Canon Selphy CP770

The ink cartridge contains a roll of film infused with successive sections of cyan, magenta, and yellow, plus a fourth layer consisting of a clear, protective coating. You use one layer of each color per print, regardless of how much color the image actually users. Canon has no recycling program yet for these cartridges.

The paper works disconcertingly, too. Dedicated cassettes take a single size of paper each; in order to plug a cassette into the printer's front you must adjust a confusing double-layer lid. The paper moves through the printer four times, extending several inches out the back and the front during each pass and thus seeming to invite premature grabbing of the print. Postcard- and business-card-size cassettes are included. A greeting-card kit--containing 4-by-8-inch paper and envelopes (24 of each), ink, and a cassette--costs $33.

Considering all of the passes involved, it's not surprising that the Selphy CP770 is one of the slowest snapshot printers we've tested. It took well over a minute to print each sample. A yellowish palette adversely affected some images, especially landscapes.

Working without a PC, you can print directly from a media card or from a PictBridge-connected device, or you can beam an image to the infrared port. The simply designed control panel and 2.5-inch color LCD simplified navigation among a basic set of editing and enhancement features. With the printer connected to a PC, you can install Corel's Ulead Photo Express LE (for adding fancier effects to an image) or ZoomBrowser EX (for managing and printing larger collections of photos).

The printer ships with trial-size ink and postcard-paper supplies that last 5 pages each. A kit containing postcard paper and an ink cartridge for 108 prints costs $30, which works out to 29 cents per print. The 36-print kit is relatively expensive at $12, or 33 cents per print.

The chief reason to buy the Selphy CP770 is for the fun factor. Though the dye-sublimation technology produces a decent print, it's too slow and plastic-intensive for me to recommend over other kinds of printing.