Photo Printers: The Price of Great Pictures

Snapshot Printers

Snapshot printers offer an easy way to print 4-by-6-inch photos. Three of the units we tested almost matched the high print quality of the best full-size printers. But one model, the Dell Photo Printer 540, was particularly disappointing, producing less vibrant colors than the others.

Epson PictureMate

The $199 PictureMate isn't the smallest or lightest snapshot printer we've tested, but nonetheless its handle and lunchbox size suggest portability. The PictureMate doesn't run on batteries, though you can buy a car adapter for $50. It prints only on 4-by-6-inch paper, but it will print two wallet-size photos on one sheet.

We found the PictureMate a pleasure to use--and the least expensive to operate of all the printers we tested. Epson advertises that prints cost 29 cents each; its $29 print packs come with 100 sheets of paper and an ink cartridge, which the company guarantees will last at least 100 sheets. But we wanted to find out how far you might be able to stretch your dollar, so IPL fed the PictureMate extra paper until the print quality degraded noticeably. Doing so reduced the per-print cost to 23 cents.

The PictureMate has a direct-print port and memory card slots, and it can print via a Bluetooth module ($69). Also, it can write files to an external CD burner. Navigating on-board menus with the four-way toggle button was easy. The menus let you print a proof sheet, pick images by number (the LCD doesn't display images), and print multiple pictures on the same sheet. But the LCD isn't backlit, and it suffers from distracting reflections. You can convert prints to black-and-white or sepia-tone, and you can apply various cropping templates. The Save Photo button lets you write images from your memory card to a disc loaded in an external CD burner.

The PictureMate uses a six-ink cartridge that includes Epson's new red and blue inks. The flat, wide cartridge slides into the back of the printer. In our test photos, colors looked bright, and details popped out in sharp focus; highlights and shadows looked well exposed.

However, to print our test photo the PictureMate took 2 minutes and 16 seconds--noticeably longer than the other three snapshot printers we tested.

Upshot: The PictureMate is a good choice for very low-cost snapshots, as long as you don't need prints in a hurry.

Dan Littman

HP Photosmart 375 Compact Photo Printer

Snapshot printers don't get any more portable than the $200 HP Photosmart 375. This petite printer weighs just 2.6 pounds, and at less than 5 inches thick and 4.5 inches tall, is easy to take on the road; an optional rechargeable battery tucks neatly inside the printer, and costs $80. With its silver top and white side panels, the Photosmart 375 looks like a four-slice toaster for mini cocktail bread.

A 2.5-inch LCD display flips up from the top for previewing and editing images. The front panel folds down to act as an output tray, revealing four memory card slots. The rear panel tilts back to reveal an input tray that holds up to 20 sheets.

The quality of the photos that popped out of the Photosmart 375 were on a par with those from the Epson PictureMate and the Sony DPP-EX50 (see reviews on this page). We liked the rich colors and sharp details in most of the Photosmart 375's test prints, but noted that one of the photos didn't look as smooth as the same image printed by the Photosmart 8450. Both HP printers gave the sky and water in that image a slightly purplish cast, but, the Photosmart 375's prints showed a slight band across the trailing edge of the paper.

The Photosmart 375 uses a tricolor cartridge (or a gray-ink cartridge for printing black-and-white photos). Running costs are high, however: Ink and paper costs totaled 81 cents per 4-by-6-inch snapshot in IPL's testsa??higher than the other three snapshot printers we tested.

The Photosmart 375 printed at below-average speeds, printing a 4-by-6-inch snapshot in 1 minute and 47 seconds, though the HP Photosmart 8450 was slower, taking over 2 minutes to print a snapshot.

The printer comes with the same high-quality software package that accompanies HP's desktop inkjets. Also available are a $50 Bluetooth adapter and a car lighter power adapter that costs $40.

Upshot: Printing costs for the HP Photosmart 375 are more than three times higher than the PictureMate's--but this small, lightweight printer is the only model here with an optional battery pack or car adapter, making it ideal for taking on the road.

Paul Jasper

Sony Digital Photo Printer DPP-EX50

Like the other snapshot printers we tested, you can drive the $180 Sony DPP-EX50 dye-sublimation printer from a direct-print-capable camera, and the printer has memory card slots (but only for Memory Stick and CompactFlash cards). However, many people will want to connect this model to a television.

You connect the supplied cable to the TV, which will then display menus for selecting images to print, and for creating calendars, postcards, or multiple-image layouts. In addition, you can convert images to sepia-tone or grayscale, clean up red-eye, apply a fish-eye lens effect, and more. You don't have to use the TV if you set up a DPOF job on your camera. (DPOF, or digital print order form, is an industry standard for digital cameras that lets you mark pictures to print directly from a media card).

The printer's on-board control panel and backlit LCD make it functional without a PC, but when you do link to a computer, you'll probably want to use Sony's PictureGear Studio 2.0 software to manage and edit images, because Sony's Windows driver lacks many common image adjustment options, such as color and density adjustment.

The DPP-EX50 can print to three sizes of paper: 4-by-6-inch, 3.5-by-5-inch, and 3.5-by-4-inch; all three work with the same paper cassette, which slips into an opening on the front of the case. Sony provides no consumables in the box; a 25-sheet pack of 4-by-6-inch paper with an ink ribbon costs $17, which translates into about 68 cents per print. The $43 value pack of 75 sheets reduces the per-print cost to 57 cents each, but that's still more than twice as much as the 23 cents per-print cost of the Epson PictureMate reviewed above.

The DPP-EX50 printed a 4-by-6-inch photo from a PC in a snappy 88 seconds--faster than most of the seven desktop photo printers we tested, and 9 seconds faster than the test set average. The print showed very sharp details and the luminous quality we've come to expect from dye-sublimation prints.

Upshot: The Sony DPP-EX50's unique TV interface makes it a fun addition to the living room, but you'll get equally attractive prints at a much lower cost with the Epson PictureMate.

Dan Littman

Dell Photo Printer 540

Of the four snapshot printers we tested, Dell's Photo Printer 540 was the quickest, but it also printed the least attractive pictures. This dye-sublimation printer generated 4-by-6-inch photos in just over a minute--more than 30 seconds faster than the average. However, our test prints weren't aligned properly, leaving white bands on the top and right edges of the paper. Also, there were noticeable light and dark bands close to the trailing edge. As you'd expect with a dye-sub printer, tonal changes were nice and smooth, but we saw richer, more vibrant colors from most of the other snapshot and photo printers we tested. Perforations at each end of the print leave a slightly rough edge when you remove them.

The Photo Printer 540 costs $189, and like all of the other snapshot printers, it has a direct-print port and memory card slots, though it lacks a slot for xD-Picture cards. One plus: The direct-print port also reads USB flash drives. The 2.5-inch color LCD is handy for previewing photos and making simple adjustments.

Buying Dell's print packs individually makes the cost per print 50 cents each, but that becomes more reasonable if you buy Dell's $47 bundle of three print packs. Purchasing in this quantity reduces the cost to 39 cents each, which beats all of the desktop photo inkjets we tested. Each pack includes a dye-sub ribbon and 40 sheets of paper.

This printer is small and light enough for easy travel, weighing only 3.6 pounds and measuring 7.5 by 5.5 by 2.7 inches. Though it can't run on batteries, the power adapter is compact.

Upshot: The Dell Photo Printer 540 is very fast, and printing costs are low if you buy supplies in large quantities, but its print quality is the least impressive of the snapshot printers.

Paul Jasper