Nice Little Printer
Written: Jun 19 '03
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Paper Handling: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Make Photo-Lab prints at home.
Cons: Skimpy accessories, Supplies not cheap, Limited papers.
The Bottom Line: This is THE printer to use for 4x6 snapshots. You can make durable, water-resistant, "archival quality" color prints at home. Cost of supplies is a little high, though.
|
|
|
| brian100's Full Review: Sony Digital Photo Printer DPP-EX5 Dye Sublimatio... |
Bottom line, the Sony DPP-EX5 is a great way to make photo-lab quality prints in your own home. The dye-sublimation process makes great color prints which are relatively permanent compared with many inkjet prints. For Windows and Mac.
As of today, 6-19-03, the descriptive photo is of the wrong item. This printer is about the size of a standard hard-bound college dictionary. It stands upright to save desk space. It's very portable, but you need to plug it into a wall AC socket. The included paper feed/collector tray holds about 20 prints and extends out the front of the printer. If your camera uses "Memory Stick", you can print directly from "Memory Stick" without using your computer. To do this, you hook up the printer to your TV with a video cable (yes, included), and manipulate the menus and photos on TV. If you do "Memory Stick" printing, this printer can use the EXIF 2.2 data stored in your picture files. Unfortunately, if you print from your computer, this option is not available.
To print from your computer, you need a USB cable (not included). This is not a USB 2.0 device, so any USB cable will do. When you print from your computer, you typically are printing from a software application. Make sure that you select the Sony DPP-EX5 printer from within the application if it is not the default printer. Also, make sure that you choose the correct paper size. I didn't, and I got an irritating error message until I figured out the problem.
There are limited Sony glossy papers available including 4x6, 3x4, 4x6 sticker, 3x4 sticker, postage-stamp sticker. The included printer and driver software allows for 3x5 prints, but I haven't seen 3x5 paper. No paper is included with the printer at all. Each pack of paper comes with a special ribbon which lasts for the exactly the number of prints in the pack. I got an 8-box set of 4x6 paper for $96 over the internet. This is 200 prints, so, with shipping, your cost is a little over 50 cents a print. Where I live, drugstore 4x6 reprints are 40 cents, and sometimes on sale for 30 cents. So, we're not talking about saving money here. However, it's convenient to be able to make prints at home and the quality matches drugstore photo-lab prints.
The print colors look very nice. The prints are dry when they come out of the printer in about 90 seconds. They supposedly won't fade nearly as much as most inkjet prints do. They feel just like a drugstore glossy photo, and are water-resistant. Print resolution is 403 dpi, which is lower than most inkjet printers these days. When you look at the photos, you really can't tell that this is a lower resolution printer.
Depending on the software application that you are printing from, you can get true edge-to-edge borderless prints if you want. I like to print from Thumbs Plus photo management software application. Thumbs Plus great for viewing pictures and doing cropping and color correction of snapshots. Thumbs Plus is not a substitute for Adobe PhotoShop, but it is a "must-have" item. It is available from cerious.com on a "free trial" basis.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 168
Operating System: Windows
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
brian100
|
|
Reviews written: 4
Trusted by: 0 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.