Olympus P 400 Dye Sublimation Printer

Pros: High quality prints, fast for the quality,somewhat portable
Cons: Expensive printer, paper & supplies!

We've had better computer equipment than the local FBI for a long time and this printer is no exception. My husband and I purchased the Olympus P-400 for use in our consulting business. We primarily use this printer for printing black and white...

Pros: Professional Quality Prints, ease of use.
Cons: Price is a bit steep, both the printer and the supplies.

Dot-free, photo-quality prints in 90 seconds. SmartMediaTM and PC Card slots for your convenience. Simple USB or Parallel connectivity for quick and easy connections. LCD panel on the printer itself so you can view your images before printing. The...

Pros: Excellent skin tones. Fast printing. Strong vibrant colours. True 4:3 printing. Known cost per print
Cons: Olympus only consumables. Photo preview using direct printing is slow

Before I start this review, for those that are interested - Olympus will release the P-440 in Oct '03. This newer model will fix two of the minor criticizms of the P-400. The P440 will do exact 8"x10" prints (the P-400 does 7.68"x10") and has a colour LCD ...

Pros: Beautiful continuous tone, photo quality prints, great "feel" to prints fun to watch print
Cons: cost, proprietary papers and ribbons, lack of wide color gamut, max-print size 7.64 x 10.146"

While the Olympus P-400, dye sublimation printer makes one heck of a nice photo print with all the look and feel of prints you'd get straight from Kodak, it is one expensive peripheral. It's definitely not for everyone.

To give you some idea...

Pros: Professional level print quality. Puts a photolab on your desktop.
Cons: Media is expensive, both paper and ink. No true 8x10 pictures

This printer makes amazing, professional quality prints from your digital photos. If you want to ge ...

Pros: Beautiful Pictures
Cons: Cost, Cost of paper and ribbons

My pictures come out looking like professional prints. I got this for pictures my family took at my wedding. The cost of getting reprints for the volume and diversity of prints I wanted was a tradeoff with this printer - plus I wanted a cool new toy....

Pros: Professional color, water and fade proof photos, quick read memory, ability to customize photos
Cons: Cost of paper and ribbon

When I bought my Olympus camera I wanted a good digital printer. I held back for 2 months before buying the P-400. I had actually had a friend who had this and I fell in love with it. I couldn't believe the vibrant colors and the options for printing different sizes. There is also the customizing feature through the photo window where you can make choices to add borders around your photos before printing.

In plugging in your camera, the printer reads all of your pictures even in the directories you can't find. There is a smart media slot as well as a pc slot for all other media cards. The feature I had the most fun in showing and using was the waterproof feature, even regular photo labs don't give waterproof quality.

The dye sublimation e.g. thermal printing, prints all photos to be waterproof as well as fade proof and for me as a striving photographer this was a large and important quality to me.

The paper and thermal ribbons do get expensive but sometimes that expense is worth it.

This printer is awesome! The photos are truly of professional quality. It does not print a full 8X10, however if you print the max size (7.65X10) you can put it into an 8X10 frame and it just fits perfectly with no openings or gaps around edges. I had trouble installng the Win XP drivers (I had to call olympus and have them email me updated XP drivers). The drivers on the website is not current. However, I love this printer and will not go back to the inkjet for photo printing. It is well work the few problems I did have and well worth the money.

I have printed several hundred prints on my printer so far and I am over all pleased with my choice. The only problem I've had is that it doesn't like humid conditions. I do wish it printed full 8x10 pictures. Could always use more speed. Wish there was a way to print on a matte paper.