Canon Selphy CP600

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Features
The CP600's features are like any other compact photo printers with its ability to deliver consistent postcard prints at 300 x 300dpi. Connectivity options include PictBridge compatibility, USB and IrDA. However, the CP600 pales in comparison to the Samsung SPP-2040 in terms of direct printing from memory cards. The latter's built-in card reader accepts a total of seven different media.

A truly mobile printer would be one where it comes with an external battery pack. The CP600 provide batteries to match various ink-and-paper sets. Put simply, a battery pack for the 36 ink-and-color set has a capacity that lasts for 36 prints. Each set of 36 costs S$15.90 and we worked that out to be S$0.44 for each 4R print. Purchasing in bulk--the 108-piece pack--makes it cheaper, averaging out to about S$0.30 for each 4R photo.

Other features of the printer include the automatic dynamic range correction which compensates for unevenness in brightness or contrast when the optimize flag is selected on a PictBridge-compatible camera. And if your shooter has image cropping functions, you can print passport-size photos from the unit.

Performance
Windows XP automatically detects the driver for the CP600 so there wasn't much to do on our end. Installing the drivers directly from the CD that came with the printer took approximately 20 seconds. During our tests, the compact CP600 took about 8 seconds to boot up. Its shutdown, however, was nearly instant.

The results of our printing tests are tabulated as follows:

Print type (PC)	Print time (4 x 6-inch; 1,600 x 1,200 pixels)
Test photo 1	1 min 35 seconds
Test photo 1 (x2)	3 min 19 seconds

Print type (Sony Ericsson K700i)	Print time (4 x 6-inch; 640 x 480 pixels)
IrDA	1 min 16 seconds

Print type (Sony Ericsson K600i)	Print time (4 x 6-inch; 1,280 x 1,024 pixels)
IrDA	49 seconds to transfer, 1 min to print

Image Quality
The print quality of the CP600 varies with the size and resolution of the images and we found it to be generally consistent. On the plus side, there was good color representation in our printouts though they tended towards a bluish cast. The photos have an overcoat which made it dry to touch almost instantly and would protect the picture from water spills.

As with other compact photo printers that use dye-sublimation technology, the colors of the printouts are not restricted to the amount of ink in the cassette as compared with photo inkjets, so you don't have to worry about running out of a particular color.

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