) without annoying your ears.

Comparison details:

Compare the Selphy CP800 to the much hyped Sony DPP-F700 and you will see a brighter, bigger and more appealing Sony display. Nevertheless, the performance is on the same scale as that of the Sony, though the Canon is less pricey. The Epson PM 300 on comparison with the CP800 seemed to handle DVDs and slightly bigger paper. This said Canon is the cheaper of the two, though HP has media card slots and a touch screen, things that Canon is built short of.  Weigh the CP800 against Canon iP2702, you will find that the later gives better quality prints and prints a gamut of paper sizes and types. The iP2702 fancies being much cheaper, given that it comes with memory card slots and works well as a stand-alone machine.

Verdict:

The Canon Selphy is a doddle to use for families, individuals, organizations and businesses that require occasional top quality output that is of snapshot print sizes. The portable printer is great for bringing to business events, parties, contests and sporting events featuring a booth or table. Indeed, it is pretty handy in numerous scenarios where the user would have made use of a Polaroid instant camera. (And this depends, obviously, on purchasing that additional battery pack). Mobile professionals including first responders, real-estate excecutives, artists, fishing enthusiasts (and the list goes on and on) can reap the many advantages of the printer. It is pretty simple to conjure up several situations and jobs where you may find this premium mobile printing highly useful. We suggest that you try out in a local store to get a feel of the speed, weight and size and get a first look at the prints. Then you will know if it is actually worth thinking about going for one.

The cost of consumable is a point of concern and the most off-putting. And also options are plenty when it comes to going for snapshot printers that give you lesser cost per print, but you will need to shell out more up front for them due to the low initial cost of the Selphy. In addition, you need to pay more for its battery, Bluetooth facility and features that come with some rather high-priced models. However if you are searching online for a reasonably priced, less than a minute printing machine which you can carry about in a petite bag, the Selphy CP800 could just be the one!

Check other Latest Photo Printers and best selling Canon Photo Printer reviews in this website.

Canon SELPHY CP800 Inkjet Photo Printer – Technical Specification Table

Positives:

• Reasonably good print quality and is excellent, particularly when making use of the Epson inks & paper
• Good photo quality
• Easy set up
• Stylish looks

Negatives:

• Takes some time to find USB port
• Higher ink costs
• Low print speeds
• Takes a while to come to terms with all settings & functions
• Printing without a border leads to slight discolouration at the end side of the image
• Scanner has no OCR facilities

Features:

There is an omission from the product spec which deserves a mention. Whilst most of the competitors of the PX660 would either have a wireless network interface or wired Ethernet port, the PX660 comes with an old, basic USB port. While you can still make use of the Windows’ printer sharing for sharing it with your PCs, you would have to leave the host PC ‘ON’

When you look at the present range of ‘Stylus’ machines from Epson, it is not easy to spot out the difference as they all are jet black in colour and its size is pretty compact and rectangular and so is the Epson Stylus Photo PX660 All-in-One Printer, thereby giving you great value for your bucks. More often than not, it is the availability of the automatic printer document feeder that separates the machine from the rest. Like two peas in a pod, it is not easy to differentiate it from the Stylus Photo PX650, its immediate predecessor in both features as well as looks. Its dimension 451 (W) x 386 (D) x195 (H) mm and weight of 8.5kg differ only marginally, while the layout looks more or less the same.

Control panel: Though the control panel of Epson PX650 and PX660 might look more or less the same, there has been for sure a shift in emphasis. First, you cannot miss the touch panel symbols that easily with the big question mark to the left of its LCD screen of size 63mm, large Home icon and 4 navigation arrows in addition to the ‘Stop’ and ‘Start’ symbols and related additional functions to the right. There is now a few huge brilliantly backlit controls located on both sides as piece of brilliant navigation touch control panel instead of the physical buttons that enable you to scan easily through the control menus and select your options fast and more efficiently, although it is disappointing that one needs to look into control menus before one accesses images of memory card instead of having the customary dedicated button.
Overall, the printer is built with only few controls. This said, the PX660 still manages to give you a wide range of the important all-in-one functions for printing, scanning, copying and handling photos.

Contact Image Centre (CIS) scanner: This scanner is designed with a pretty thin, fragile cover on extending hinges, therefore you will have no trouble scanning from both single sheets as well as books, though it is hard for you to keep the top cover open because it does not hinge past the vertical and would want to fall short, if it is not held in place, while you are loading an original.

Paper input capacity: You can find a 120-sheet A4 input tray, a single paper path that is feeding sheets from an angled paper tray located at the rear through directly to a telescopic one that pulls out from the front, when you pull down the front cover. At the base of the printer is a drop-down output tray having a socket meant for the DVD/CD tray that you can insert to print labels directly on to the disc. You need to lower the front tray to the horizontal for printing on disk, making use of an internal lever, by sliding in the CD carrier directly from the front.  Like the PX650, the PX660 is built short of Wi-Fi capability, so you can only connect the PC via the regular USB cable. Under the control panel, which opens out to any of the seven angles are 2 slots that are meant for memory cards which do their intended job of handling xD, SD, CompactFlash and MemoryStick. The integration of a PictBridge socket also does well as a front panel for the USB drives.

Print engine: Whilst the Epson Stylus Photo PX660 is relatively new, it is built on a print engine that has been in use for quite a few years. This said, it is no bad thing. The print engine makes use of ‘Claria dye-based inks’ and is built with a minimum ink droplet size of simply about 1.5 picolitres, which also features in few of our much-loved photo printers. Disappointingly, the Epson PX660 is not a brilliant printer for printing text documents like some of the previous Epson printers that we had tested. With less sharper and dark characters than created by, for instance Canon PIXMA MG6150 photo printer and the draft text which is faint and off-black, the performance overall seems to be satisfactory.

Software Installation: Installation of software does not get fast and easy than this one. You will be able to find OSX and Windows on the CD and on choosing Linux from the set up menu, there is a direct link to the Linux support page of Epson. Giving OCR support is a copy of ABBYY FineReader, on top of a choice of Epson’s utilities that cover most other aspects of the printer. The machine is a 6-colour printer with light magenta inks and light cyan that are added to the standard CMYK. You can find that each of the cartridges will neatly clip into the head carrier and this is a permanent fixture which should last the printer’s life.

Performance:

Print speeds: The Epson Stylus PX660 Printer claims excellent print speeds of up to 38ppm in colour and 37ppm in mono. This said, it was no where close to the speeds it claims in our tests. Draft printing speed was decent at 15.8ppmm but at standard quality, we found the speed at a mere 4.8ppm, which is pretty short of its quickest competitors. At 3.3ppm, we found that on plain paper, the mixed colour prints were competitive; however photo prints are pretty slow and almost took 12.5 minutes to print 6 postcard-sized prints. Furthermore, on testing with a five page black text, the results are as follows: 20 seconds giving 15ppm in draft mode and 1:08 time producing 4.4ppm in normal mode and for printing 20 pages it took 4:18 (4.7ppm) in normal mode. At no point of time, did it leaped to 20ppm, let alone the print speeds of 38ppm. We tried printing 5 pages of colour print and the machine was able to do it in 1:27, giving you a speed of 3.5ppm.

Epson’s continual hype of poor print speeds prompted us to carry out more testing of its print speeds. A special document was created comprising simply one line of text (quite uncharacteristic). Five of these were printed in draft mode, not including the processing time. It consumed 6 seconds, from when the first sheet started to move to the final one spilling on the output tray. That is 550pmm which is far more than the 38ppm that the manufacturer claims. Nonetheless, if you take into account the time before the print starts, whilst the machine inspects things like ink levels, it gives you a speed at 12.5ppm in 24 seconds, which is roughly less than half the claim.
The need to wait for both printing and processing before you can make use of the document gives you not much option than to exclude the processing time in printing speed specifications. This is a common practise to several printer brands and manufacturers, however both Brother’s as well as Epson’s claims are miles away from what is reality.

The biggest advantage is that you could print off your photos without the need to feed through a Mac or PC, and still you are provided with the Easy Photo Print software that simply lets you to layout and print digital images without any trouble on different types of paper.

Print quality: When we expected a lot out of the photo quality from this inkjet printer, the results seems to be pretty far ordinary and disappointing. Whilst most subjects seemed to be brilliant, black and white prints, that are generally its strong suit, appeared to be terribly washed out. We looked further into it and observed (what was part of a minor update to the print interface) the default colour mode of Espon had been changed to Photo Enhance. You need to set it to colour control with the vivid profile for the machine to produce the expected results you might expect. The Photo Enhance facility helps colour correct to a much closer assimilation. Black text in normal mode is realistically well produced, but just that it could be a little fuzzy in cross heads and emboldened headlines. You will happen to see a different draft mode text that looks faint and jaggy. Not to mention that it comes through in dark brownish tone instead of black and it does not give one the best of impressions. Colour graphics are usually decent, although we happened to see some sort of banding in certain filled areas of business graphs. The colour copy appeared to lose a bit of the colour depth of the original, although it is still usable. We liked the photo quality of the printer with smooth, good levels of details and natural colours.

The Epson Stylus Photo PX660 is a six-colour printer and therefore, you can expect the running cost to be a tad higher than with 4 colour printers. You will also be able to find an ISO black page that costs 3.1p and an equivalent one that costs 10.3p at the best prices. When it comes to black cost, it is above average for this class of printers, although the cost of colour is a penny or so more than competition.

Scanners: We had to admit that Epson scanners in general are above average and the PX660 comes as no exception. It is swift and the images that it was able to capture seemed sharper and colours were splendid and accurate. No doubt, we were impressed with its knack of preserving subtle details in the very darkest and lightest of source material. Equally good were the photocopies with pretty reasonable accuracy in colour and preservation of darker details, courtesy its well-judged brightness.
There are several things we love about the Epson Stylus Photo PX660 Multi-function Printer, including low inkjet operating cost (in fact the lowest) available, if you stick to the ‘Owl’ series cartridges which is of pretty high capacity. But there is no way you can run away from the purchase price initially, which is just too high.

Manufacturer warranty:

The Epson Stylus Photo PX660 is covered under a standard manufacturer’s warranty of 1 year and there is also an optional warranty of 3 years (which is extendable).

Verdict:

The Epson PX660 is a middleweight, decent all-in-one that every photo enthusiast would love to have and not something that is meant for the small business customer. Easy and simple to use, it gives you remarkable extras including touch control panels and direct CD/DVD print. There is not much of a difference with other Epson machines when it comes to the print quality and the print speed which is reasonable is a far cry from what the manufacturer claims. If you are prepared to shell out £25 more, the PIXMA MG6150 should do no harm as it is brilliant in printing which looks pretty better on plain paper and comes with two paper trays, duplexer, and not to mention both wireless as well as wired network interfaces. And alternatively, there is the Canon MG5150 which rivals on the specs and features at just about £73.

Check other Photo Printer Reviews in this website.

Epson Stylus Photo PX660 Inkjet Printer – Technical Specification Table

What is hot?

• Lab quality photos on the move
• Gold & Silver ink options
• Voice guidance
• Simple to use menus & carry handle
• Ink & paper in one cartridge
• Availability of wide range of creative features

What is not?

• Is capable of only 4×6 photo printing
• Cost per print can be higher
• No additional battery pack

Design features:

Not a Fisher-Price toy:

The new, latest Canon SELPHY ES40 Compact Photo Printer is built with a few things that are very common with most of its peers and this of course is that it is an extremely cute printer Though it might look like a sort of Fisher-Price toy for a 2 or 3 year old in a nursery class with its nice round edges, big simple control panel with a blend of white and tan colours and is pretty easy to read. We felt that Canon should perhaps give it a more professional and serious look than it actually appears. However, thanks to the latest voice guided aspect, even a kindergartner will have no problem working on the Canon ES40 with the minimum of efforts as such is the ease of operation and therefore, the results are quite excellent.

You will find a tiny switch that helps open a door or an access into the machine, where you will be able to load the Easy Photo Pack offered by Canon. On the Canon ES40, you can roll the paper and ink into one photo pack which is simple to install. You may get the pack in the sizes of card (roughly 2 x 3) or postcard (4 x 6). The manufacturer also gives you exclusive Silver & Gold photo packs so that you can jazz up traditional photographs. To the left area of the Canon ES40 is a provision to the USB port for connecting to the PC and there of course is the PictBridge slot to print from digital camera and several other permissible media. There is an AC adaptor that you can find at the other side of the machine.

As always with mobile printers, more compact the size, the better and therefore the integration of both the paper and ink into one customer cartridge can save some space whilst taking the speculation out of actually how much one may require.

Control panel:

The Canon SELPHY ES40 Dye sublimation Printer has its control panel well cut out consisting of a big 3.5” LCD, 4 big buttons (print, creative print, on, back) and 8 smaller buttons (menu, voice, edit, display, zoom out, zoom in, minus copies, plus copies). Just under the control panel, you will find a thin slot which runs the distance across the ES40 printer and this is a part of the paper path of the ES40.  There is a built-in memory card reader built on the top of the printer. You will be able to find the photo path’s other end on the top of the ES40 that also functions as an output tray.

LCD screen:

The SELPHY ES40 is designed with a convenient scroll wheel bright 3.5” 230K dot LCD screen and big tactile buttons to give you easy and swift controls when you need to review and navigate through image prior to printing. The scroll wheels help navigate through the menus for selecting the choice of editing features and learning on how to use them should be child’s play.  A carry handle is built on the unit and this makes portability a lot easier and safer.
Compatibility with Memory Cards:

The Canon ES40 Photo Printer could support up to 15 different types of flash memory cards of digital camera with suitable slots built on the top of the photo printer so that you have easy access and comes with a PictBridge port for connecting directly to compatible cameras. The printer is also compatible with most microSD cards generally made use of in mobile phones so that you can easily print out snaps taken with the mobile digital camera. On the other hand, the ES40 can be used with a Bluetooth adaptor (optional) so that you can print images wirelessly from your mobile phone. In general, the ES40 printer is pretty compatible with miniSD Card, microSD Card, microSDHC Card, MMCplus Card, MultiMedia Card, CF Card, RS-MMC Card, xD-Picture Card, MMCmobile Card, Microdrive, Memory Stick, miniSDHC Card, HC MMCplus Card, Memory Stick PRO Duo, Memory Stick Micro, SD Memory Card, Memory Stick PRO, Memory Stick Duo, SDHC Memory Card and the MMCmicro Card.

Performance features:

Set-up:

The Canon SELPHY ES40 is made use of as a PC-free device by most users, an indication that the ES40 is very easy and simple to set up. You simply need to plug the machine, remove the cleaning unit, fit in the ink/paper combo cartridge, switch on the printer and presto; here you are ready to print. The ES40 is available with a starter ink/paper pack as you will come to know when you do through the Beginner’s guide and as a user, you will have to go for an ES Easy Photo Pack paper/ ink combo cartridge at the time when you first buy the product.

If you decide to use the Canon ES40 with your computer, you also have to buy a USB cable and the drivers & software have to be downloaded on the CD-ROM supplied by the manufacturer. One could also receive the latest software and drivers on the official website of Canon namely the Canon.com.  The download process either way is a breeze and does not take much of your time. The machine has to be attached through USB when you download the driver.

Ease of use:

Having reviewed both the Selphy products viz the Selphy CP790 & ES40, it is only fair to say that they are relatively easy even for a child to make use of and this point can well prove to be one of its selling points. The Selphy range of printers is aimed at families on the move who like to print instant memories. However, the ES40 has taken all its convenient features to the next dimension, courtesy the voice guided prompts that one may find on both the printer as well as the Selphy Photo Print software.  You can turn them off if you need to, though kids will actually go gaga over the pleasing voice that is instructing them. A quick start-up helps you begin the process of printing in about 8 seconds after the printer is turned on. There are two high-speed image processors which help the SELPHY ES40 to create ‘P’ size in approximately 55 seconds and you may have the ‘L’ size printed in simply about 47 seconds and this means no frustrating waiting times.

Voice Guidance feature:

Voice Guidance feature defined by a dedicated button on this ES40 SELPHY printer helps users of all the ages and can take you through the innovative printing process. Instructions including ‘select the area for printing’ or ‘select the colour’ can help get rid of the frequently occurring problems in printing like letting the user know when either the paper or ink cartridge needs replacement.

Fast print processing & Quick start up:

The Canon SELPHY ES40 is integrated with DIGIC II processing, one of Canon’s innovative technologies that can be made use in the digital cameras for superior image quality with a quick printing of not more than 55 seconds per print and quicker start up time of approximately 8 seconds.

Creative Print mode:

The SELPHY ES40 lets you to be playful with the prints, be it personalising photographs or when you are designing creative gifts for your friends. In Creative mode, you can make use of 12 templates to produce bright and vivid calendars using your own images, add speech bubbles, stamps or clip art to photographs of your family & friends or frame the prints with arty borders. Besides, you can combine the images within a selection of six images, so that you can offer an artistic touch to your photo prints or give as a caring gift to others.

Available just at the touch of a single button, Creative Print options including ‘MyColours let you add special effects including Vivid, Sepia, Black & White and Positive Film to the prints.  The ‘Mix & Match’ effects help you personalised cards, photos and calendars. Creative Print could also help apply several numbers of stylish Image effects to all your prints which you can review before you print something. You can even-out skin tones using the Smooth Skin feature so that your photographs of relatives and friends look their best. There are filters including soft focus, faded edges and star light that subtly provide your image a high quality, unique look and feel.

Easy Photo Pack:

The ES40 Colour Photo Printer from Canon employs Easy Photo Pack feature, an all-in-one paper and ink cartridge consisting of  everything that you require to create excellent prints, whilst all reducing mess and fuss. Each top-class print can last for up to hundred years when you store in an album, the ES40 is the perfect way to creatively print and preserve your much treasured family memories for several generations to come.  When you connect the ES40 to a PC, you may get more creative content, courtesy the ‘SELPHY Photo Print’ Software that comes in conjunction with an interface that is pretty easy and simple to use.

CANON iMAGE GATEWAY:

Users of the Canon ES40 have access to the CANON iMAGE GATEWAY absolutely free. This is an online photo sharing solution and you can enjoy fabulous, new features including increased storage capacity of 2GB and this means you can upload and share hundreds of top quality images. Your friends and family can enjoy the benefits of viewing the photo albums from the mobile phones online using the latest feature of mobile browsing. Besides, users of PIXMA inkjet printers could now make, share, in addition to printing images from the photo album making use of the latest PIXMA Album Printing feature. The ideal website for sharing memorable and high-quality videos and photos with friends and family is the CANON iMAGE GATEWAY.

Free automatic correction software:

An integrated Auto Image Optimise technology is ideal to use in the home photo lab because it can automatically correct photos and images making use of red-eye removal, noise reduction, colour correction and face brightness for naturally stunning images.

Print Speed:

Canon does boast printing photo of postcard sizes in less than a minute, but we found on average, the Canon ES40 consumes just more than a minute for printing a borderless 4 x 6 colour print. Adding decorations or effects does not tend to slow down the print times of Selphy ES40 from what we can describe and neither did printing of multiple photographs.

Printing Quality:

We found the photo print quality on the Canon ES40 Digital Photo Printer reasonably good. The images are sharp and the colours are bright, though there is some fuzziness when it comes to out of focus and high contrast areas which are common in dye sublimation printers. In general, you may find that this printer gives photo lab quality images nearly all the time. As we mentioned with the users of the CP790, they should ensure that they check the size of the image before printing from your computer. More often than not, if you are not printing the original image or photo captured from a digital camera, somewhere down the way, the size of the image is perhaps reduced. The photo may seem completely normal if you view it on a computer monitor, although it would come out pixilated or fuzzy. When you are using a memory card that you had taken from the PictBridge function or digital camera, users should not find much pixilated images.

Ink tests:

The Canon Selphy ES40 makes use of Easy Photo Pack that blends ink and photo paper in a single easy to insert print cartridge. Every photo pack provides an accurate number of images, therefore there was not a lot to test in this regard. The manufacturer sells two different types of paper sizes namely the 2.1” x 3.4” card size or 4” x 6” postcard size. It does appear to be pricey when you could otherwise get bulk photographs for cheaper rates at many photo labs. Nonetheless, as we pointed out that with the CP790, there is the convenience of capturing a photo, then editing it and immediately printing with the Canon Selphy ES40. You may also add a lot of innovative and creative features for free that will lead to additional costs at photo labs.

Energy consumption:

The ES40 Compact Size Photo Printer makes use of nearly 10 W of energy at the time of its brief warm up and then in the ready mode, it only consumes about 2 W of energy. When we are printing, the Canon Selphy ES40 only consumes a reasonable amount of energy as it makes use of heat for transferring the ink to the special photo while it is reproducing 16.8 million colours. The energy consumed during the heat transfer is 55 W, but generally hovers between 35 W and 45 W during the process of printing. Once you are done with the printing, the ES40 printer’s energy consumption is reduced to 2 W. The Selphy ES40 is automatically turned off when the printer is not in use and this may save you additional power.

Accessories:

Some of the accessories that you get alongside the product include built-in AC adapter and a BU-30 Bluetooth unit that helps you in printing from compatible PDAs & camera phones.

Prices & Availability:

The Selphy ES40 is available on the market online for about £170 and there are several places online where you may get this photo printer with the average price range of £150 to £165. There are Easy Photo Packs available in the form of 50 sheet and 100 sheet postcard size.

Manufacturer warranty:

The Canon SELPHY ES40 is covered under a 3 year warranty in the UK which commences from the original date of purchase.

Verdict:

The Canon SELPHY ES40 is an easy to use, fun and dedicated photo printer which offers users the instant gratification of printing 4×6 size photo only minutes after you have taken the photo, courtesy its new voice guided feature. Using the ES40 is simple enough that even a child can dabble at it. The only downside to the printer is the cost per print which is on the higher side when purchasing the smaller photo pack. We would rather suggest that you go for the larger photo pack so as to bring about the cost per print down to an extent. Apart from this, the Selphy ES40 is a simple and fast way for getting creative or simple prints at any time and a great feature laden family printer.

Canon Selphy ES40 Portable Photo Printer – Technical Specification Table

But first a look at the highs and lows of the Canon PIXMA iP4850

Positives:

• Excellent quality for both documents as well as photos
• Lightweight, compact, solidly built and meticulously put together
• Good print speeds with superior precision
• Rear tray paper feeders & Dual full-sized A4 cassette
• Direct & Auto duplex printing onto DVDs & CDs

Negatives:

• No Ethernet connectivity or Wi-Fi
• Running costs – bit higher than some of Canon’s previous models including the iP4500
• Short of all-in-one extras such as scanner, copier, etc
• No major advancements over the Pixma iP4700
• No memory card slots, therefore direct printing is only through the PictBridge interface

Design features:

The Canon PIXMA iP4850 Colour Photo Printer (product code: iP4850) is perfect for pleasure or work. This photo inkjet printer is an absolute beauty – a black printer built with a smart silver lining and comes as an excellent option if fuss-free good quality and stylish printing is what you are after. The Canon Pixma iP4850 is built with more or less the same printing specifications like the Canon MG5250 multifunction, but is short of copying and scanning like the built-in colour screen that will for sure keep costs down. The machine is much cheaper too, carrying a price tag of around £99. It obviously is one of the cheapest printers from Canon designed with a 1-picolitre print head that gives you nice detail for both grayscale and colour prints.  Physically identical to the iP4700, it has a glossy finish and same low profile and coming to the printing, there is not much difference between the two with only minor changes under the hood.

Performance:

Five-colour ink system:

The Canon iP4850 Photo Printer is built with a five-colour ink system which can take five different ink cartridges and this has been exclusively designed for the latest range of Pixma printers. The print head comes as a separate unit and can be replaced if required. The ink consists of dye-based black ideal for photo printing, pigment black made use of for only plain paper printing and the regular dye-based magenta, cyan and yellow inks suitable for both plain paper documents and photos. The difference in print quality is therefore hardly noticeable with the same perfect sharp detail and colour tones in photographs and diagrams. We found the text blemish-free and bold and the iP4850 can print double-sided and directly onto optical discs with the tray supplied by the manufacturer.

Print quality:

Photo printing and full quality do not seem to suffer though. The PIXMA iP4850 Colour Inkjet Printer can produce nice image detail in its well-saturated and rich photo prints, with very few perceptible flaws. We did observe a little amount of detail loss in certain yellow print areas.  It is able to manage Greyscale prints with not a great deal of graininess noticeable on gradient and excellent detail in darker printer areas. The pigmented black ink can give solid-looking, dark lettering; on the other hand the illustrated business documents featured rich colours. The photos seem to be brilliantly coloured with clear black and whites. The default settings can give a bit of over-saturation, but found the effect both attractive and simple to change if you do not like it. The only downside is that there was some discernable dithering on certain areas of subtle shading.

Print cost in Pixma iP4850:

All the ink cartridges are available online at a price little under £12, though these are pre-releases prices. The print cost of 3.5p per mono page, 6.9p per colour page and 10.4p per mixed-colour page is likely expected in future. Not to mention that the pigmented black pages at this time seems to cost more than we had expected. We also found that 6x4in photo costs 32p and 52p on Canon Photo Paper Plus and Canon Photo Paper Pro II respectively.

The running cost of the PIXMA iP4850 is quite reasonable in terms of the manufacturer’s quoted print figures. But take into consideration, the actual number of photos you plan to print as these figures is a measure of the rated page yield when it comes to monochrome and text documents. Photo printing consumes a lot of ink, therefore you will need to replace the print cartridges soon after a period of use. You will be able to purchase a complete set of ink for approximately £40 at the manufacturer’s recommended retail price, though some online stores offer them at much cheaper prices.

Print speeds:

There have been some obvious improvements that Canon has made over its predecessors when it comes to print speeds such as the mono text sped of 9.7ppm and draft speed of 13.8ppm which is appreciable. It just took under a minute to print a full quality 6”x4” photos and 4 minutes is what it took for a ten-sided draft colour duplex print. Having said this, the speed enhancements to draft printing has led to a slight slump in quality. The mono text seems to be slightly jagged and looks a bit grey, however no problems as such was observed in its legibility, though the draft colour looks quite washed out and the small fonts are speckled and jagged. We also instantly noted a significant upgrade in its document speed. All the previous models that measured rates of 5.8ppm in colour and 8.8ppm in mono have been increased to 6.1ppm and 10.5ppm respectively. With the exception of this, it is more of the same with the A4 photomontage still taking 1min 38seconds.

No scanning/copying functions:

The Canon PIXMA iP4850 Inkjet Photo Printer does not come with a flatbed scanner for scanning documents or copying them either. It is short of an LCD colour screen and the photo printer does not have any memory card slots for printing directly. This in particular is a bit of a concern with the claims of the PIXMA iP4850 as a photo printer and it would have been a handy inclusion. However, the iP4850 is PictBridge-compatible and this means you can connect the camera directly for printing that way. You need to know a bit about the printing interface of your camera and do have the cable close at hand too.

Paper handling:

Paper handling for the PIXMA iP4850 is offered by a 150-sheet cassette and 150-sheet rear tray.  When you load the paper tray through the rear tray, the PIXMA iP4850 has the ability to print on both sides and this is a useful feature to have if you need to cut down on paper costs. Generally, 20 sheets of photo paper (6x4in or A4) can be loaded at once. The PIXMA iP4850 defaults to photo paper in the tray and plain paper in the cassette, but the maintenance setting of the printer software helps you to change this in no time. You will have no trouble setting up the PIXMA iP4850 and its software and this may take only about 10 minutes. The printer comes with two USB ports. The PC can be connected via the rear connector whilst the front could manage PictBridge.

The upright feeder comes in pretty useful when you are loading the photo paper and this means you do not have to swap paper every time when switching between photo printing and document. A few printer models including the Epson PX720WD and HP Photosmart Plus come with a separate photo tray, but you only get a photo tray of postcard size which is of no good when it comes to A4 photo printing.

On many older models of Canon, there is a paper feed switch you may find on the front of the printer, but Canon has done away with this on the Pixma iP4850. This actually can help avoid slight confusion because the printer driver can override the paper feed switch anyway. There is an automatic option that helps choose the rear tray for printing photo and lower cassette for printing document, though this could be overruled in Printer Properties.

Advanced Media Handling:

With the two-way paper feeding allowing one to load several paper types at the same time, the PIXMA iP4850 gives you real versatility enabling you to print directly onto compatible Blu-ray discs, CD-ROMs and DVDs. You can easily print documents on double sides of the paper with the help of the Auto Duplex feature.

Software & tools:

One feature that gives the Canon a cut above the rest is the accompanying software and tools. The iP4850 makes use of new CLI-526 and PGI-525 inks, but of course the advantage does not really lie in its extra capacity, rather the tanks are chipped and users utilizing a complete set of Canon inks can have full access to ‘Creative Park Premium’ – an addition to Canon’s existing art and creativeness website.

Creative Park Premium:

This is an online service that allows you to download illustration and photos from world-renowned artists and photographers including the likes of Beatrix Potter and Norman Rockwell, et al. You can use the images freely and the website allows you to convert into professional looking greeting cards, calendars, prints and other creations. It comes as a neat bonus though it is a must-have feature. Note that the access is available only with machines installed with Canon genuine inks.

Full HD Movie Print:

If the ‘Creative Park Premium’ does not seem to excite you, the other recent addition in PIXMA iP4850 is the Full HD Movie Print which enables you to capture memories by transforming your digital camera movie moments of Canon into lovely prints using the Full HD Movie Print. Just play your movie with this software and pause for capturing a frames or frames for printing. Advanced and new Canon technologies improve the photo quality of the image produced, which you may never conceived possible from a movie. If you have a PowerShot or Canon EOS camera that can record HD video, this function can capture a still from any scene, improves and prints it as an excellent quality photo. Barely a mainstream aspect and it is a shame that not much video types are supported, but yes the appeal can be seen.

Easy-WebPrint EX- Intelligent software:

Easy-WebPrint allows you to easily and quickly clip and combine formation from multiple numbers of web pages. Auto Photo Fix helps optimise your photos with correction including removal of red eye. The Easy-PhotoPrint EX helps in creating easy layouts for printing calendars, photos and features a Flickr search function for finding suitable images that are publicly available.

Dimensions:

Weighing 5.7kg, the iP4850 is relatively compact at 431mm (W) x 297mm (D) x 153mm (H). Like most printers, there is an increase in the overall depth once you extend the input and output trays completely, but to a space-friendly 550mm in this case.

Manufacturer warranty:

The product is covered under a manufacturer’s warranty period of 1 year from the original purchase date.

Verdict:

Launched earlier this year, the quality of the Pixma iP4850 is more than enough for printing documents everyday. There is the high quality mode that makes colours slightly vibrant if you want the best. But that is it. Same PictBridge port, USB interface, two paper trays with running cost above average. To be honest, there is nothing at all available to lure owners or users of the iP4700 to upgrade. Said this, the speed enhancements and several additional features add to the performance of this reliable single-function document and photo printer. You do not get a USB cable which comes as a disappointment to some people, but we thought it is sensible because why do you need a new cable with every machine once you have one. And do not get startled if you do not find one in the box!

Canon PIXMA iP4850 Colour Photo Printer – Technical Specification Details

Performance features:

The Fujifilm MP100 Mobile Photo Printer (Product code: MP-100) is quite perfect for adults and kids alike. The most impressive feature of this mobile photo printer is that it is really small and light with a rather stylish body. It is capable of printing really good pictures and the reason why it has been popular ever since it was first brought out into the market six years back. The photo printer had a great deal of sales success in the first year of introduction itself. So what made Fuji come out with this little piece of innovation? The steady expansion of camera phone market and the launch and rapid growth of high-spec mobile phone models with image resolution of 1 megapixel or more have created a lot of demand for printing images taken with camera mobile phones.

New concept printer:

The MP-100 Compact Size Photo Printer is indeed an innovative concept printer, designed exclusively for use with mobile camera phones. Besides, giving you superb quality prints, it is really easy to use and is built with the ease of infrared transmission (the details of which will be discussed later in another section in the review). It is not quite in the same league as that of other home photo printers (including inkjet photo printers) or various retail print solutions and this has created an innovative market segment of ‘anytime, any place printing’ for camera mobiles.

Infrared transmission:

The MP-100 makes use of infrared transmission by which you get real images from your camera phone anywhere, anytime. This is made possible by the built-in infrared interface and has no media link up or cable connection. The operation is easy; simply press the MP-100’s ‘POWER’ button, choose the image data that you have to print and send it through infrared from your camera mobile phone to the device (printer). Therefore as long as your phone features infra red, you simply have to align the infra red ports, then push the button and the printer starts to print images.

High speed printing:

The MP-100 film packs are available in two 10 shot cassettes. This digital photo pack gives you high speed printing in about 21 seconds after image data transmission is done and that is really fast with very low energy consumptions. The print speed for taking a colour print out of size 54 mm x 86 mm is up to 0.35 min/page with a maximum resolution (colour) of 254 dpi. The total media capacity is 10 sheets. The printer just run on batteries, therefore it is really portable. You can get roughly 130 prints out of two CR2 lithium batteries. You need not have to charge batteries either. Besides, you can install Fujifilm’s Image Intelligence, a new technique of image-processing software made use in Fuji’s Frontier digital minilabs. This software could offer automatic exposure compensation and automatically corrects under/over exposed images or photos. The picture starts to appear in or about 10 seconds after print processing at 25 degrees. What is more, you can enjoy the prints instantly from your camera mobile phone.

Other features:

Measuring 12.7cm (W) x 9.8 cm (D) x 3 cm (H), the mobile photo printer weighs only 205g (photo pack and batteries not included). You will have no trouble fitting the printer in a handbag or pouch. We were impressed with the exposure system that allows exposure and printing to be carried out simultaneously with the help of a fixed LCD shutter.

Manufacturer warranty:

The Fujifilm MP-100 Digital Printer comes with a manufacturer’s warranty of 1 year from the original date of purchase.

Verdict:

The mobile photo printer on testing produced real sharp images and the pictures are a perfect size to fit into your purse or wallet. We thought it could have been marketed even better by the phone companies world wide as commercially it does not seem to be too popular in spite of its powerful performance and superb value.

Fujifilm MP-100 Wireless Photo Printer – Technical Specification Table

Product features:

At first sight, the Kodak ESP 3250 All-in-One Photo Printer looks as if it is 3,247 model numbers, a shy away from the Kodak ESP 3, but one would be better thinking of the ESP 3250 like an ESP 3.250. It is a small facelift and cost hike on the brand’s entry level multifunction one. Built on the lines of the ESP 3, the new machine comes with a quite similar, all black case with a rather odd concave front panel and flat, frosted top surface.  There is a simple control panel that is set into a panel you can find to the right of the flatbed scanner. The control panel is built with a useful 38mm LCD screen, the major aspect distinguishing the Kodak ESP 3250 from its inexpensive sibling. While the 1.5-inch LCD is comparatively small, the ESP 3250 carefully highlights the menu item that you have selected in the form of bright-red band of colour. The price of the machine up-front is pretty low and you will not be hit that hard each time when  you have to replace the ink cartridges, because they provide an economical price per-page for an inkjet-based machine. While, in contrast, the ESP 3250  is one of the slowest models that we have tested in recent times and you will not get such features like  a big LCD screen, Wi-Fi connectivity, multiple paper-intake slots or fax capabilities. The little footprint 422 mm (W) × 300 mm (D) × 175 (H) mm (16.6” × 11.8” × 6.9”) makes it a lot more simple for positioning the machine nearby, which certainly is a nice thing as the lone connection option is a USB connector cable.

Display features:

The LCD display is angled right into the top face of the printer. This means you will have no real trouble reading it from fairly a wide angle, although you are not seated beside the printer model. You can also find a slot in the front face of the machine directly in line with the control panel, which takes MemoryStick and SD, though not xD cards. Therefore you will need an adaptor, if you like to make use of it for printing pictures from the Fujifilm media. Furthermore, the printer is short of dedicated copy, print and scan control buttons. You will have to choose the appropriate functions from the control menus with the help of cursor movements. On testing, we found that the cursor buttons feature a fine, perceptible feel and the control array of 10-button control is well-labelled and logically positioned. Generally speaking, besides the tiny LCD, the printer is rather well-built and simple to navigate.

Using the ESP 3250:

Before you could use the machine, you should load it with paper and one may find the feed and output trays function in the same way as the HP does. Just fold down the front panel’s centre section and it turns out to be paper tray, into which the photo or plain paper can be loaded from 15 x 10cm up to A4 sizes. The pages are then fed into the printer, making a 180-degree turn before you feed out to lie flat on the top of the device’s input paper stack. There is an extending paper support that could stop pages falling to the desk.

Connectivity:

There is a single USB socket at the back of the printer and it is the only means of transferring the data to the Kodak ESP 3250 Multifunction Inkjet Printer. You will find a low-voltage socket meant for the black-block power supply which surprisingly has a short mains lead.

Ink cartridge compatibility:

Like all of the Kodak’s multifunction printers, this model too makes use of a simple, but well-designed print engine, where the print head is built into the machine and itself holds twin ink cartridges, in contrast to being embedded into each cartridge. There are three cartridges, the first of which is the pigmented black-ink that is followed by a 4 colour cartridge including a black that is meant for photos. Having a special black cartridge can prove useful as it will save some bucks if you are someone who does more of text printing. The dye-based cartridge is useful for photo printing and graphics. The feature is a big plus as their cartridges cost much less than those sold by other printer brands. On the other hand, having a single cartridge built with all the colour inks will cost you some extra bucks if you print in one colour for the most part. For example, if you use much of blue for photographs of the water or sky, you need to replace the complete cartridge, though considerable quantities of other unused or less used colours remain in the printer cartridge.

Easy to maintain:

The Kodak ESP 3250 Printer, Copier & Scanner machine is quite simple to maintain and the simplicity has enabled the brand keep the consumable costs reasonably down, something that has now made its unique selling point for the complete multifunction printer range. Once you clip the ink cartridges into place, the printer makes an automatic, one-off calibration print which is when it is ready for you to use.

Print speed of ESP 3250:

For many users, speed is not everything. The manufacturer claims quite silly speed for all multi-function printers, especially if you print in normal mode than draft mode. The machine top speed is said to be 29ppm for colour pages and 30ppm for black pages, but our 5-page text only took about 1:06, a print speed of 4.54ppm and the equivalent graphics document or five-page text took about 1:42, or a print speed of 2.94ppm. We found the 20-page black text print had the fastest print of the lot at a speed of 5.11ppm. With a mixed text-and-graphics document of 10 pages in ‘Best’ mode, the Kodak ESP 3250 came in at 7 minutes and 46 seconds, which is about 1 minute slower than the Photosmart C4780 and 3 minutes slower than the Impact S305.  The photo-printing speeds were a bit more competitive. Printing an 8.5” x11” test image onto the Kodak photo paper with the auto setting (the only option) took 2 minutes and 22 seconds and this is double the time taken by HP Photosmart Plus and about 30 seconds comparatively slower than the Epson Stylus NX515. These speeds are not bad by any standards for a photo printer that costs under £100; therefore it is a shame that Kodak has to overdo the facts with these seemingly unrealistic claims.

Print cost:

The manufacturer claims to save you an average of £75 per year, compared to its main rivals. This average was calculated based on account differences in usage and does not need you to be printing reams of paper daily. The calculations also showed improvements in costs. With the cheapest prices, we can find for the two cartridges, the Kodak ESP 3250 provides costs of 5.46p for colour, 2.65p for an ISO black page and 0.7p for paper. Just compare the ESP 3250 to the likes of Canon PIXMA MP540, the HP OfficeJet 6500 and the Epson Stylus SX415, you will find that the relative page costs range from over double as much as the Kodak ESP 3250, to around 15% less. Though one can claim the HP Office Jet Pro 6500 is cheaper to run, it is considerably pricier to buy. Therefore, Kodak justifies its claim that it runs its machines much cheaper than some of its competition.

Paper capacity:

Another sign of the Kodak ESP 3250’s cheap price factor is its single paper-intake tray as the printer tray holds 20 envelopes, 20 sheets of photo paper or 100 sheets of plain paper. You may see that the printed paper ejects on the top of the machine’s paper-intake tray concealing the remaining sheets left in the paper-intake tray from your view. The arrangement does not seem to get in the way of the paper coming in and out of the machine, however and seemingly, the shared space will help make the ESP 3250 printer more nice and compact. Disappointingly, if you fail to keep this printer level, the paper that is ejected could well fall onto the floor. The paper-intake tray is short of suitable side supports to guide the paper as it comes out, therefore if the machine is sloped to the right, left or forward, a page could rarely fall in that direction.

The Kodak ESP 3250 can take paper sizes of up to 8.5″x14″. The instruction manual tells that you should not attempt to make use of paper of size smaller than 4”x6”. The printer could auto-detect plain paper, transparencies and photo paper, no matter what the brand is. The brand’s photo paper comes with a bar code found on the back that will allow the machine to adjust the printer settings automatically for that particular sort of photo paper.

Setting up the printer:

Setting up the Kodak ESP 3250 All-in-One printer is fast and trouble-free, in part as there is no Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to bother with. The printer model is not shipped with a USB connector cable, so you will be required to supply USB connector cable (Type B) having a square-with-rounded-top, on one end and the much regular Type A USB connector on the other end. Kodak allows you to download a set-up instruction video whilst the CD can install the drivers and software. You can also find a link in the instruction manual if you have to download the CD contents straight to your PC, which will be useful if your computer system lacks a CD drive. We also found the 2 ink cartridges differently sized and clearly labelled.  We got a little black ink on the fingers when we were installing the printer cartridges, therefore keep your fingers at a distance from the ink openings that you may find at the bottom of the cartridges.

Kodak Home Centre:

The Kodak Home Center software that comes with the printer offers Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and photo editing capabilities. On Windows, this software is a totally integrated solution which helps you to set your own defaults for the machine, run maintenance utilities, receive help and also functions as a launchpad for the scanning and printing tasks with easy walkthroughs of basic printing, scanning and/or photo-retouching functions. If you are a Mac user, the Kodak Home Centre will let you change settings, set defaults, get help but does not incorporate direct access to printing or scanning. Instead it is nicely integrated into the OSX itself. Just for an example, you could initiate and control a scan from within the Image capture or Preview or any other scanner-aware application.

Copying & scanning functions:

The AIO’s scanning and copying functions were quite straightforward, as you get several options to select amongst other than the basics. One also gets the option to choose the paper size, plain-paper quality, copy size and brightness for photo copies. The Kodak ESP 3250 is built with the capability to automatically detect the photo paper and select the best quality printer setting, if you select to copy your photograph to photo paper. When you are scanning, you can select white, black, colour or gray scale, in addition to the scan resolution with up to 1200dpi (dots per inch) and 24-bit colour. Kodak brings you a reasonable choice of file formats for all your scanned photos and documents. There is no option as such if you want to auto-load the scanned file into a particular application; however you can select the folder where you can save all the scanned files.

Copy & scan time:

The copy and scan times were quite sluggish. The ESP 3250 could copy a one-page monochrome text document in about 25 seconds, which is a little slower than the Impact S305, but almost double the Photosmart C4780. We were able to scan a text document with the ESP 3250 compared to 16 seconds with the Photosmart C4780 and 18 seconds with the Impact S305 printer.

Noise level:

The ESP 3250 is about average in producing noise when you are printing and it did not shake excessively. Because the printer has the ability to automatically detect the Kodak- photo paper, we found it a little disconcerting to not have any options for print-quality available with that paper. Kodak is of the claim that the print quality was optimized for its very own photo paper and correctly points out that a few users would like to make use of draft mode with high priced photo paper. In our tests, we had photo paper and plain paper alike jam in the machine occasionally. If that occurs, you will have no trouble removing the paper that is jammed inside.

Print quality:

On testing the machine, we found that it took 1:08 for a 15cm x 10cm print and 58 seconds from an SD card. These are really good speeds for photo prints and the resultant images are also without any scratches. There is a plenty of detail in the images and the colours are natural too, if a bit dark in areas of shadow. We found one of the images showing some slight banding. Said this they were better than adequate, so no problem here. The same thing goes for graphics on plain paper, although you can see some signs of under-taking in certain areas of solid colour, therefore the paper fibres showed through to create a little speckling. We were pretty satisfied with the colour copy from the 1,200ppi flat-bed, although the orange and yellow shades seemed a little muddy. The black is appreciably clean, though we saw a couple of places where there was a slight print displacement from one pass to the subsequent one. While the printed text was nicely formed and legible even when reduced to 3 points in size, it was apparently lower than with competing inkjet printers. Our 10-page text-and-graphics document had embedded graphics looking too light with the colours less than accurate. Flesh tones seem to tend toward yellow; however the pixels in the graphics were accurately placed without obvious distortion. The graphics in the copied documents showed similar characteristics.

The Kodak ESP 3250 did much better when printing photos to photo paper. The colours were quite accurate with nicely balanced blacks and whites. In addition, the contrast was not much heavy as is at times the case with photos printed on an AIO. A big advantage for the photo is the longevity of the printer inks. As estimated by the Wilhelm Imaging Research, the pigment inks made use in the Kodak ESP printers should withstand fading for 120 years or more, if you store the photos in an album or away from direct light.

Package Contents:

KODAK ESP 3250 All-in-One Printer, KODAK Colour Ink Cartridge, KODAK Black Ink Cartridge, Adapter cord, Paper Sample Pack, Power supply, User Guide, Startup Guide and KODAK All-in-One Printer Software

Warranty Information:

The Printer, Printhead and Ink Cartridges are covered under a warranty of one year from the purchase date or 13 months from the manufacturing date against defects in workmanship, materials or packaging. To make claims under their comparable product replacement program, you may be asked to furnish proof of purchase details.

Bottom-line:

The photo printer fails to support some memory cards, but if you need or want more bells and whistles like a dedicated photo tray or an automatic duplexer, we are afraid, you will have to go up to ESP 7 from the makes of Kodak. Besides its modest buy, the Kodak ESP 3250 will not burn a hole in your pocket when it comes to replacing cartridges. They just cost a little around £11.99 for the colour cartridge and £6.99 for the black cartridge. The printer is shipped with a complete suite of full-capacity cartridge. Additionally, the page yields out of the printer cartridges for monochrome and mixed text & graphics indicate an excellent value. The results are exceptionally good, especially for an entry level AIO model. If you are on a stringent budget and the price of your inkjet printer’s consumables is a big concern, the ESP 3250 is an excellent choice, as long as you tolerate its dearth of high-end specifications and tolerate its slower speeds. The Kodak ESP 3250 copy and print quality can be much better with plain paper, therefore go for a better model if that is a bit of bother to you. Whereas, the quality of print is great, when compared to the long-lasting, inexpensive Kodak inks, the printer model comes as a decent option where both cost savings and photo quality are both imperative.

Kodak ESP 3250 Photo Printer – Technical Specification Table

• Faster speeds for office documents (13 ppm in black & white) & for photos (32 sec for a 10×15)
• Good print quality for photos, office docs
• Lower energy consumption level: 17.5 W (printing), 1.6 W (on standby)
• Excellent photo print quality with invisible drops
• Wi-fi plus double-sided printing

Minuses:

• No fax & touch screen
• Greater costs per page than on 4 cartridge models
• Not really convincing Creative Park software & Full HD Movie
• No Linux drivers

Continue reading to know more about the PIXMA MG6150 Inkjet Photo Printer from Canon in the upcoming review.

The Canon PIXMA MG6150 Inkjet Photo Printer is the higher end Canon 2011 general consumer printer model. The control buttons that earlier decked the MP640 have been fully replaced by touch sensitive backlit buttons. The next major difference is that the printer employs a total of six different cartridges. Besides, the 4 standard cartridges (black, magenta, cyan, yellow), you will also come across a second black photo cartridge that can provide you the black in truly black images and there is also a grey cartridge that will perfect the greys in, for instance black and white photos. The pricing too is more accessible as the printer is sold at less than £150 and comprises most of the features that you will find on the MP990 rolled out at a price of £250 at the end of the year 2009.

Hardware:

The unique feature of this Canon MG6150 Inkjet Printer is its browsing system which is quite similar to the likes of the Samsung SCX-4500W laser printer, an array of touch buttons that are built into the hood and now you have a smaller screen (7.5 cm). Depending upon the use, you have chosen like the Copier, Scanner, you will find that only the control buttons being used for this function illuminate. For fewer models like copy, though, the screen is quite loaded with info. Though it is not the most intuitive of methods, it does give you a pretty honed down and good-looking aspect to the device. The glossy black does add a bit of class to the overall look of the printer. But make sure you have a rag with you to wipe off finger marks and dirt that may obviously get picked up. You could only speculate why Canon did not go all along the touch route. We guess why Cannon would not have provided this printer a large touch screen? When you originally start in on, you automatically try to pick options on-screen instead of looking out to the backlit control buttons on the hood. Like the Canon MP990 printer, the Canon PIXMA MG6150 Multifunction Inkjet Printer lets you to print on DVD/Blu-ray and CD. Do remember that this feature is not found in some countries.

As an addition to their latest ‘Intelligent touch system’, several other types of software are believed to offer added value, especially those which makes use of the ‘Premium’ cartridges (the Canon can make cartridges than compatible ones from other manufacturers). Take for instance, the Full HD Movie function that helps you to print photos from digital video. You have to install the software provided by Canon so as to do this. Customers who buy genuine Canon inks for their Canon MG6150 can get access to a special area of the Creative Park website – ‘Creative Park Premium’. Here you receive access to the premium artistic content like professional photography and illustrations which under normal circumstances will be right protected. You can depend on the Creative Park tool that will give you illustrations to make your calendars, gift cards and scrapbooks. This seems to be of very less interest to us. We are not quite convinced either by looks, pertinence and modernity of the printer models.

Neat & Tidy:

You will have no trouble pushing the device right against the wall as both the USB port and power cable are recessed inside the smart, compact printer body. This can help save some precious space, keeping everything nice and tidy.

Fast speeds:

When you compare the speeds on the Pixma MP990, the print speeds of the Canon PIXMA MG6150 printer are among the maximum measured for an all-in-one printer model. A notch up on the fabulous MP640, they beat some of the other models tested like the Brother MFC-795CW which gives an average of 4 ppm. The quality of photos is actually very good. The images are more neutral than the Canon MP640. It gets 5-star rating for it. Coming to black and white, the combo of the exclusive photo black and grey cartridge makes a world of difference and offers good contrast too.

Scanner & copier:

We found the technical specifications are almost identical like the MP990 with the exception of the scanner which is a CIS type as opposed to CCD, an indication of a more cost-effective scanner. The MG6150 Inkjet Photo Printer lacks the slide scanning module that one may get with the pro printer models. The scanner cracks all the speed records with just 4 seconds for a 75 ppp scan, 6 seconds for preview and 6 sec for 300 ppp. The scanner native resolution (which is 4800 ppp) offers superior scanning and despite the actual colour difference of 5.7%, we found the results quite compelling. The colours are pretty accurate, notwithstanding the slight lightening of light tones; however the detail is nicely rendered with no particular accentuation. Said this, you can note still a little smoothing of traits meaning a slight loss of detail. All said and done, this is something that nearly all the models really suffer from.  Coming to the copies, the printer can take approximately 14 sec for black & white and about 18 sec for colour.
Noise & Energy consumption levels:

The MG6150 All-in-One printer can quickly go into the standby mode. In this mode, it consumes17.5 W when it is printing and the noise level can go up to 45 dB. Therefore, for the most part, it is a relatively low energy and quiet motor.

Cost per page:

The average price is estimated on a basis of 120 photo prints of 8.6 pence per page and this is more than the 7.6 pence on its predecessors MP640 & MX870 and analogous to the 8.66 pence on the Canon MP990.

Special Features:

So far we have seen the hardware aspects, performance, energy consumption levels, cost (per page) and noise levels of the MG6150 in detail, now let us have a closer look at some of the unique features of the printer one by one starting with the Intelligent Touch System.

Intelligent Touch System:

We have already seen a bit of this feature earlier in the review, the Intelligent Touch System gives you superb photolab quality printing. A separate grey ink that produces excellent greyscale and colour prints in conjunction with its stunning design and unique functionality make this a premium photo printer for your office and home needs. The MG6150 is ready to use right out of the box and you will always get the best possible results, be it printing, scanning or copying.

Light-guided touch panel for intuitive operation:

The unique Intelligent Touch System makes operation very simple. All controls are built into the lid of the printer, giving a much larger operational panel and leaving the 7.5cm TFT display free for viewing. You can operate the controls by touching rather than pressing down and this touch operation gives you a fast response to your inputs. The clever bit though is the intuitive light guided operation. Supposing, you select the photo print function, you can find that only the controls relating to that function will light up and all other buttons remain barely visible in the glossy back lid.  At each successive step, only the controls that will assist your photo printing will light up, helping you through the process to print easily and quickly.

6 Single Ink System:

The PIXMA MG6150 printer can deliver a maximum print resolution of 9600 x 2400dpi. Thanks to the tiny 1pl ink droplets from Canon’s FINE print engine that helps create grain free, smooth images. Canon’s 6 Single Ink System (namely PGI-525PGBK, CLI-526C, CLI-526BK, CLI-526Y, CLI-526M, CLI-526GY) has two blacks, one that could print clear laser sharp text, the other for images to provide strong saturated blacks and there is a unique grey for superb monochrome printing. The document speeds are pretty useful at 9.3 IPM (Images Per Minute) in colour or 12.5 IPM in black & white. You can get a borderless 10x15cm photo-lab high quality print delivered in about 20 seconds. The printer comes with two-way paper feeding that allows you to load different types of paper, all at the same time for printing your documents or photos easily. You will have no trouble of even printing directly onto the CD to help personalise your music or archive data for example. Furthermore, using the PictBridge connection, you can easily print your favourite moments without a PC straight from a device or USB flash memory for easy and fast photos. With the help of the 6 separate ink tanks, you can replace an ink cartridge when it runs out, thereby optimising ink usage by reducing waste. In combination with Duplex Printing, this feature will help you print on both sides of paper. This means you can save some money, reduce paper utilization and help our environment in the process, all these without compromising on the print quality.

Full HD Movie Print:

Printing a photo with the Canon Full HD Movie Print could not be easier. This feature is useful for producing individual photos of superior quality from your favourite HD home movie moments. You simply have to select a frame from your movie with the intuitive Easy-PhotoPrint software and print. As you go about doing this, the frame enhancement technology would automatically analyse the frame either side, blending the best from each to make sure that both the resolution and lightning are as good as they could be in your final photograph.

Built in wireless connection:

The PIXMA MG6150 is built with a fast 150 Mbps built-in wireless connection and this means multiple people can print to it, wherever they are at home, whenever they want without any hassle, even if it is stored out of notice. The photos and documents can be printed directly from your iPod touch, iPhone or iPad just by downloading the Canon EasyPhoto Print App from the AppStore that links directly to the printer via Wi-Fi. On the other hand, if you have a PS3, you can also view and print photos from your widescreen television. Now if you have an Android device, you can even remotely print images via           Wi-Fi. With the help of Ethernet connection, you can easily connect the printer via Wi-Fi to a home or office network for the PIXMA quality to be shared by everyone.

Available software:

Automatic correction:
The Auto Photo Fix II can automatically analyse and correct the images at the printer, eliminating any red-eye and making some adjustments to make up for the photographer, camera or lightning limitations, based on the Canon’s leading camera technology. The lightning conditions will be automatically recognised when you take the photo and will brighten faces (as an example) that are underexposed and backlit to ensure more precise skin tones or do away with any colour to produce true, clear colour photos. And the result, you get perfect prints without the assistance of a computer.

Automatic enhancement:
If you think intelligent auto-correction stops with your photos, well it actually doesn’t. Your printer can improve text, graphics and images in scanned documents and make them clearer, impactful and more vivid.

Easy-PhotoPrint EX:
Easy-PhotoPrint EX is exclusive to Canon and is the easiest and fastest way to re-touch all your digital photos and print them in your choice of size and layouts either from Adobe Photoshop with the Easy-PhotoPrint EX plug-in provided or within the software. There is a Correct and Enhance button that does advanced photo correction and enhancement with the simple interface. Some of the available lab-quality re-touching features include red eye correction, face brightener, smooth facial lines & skin tone, blemish remover and face sharpener. With the intuitive on-screen display, you can choose to print your selection in whatever format you want from calendars to normal photos. The software also comes with a direct link to Flickr, using which you can make a search and download images that are publicly available to supplement your own. You can also access the Full movie print function through the Easy-PhotoPrint that helps you capture your home movie moments of your choice on photo-lab quality stills.

Easy-WebPrint software:
The Easy-WebPrint software gives you a wide range of options that help you with the information you want to print from the web, thereby avoiding wastage of paper. These comprise Auto Clipping that can print only a particular area of a web page you need and not all advertisements you don’t. Another feature ‘Clip from Multiple pages’ lets you gather, combine and edit content from multiple pages from the web before you print them. You can also collate this information to develop easy to print multiple page booklets or minimise the size of the whole web page to make it fit onto a single piece of paper.

Solutions Menu EX:
Solutions Menu EX is a useful software which gives you easy access to some of the advanced features of the printer. You may find the functions in each category presented in simple, recognisable pictorial icons and you can also tailor your desktop in order to quickly access the functions when you want.

Canon ChromaLife100+ system:
The Canon PIXMA MG6150 comes with another interesting software namely the Canon ChromaLife100+ system which helps you keep your precious photos vibrant and bright. The Canon Chromalife 100+ inks and the FINE print head technology combine with selected Canon photo papers to help you produce lovely photos that will last even up to 300 years when you store them in an archival-quality photo album. For an exceptional print resolution, you can rely on its Full-photolithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering (FINE) that makes use of a patented print head having high precision nozzles that can eject ink droplets as little as 1 picolitre in size, as smaller the ink droplet gets, the better will be the quality of the image.

What’s inside the box:

PIXMA MG6150 All-In-One, Power cord, Multilingual set up guides, Ink tanks (PGI-525PGBK, CLI-526C, CLI-526BK, CLI-526Y, CLI-526M, CLI-526GY), User’s manual CD, Set up software  & Warranty sheet.

Manufacturer Warranty:

The product is covered under a manufacturer warranty of 1 year which commences on the date of purchase of the product.

Verdict:

Canon’s all-in-ones have ruled the roost in recent years, but they have been in need of an upgrade. While we would rather prefer to see the much awaited result in a proper touch interface, the Canon’s semi-touch solution is definitely an improvement and the overall design tweaks have lent the MG6150 true consumer appeal. Said that, it is deprived of Linux drivers and lacks fax support. The MG6150 will suit those who do not mind shelling out a touch extra per print in return for greater quality. The printer seems to be fast in all modes, is double-sided and there is the Wi-Fi of course. However, we love the brand’s intelligent touch system less than we would a real touch screen.

Update:

Retail prices have started arriving and as anticipated, they are a good deal and the consensus seems to be around the £150 mark, making the price of MG6150 the same as that of MP640 and it supersedes.

Canon PIXMA MG6150 Inkjet Printer – Technical Specification Table

Model Description:

The Fuji FinePix QS-7 Photo Printer is a very small, compact printer and is manufactured in an eye-catching silver colour. We found the size just over A5 format and the printer is durable too. The printer comes with both ink and photo paper with a host of several useful features. It is relatively easy to set up and easy to use. Weighing approx. 1 kg (excluding ink cartridge/paper tray), it measures 182.3 (W) mm x 147.3 (D) mm x 67.8 (H) mm in size.

Infrared communication:

This Fujifilm QS-7 Inkjet Photo Printer makes getting those photos out of the printer a doddle. The built-in IrSimple offers you a simple and direct wireless transfer from your camera to the printer, to the web or other IrSimple-compatible devices. Just for information sake, the IrSimple has also been available with the Canon SELPHY CP770, Canon iP90, Canon ES1 and this is not as rare as we think. So how do you go about using it? Simply choose the required image in any FinePix camera that is built with IrSimple™ high-speed infrared communications, just point it at the printer and then press to send the image. It is as straight forward as operating a remote controller with the entire process consuming as little as 0.3s seconds. The photo printer has the data and could enhance the image for superb quality prints. Perhaps the best part of it is that there are no messy, troublesome cables and all you have to do is simply point and print. The printer is comparatively quiet in operation, and you have your picture ready in and about 70 seconds. It does not matter anyway even if you do not have an infrared function as you can plug a camera into it.

Printing System:

This Fuji FinePix QS-7 photo printer is a dye-sublimation photo printer (also termed ‘sublimation printer’) with over coating, built around a thermal dye engine to produce stunning results. This printer can produce colour printouts in formats from 4 cm x 6 cm to 10 cm x 18 cm (pre-cut), 10 cm x 15 cm (post-cut) and uses dye-sublimation technology to produce quality, detailed, crisp results that are as true to life as possible. This makes printing digital photos at home just as effortless as going for a professional photo developing service. We found that the printer is perfectly fine for casual snaps. The Fuji FinePix QS-7 gives you a maximum print speed (from start of paper feed to finish) of approx. 70 sec. per 4 x 6 inch/10 x 15cm print size. The maximum number of printing pixels is 300 x 300 dpi/CMY with 256 gradations/colours.

Image improvement & editing features:

You will have no trouble connecting the printer to your PC through USB and in conjunction with the software provided. The printer features superb image improvement and editing features that will help you get the best of your creations. This feature will allow you to edit the images with personal captions and dates. The software also helps you see image intelligence in action by using a before and after shot. This photo printer can receive images from Bluetooth and is also compatible with OPP profile-supported Bluretooth USB adapter. Note that the Bluetooth USB adapter is a non Fujifilm product and is sold separately. This printer cannot receive images from Wi-Fi and this is a big let down.

Image Intelligence for Automatic Edit:

The Fujifilm’s ‘Image Intelligence’ digital processing technology inside the printer will make your prints crisper and better and is included to correct exposure and brightness. This feature will automatically detect faces in the image data and optimize coverage for more strikingly beautiful prints of the people in the image. Another highlight feature is that it can apply Backlight correction to create brighter, natural smiles. In the case of an orange cast from indoor lightning, Tungsten correction can suitably adjust itself to make a beautiful print, sealed with an overcoat finish to keep the colours as fresh and vivid as the day the photos were printed. Therefore, you can see the difference with Image Intelligence for it could automatically detect and enhance faces for great portraits.

Signal transfer methods:

The FinePix QS-7 printer also has a PictBridge-compatible USB port that should work absolutely fine with your camera and allows you to print directly from any digital camera that would support the PictBridge.

Manufacturer Warranty:

The Fujifilm FinePix QS-7 Compact Photo Printer is covered under a standard UK warranty of 12 months from the original date of purchase. But remember to retain your original receipt as you will have to present this in the case of a claim.

Overall:

The Fuji FinePix QS-7 Photo Printer is the cheapest on test, but disappointingly, it has no memory card slots and screens, therefore one has to depend on a PC or a PictBridge-enabled camera to control it through USB. However, if you own a Fuji Finepix camera, you can easily print over infrared link. If you are picky about the quality of the print, then it should be said that the prints are a bit fuzzy, with dull colours compared to its competition. They are also slow to emerge and are pretty costly at 30p per shot. However, you can purchase refills of ink and paper from Fuji for a great price and installing it will take only a few seconds. As parting words, it should only be said that the Fuji’s price tag is pulling back our better appreciation for this compact photo printer, however it is worth paying more to get a much better photo!

Check other Latest Photo Printers Reviews in this website.

Fuji FinePix QS-7  Photo Printer – Technical Specification Table

Features:

Canon Selphy CP790 has a unique Storage Basket which can easily hold the paper and ink cassettes, cable, AC adapter and battery pack that comes as an option. In addition, its special locking mechanism helps hold everything together when you carry the printing party with you anywhere you go. Even though the printer itself is much like Canon’s other small dye-sub machines, this machine has an oval, lime green top, into the top of which are set a 76 mm LCD display for previewing our images, ink and paper in one cassette and a series of five push buttons. In the centre of these is a four-way selection cross with, embedded in the middle, one of Canon’s Easy-Scroll Wheel for browsing quickly through menus.

Each of the sides of Selphy CP790 mushroom’s ’stem’ includes a door or sockets. On the left we would find sockets for the small, white power block, which delivers low-voltage DC to power the whole machine, a USB socket for connection to a PC or Mac and a PictBridge socket for printing directly from the camera. On the right side we have a cover for the film cartridge. SELPHY printers work by transferring solid ink from a very thin film ribbon onto the glossy photo paper, using a thermal print head. The cartridge supplied with CP790 is enough for just five photos, but consumables are available in 36-print and 108-print packs, which include both paper and cassettes. In the front we would see sockets for SD, MemoryStick and CompactFlash cards. There is an infrared sensor too, and a Bluetooth adapter is available as an option. Also at the front is a pull-down flap so we can plug in a paper cassette when printing. Two paper cassettes are supplied with the printer, one for 15 x 10 cm postcards and the other for business card-sized prints. A socket for the printer paper to feed out between each printing pass is present at the rear end.

All the parts fit in an oval, green bucket and the printer clips into its top. This is a very convenient way of transporting the machine. The bucket comes complete with a handle; though no spade and the whole system loses a little in portability, as we have to pay extra for the optional battery. CP790 comes with an applet called SELPHY Photo Print and a print driver and is compatible with both Windows and OS X.

Performance:

When we print, the paper is fed into the SELPHY CP790 and out the back of the machine. Later, it feeds through four times, being rewound between each feed, and layers of yellow, magenta and cyan dye-sub ink are laid down, followed by a final, clear, covering layer to protect the print. Despite this complicated process a four-pass 15 x 10cm print would take 58 seconds to complete from a PC, exactly a minute from an SD card and 54seconds from a PictBridge camera. All three times are quick when compared with many inkjet printers, including the small-format Photosmarts from HP.

Dye-sublimation technology employed in this Selphy CP790 printer makes use of heat to transfer ink to the paper, reproducing around 16.8 million colours for incredible pictures in both colour as well as  black and white. A clear protective coating is included that prevents against damage from light, water and gases so that your cherished photos last a lifetime. The CP790 comes with integrated Creative Options like Frames, Photo Diary Print, Calendars and much more to provide our photos a great personal touch we want when sharing those precious moments. It can also print borderless images in Postcard and Credit Card sizes or Black & White photographs. The Portrait Image Optimize feature helps you automatically deliver backlight correction for the photo prints, face detection and noise reduction while printing.

Print quality of these prints in this Canon Selphy CP790 Portable Photo Printer is pretty close to traditional silver halide photographs. There is very little of the dottiness of inkjet prints, as the ink in dye-sub printers is very briefly vapourised, or sublimated, to transfer it from the film in the cartridge to the print and the inks mix, giving what is often referred to as continuous tone print, without ink dots. Photo test prints look good, with smooth transitions between colours and sharp detail in foregrounds. By default, colours are rather dark, but flesh tones are natural enough. Overall, these images are easily as good as the best to come out of equivalently-priced inkjet printers and far better than some traditional photos.

Canon has taken its eye off the ball when it comes to pricing the consumables for the SELPHY CP790. The rival companies, such as HP and Kodak, are offering colour prints for cheaper price. But, it is worth paying a bit more for the convenience of printing wherever and whenever we wish.

Warranty:

The Canon Selphy CP790 Compact Photo Printer is available with a standard warranty of one year.

Verdict:

Stylish and compact, simple and smart, the SELPHY CP790 is a great little printer in lot of ways. Although CP790’s ‘toadstool in a bucket’ design might be a bit gimmicky, there is no denying it is a convenient way of carrying printer, cassettes, power supply and spare consumables. It is very easy to use and is versatile, printing from USB, PictBridge, memory cards, optionally Bluetooth and even infrared. Prints quickly and can produce lab-quality photos. With its range of creative functions and convenient features, it is also ideal for families for cherishing memories. Unfortunately, its expensive running cost lets it down.

Check other Canon Photo Printers, Compact Photo Printer Reviews in this website.

Canon Selphy CP790 Photo Inkjet Printer – Technical Specification Table

Design Features:

Canon Pixma iX5000 Photo Inkjet Printer is square-cut with a traditional paper throughput from rear to front. It makes use of a four-stage telescopic output tray specially intended for this purpose. This Photo Inkjet printer has two buttons control for power besides a paper feed. There is a PictBridge socket at the front and you will find a USB 2.0 port at the rear ends. The set-up and installation of Pixma iX5000 is quite standard and take about half an hour for both hardware and software. Connection is by way of a standard USB 2.0 cable, which we need to buy separately.

Output tray:

The Canon iX5000 inkjet printer does not look particularly exciting, but it is neat and seems to be tough and durable. Its paper input tray is well organized and can hold up to 150 sheets of plain paper, but there is no option to use roll paper in this printer. The output tray of iX5000 feels similarly robust and supports A3 paper to prevent curling. With the exception of the print bed and mechanics, the parts and casing of this printer are all plastic. The sharply angled tray means the footprint is just a touch smaller than competitive A3 models.

Physical Dimensions:

Dimensions and weight are low enough for one person to install the printer and carry on their own. As with the case of Canon models, the print heads and inks have to be fitted separately, using a simple snap-in process. It is at this point that the main cost-cutting angle of this printer is revealed, when you realise the straightforward use of colour.

Faster data transfer:

With a well-built design and bigger operational buttons the Pixma iX5000 offers a great sense of reliability and ease of use. The Auto Feeder comes with the ability to hold up to 150 sheets, accounting for ease of use and comfort. The printer has a USB2.0 Hi-Speed interface for a much faster data transfer and it is compatible with both Windows as well as Mac OS X. Canon’s Pixma iX5000 inkjet printer prints on paper up to A3+ (329 × 483mm). Therefore, it is a good compromise between an A4 printer and expensive large-format device.

Cartridges:

As with many other Canon Pixma printers, setting up the Canon iX5000 involves fitting its print head before slotting in the ink cartridges. It uses PGI-5BK pigment black ink and the     CLI-8 cyan, magenta and yellow cartridges which are used in many current A4 Pixma devices. These three cartridges would last for an average of 93 A4 photos; however, an A3+ page has two and a half times the area.  The black is a double size cartridge, whereas others offer a standard, relatively tiny, reservoir.

Canon FINE technology:

Canon employs FINE technology with 2pl ink droplets in Pixma iX5000 Photo Inkjet Printer which delivers a 4800 x 1200 dpi (Dots per inch) print resolution. The new technology means that the output is equivalent to competing six-ink models. But the inks are dye-based rather than pigment-based, which means the available gamut is very different and longevity is also an issue. The Single Ink Print system which is transparent has been employed in the printer that makes sure it delivers a cost-effective operation and reduces ink wastage. The iX5000 costs less than photo-orientated A3+ inkjets such as Epson’s Stylus Photo R1800 or Canon’s i9950.

Optimisation & Enhancement features:

The ChromaLife100 label assures that fading is minimal over a century under ideal conditions. But when exposed to air, this figure goes down to a decade or so. As most people do not keep their prints in a darkened room in a vacuum, the latter figure is more likely to reflect the real-world longevity. The supplied software holds the usual range of easy-quick photo utilities. More interesting in the printer is the main driver, which includes a couple of optimisation and enhancement features that try to add more punch and colour to prints. There is also a noise reduction tool, which attempts to remove graininess and other artifacts from our images.

Speed Performance:

This advanced iX5000 A3+ printer offers a remarkable A4 printing speed of 17ppm in colour and in mono format of up to 25ppm delivering professional productivity. It prints on a wide range of photograph sizes that range up to A3+. You can also take full advantage of its quick result for all the tasks. With the Canon Pixma iX5000, we can receive an A3+ size photo laboratory quality printing in or about 166 sec in regular mode.

Excellent Print quality:

In spite of the printer’s four-colour print system, the print quality for photos is generally quite good and colours appear natural and well-balanced. There is a lot of fine detail available in both bright as well as shadowed areas of an image. It can handle the graduated tints exceptionally well and solid colours are highly consistent, although sometimes not as clear as the originals. Though there is the possibility of a slight feathering into plain paper, black text is fairly free from jaggies. All your favourite photos can be viewed in a large and beautiful format. Also, one can enjoy rapid borderless photograph that prints on a range of various sizes.

Prints sharp texts:

The Canon Pixma iX5000 Colour Inkjet Printer enables us to print sharp texts and exciting colour graphics. If you require professional, superb quality photo prints, the stand alone printer can deliver crisp and sharp black text of striking and rich colour graphics. This feature is perfect for reports, documents, web pages, spreadsheets and photographs too. It can print photos straight from virtually all PictBridge that is compatible with camcorders and digital cameras. It can perform well without a PC as well. Excellent results can be observed in a short moment after the photographs are taken.

Warranty:

Pixma iX5000 Photo Inkjet Printer comes with the standard warranty and support of one year.

Verdict:

Canon Pixma iX5000 Photo Inkjet Printer is the ideal choice for users who are basking for professional, high quality prints. Though it is a bit heavy, this printer delivers sharp and crisp black text of rich and vibrant colour graphics. Moreover, it is easy to use and a reasonably priced wide-format A3 printer from the Canon.

Check other Canon Photo Printer Models, Reviews, Specs in this website.

Canon Pixma iX5000 Inkjet Printer – Technical Specification Table