Hardware News

Nuggets: Sony's printer is cool, but limited

Andrew Swinton ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 03 Aug 2000 16:32 BST

When you've shelled out plenty for a mega pixel DC (er... that's digital camera for them wot don't know), you want quality prints too: fuzzy inkjet hard copy just won't do. Up steps Sony with the UP-DP10 (we have no idea why it has such a dull name, all complaints to Sony please) Personal Photo Lab.

This purple and cream shoebox-sized digital photo printer outputs professional quality prints via USB or parallel port interfaces. Ignoring the current trend to make all printers some variation on the inkjet design, Sony has opted for dye sublimation to deliver a whopping 16.7 million colours. Each print takes 85 seconds of mechanical whirring to emerge from the 6"x 4" postcard tray.

Bundled with the printer is the usual array of software that lets you to touch up your images and stick them in a range of frames (bit pointless given that anyone using this printer probably has Photoshop at the very least).

The print quality on the special paper supplied is close to what you might find on high street chain processors, so you won't be disappointed.

The print goes right up to the edge and dries instantly. To get the benefit of the high-res images, Sony recommends you use a digital camera with a minimum of 2.1 million pixels (and if you'll take our advice check out Canon's SureShot Mega 3).

On the downside we found the setup of the printer a bit fiddly and the archiving of the images unclear. But the real pain here has got to be the print size. Buying a printer at this price that can't step up to print your fave A4 shots... well it just ain't cricket, is it?

So, there you have it ~- high quality print, convenience and a range of silly effects, but only in postcard format.