Lab

Mini Photo Printers

Compact photo printers are perfect if you want to print your snaps quickly and easily at home. Over the past couple of years, they've become increasingly popular and affordable, giving you the freedom to print photos from your PC or directly from a digital camera or memory card. Some of the printers we've looked at have optional battery packs, so you can print photos no matter where you are.

In this Labs we've reviewed nine compact photo printers, from the most affordable to the most feature-packed. Most of the printers here have high-quality colour screens, so you can preview and edit your photos before printing. The most advanced models include touch screens, CD writers and Bluetooth support, so you can print pictures directly from your camera phone.

Read on to find the best way to get great photos without the wait.

Compact photo printers let you turn images from your digital camera into 6x4in photos that you can share with others. Most let you edit and customise your photos before you print, making them perfect tools for on-the-spot creativity.

Shoot and run

Not all compact photo printers use the same printing technology, and they all have different features. Which printer you choose depends on how, and where, you intend to use it. Most printers in the group are portable, with only HP's oddly shaped Photosmart A826 designed to spend its life on a desk. However small and light a printer may be, its portability is limited if you can't use it without a mains power connection. The table on page 91 shows which printers can take an optional battery pack.

All the printers in this Labs can print from a PC at their maximum resolution, but this isn't always the case if you want to print directly from a digital camera or a memory card. All except one of the printers in the group have integrated memory card readers, so check that the type in your digital camera is supported.

Most can also print directly from a digital camera using a PictBridge USB connection, although Kodak's EasyShare G610 doesn't support PictBridge and instead prints directly only from cameras that support the Kodak ImageLink system. Your final option for direct printing is wirelessly over Bluetooth. This is particularly helpful if you want to print photos taken on a mobile phone. Optional Bluetooth adaptors are available for three of the printers in the group, but only Epson's PictureMate 290 comes with Bluetooth built in.

A screen is essential if you want to print from memory cards, as it allows you to preview and adjust your images. All the printers with memory card slots also have screens, ranging in size from 2.5in up to the 7in touchscreen found on HP's Photosmart A826. Most printers let you crop, enhance and manipulate your photos with colour effects, captions and borders, and a big screen makes editing your photos much easier.

Ink compatibility

Compact photo printers use two very different printing technologies, which is why some printers in the table on page 91 have much lower resolutions than others.

Inkjet photo printers work just like normal A4 inkjets, with a print head that travels across the page from side to side squirting out tiny droplets of ink drawn from a reservoir in the cartridges. The image you see on the page is made up of thousands of tiny dots, and the resolution - the number of printed dots per inch - is a major factor in how clear and sharp printed images will be. For photo printing, you ideally want a resolution of at least 4,800x1,200dpi, although resolutions as low as 1,200x1,200dpi can produce perfectly acceptable snapshots.

Four of the group's photo printers use a different method of getting ink on to the page. Dye-sublimation printing uses a solid dye that is rapidly heated to become a gas without passing through a liquid state. The gaseous dye solidifies as it comes into contact with the photo paper. The dye is stored in a cartridge on a transparent ribbon made up of different-coloured panes: yellow, magenta, cyan and a clear overcoat that protects against moisture and ultra-violet light.

Quoted dye-sub resolutions are lower then those of inkjet printers, but the resulting print looks smooth because dye-sublimation printing completely covers the page in ink, rather than printing dots. However, dye-sub photos can look slightly soft-focus with poor definition on dark colours.

Consumable culture

Printing your photos at home means you get instant results, but it's never as cost-effective as using an online printing service. In each review, we've listed the typical price you're likely to pay for packs of consumables, and the price you can expect to pay for each photo.

Most inkjet photo printers use three-colour cartridges that look very similar to those used by full-size inkjets. The Epson printers' cartridges look a little different, and instead of mixing their three colours to produce black they have a dedicated black ink cartridge, which produces more intense dark colours. It's possible to buy ink and paper separately for many photo printers, but the most economical way to buy consumables is in packs that contain both photo paper and a cartridge with sufficient ink to print every sheet.

Dye-sub cartridges are available only in packs with the correct amount of photo paper. They look very different to familiar inkjet cartridges, consisting of a reel that looks like a video tape, on to which are wound the transparent coloured panels that contain the dye.

Regardless of your choice of printing technology, the durability of photos is important. Where available, we've listed figures for how long the photos will last in a frame, along with the source of this data. Wilhelm Imaging Research is regarded as the world standard authority on photo durability, while some manufacturers use their own testing facilities.