Cheap Sony DPP-FP30 Digital Photo Printer and Digital Camera Reviews

Sony DPP-FP30 Digital Photo Printer

Best All-Around Color Among Portable Dye-Sub Printers 2005-06-11

Aside from Sony, many other brands make portable dye-sublimation printers these days, which makes the choice tougher. I did not consider purchasing the Dell, HP, Kodak, or Olympus ones because they are simply too big - I wanted one that I can comfortably bring with me on my travels, so I can print my own postcards to send home.

I tried out the Canon CP-400 (form factor even smaller than the Sony DPP-FP30) in the store, and found that the print-outs (direct from my camera, not touched up by computer) have a blue cast to them, and in a side-by-side comparison the Sony print-outs (of the same pictures) have much prettier colors.

And comparing to Sony's own older model DPP-SV77, which I have at home: The DPP-SV77 is bigger, complete with touchscreen LCD and Memory Stick/PC Card slots, built-in creativety functions such as printing calendars, and has a higher resolution of 403 dpi (the DPP-FP30 reviewed here, like the Canon models, only has 300 dpi). BUT the little DPP-FP30 actually prints photos with much truer color, while the big brother DPP-SV77 tends to exagerate reds and greens, and over-sharpen any edges. The lower resolution in the DPP-FP30 is not noticeable at all unless I print fine text to it from a computer, which is not this printer's intended purpose anyway.

While I am very happy with the Sony DPP-FP30, I WISH IT COULD HAVE HAD (Sony, are you listening):

- A battery option, so it's not necessary to carry the AC adapter or to be tethered to a power source when printing.

- A button to toggle between bordered (no cropping) and borderless (cropped).

- More creativety functions in the included software.

- Without increasing the overall size by too much, add multi-type card reader slots and a small color LCD to choose pictures (better yet, ability to trim/crop them before printing). This would also eliminate the requirement that the digital camera must be PicBridge compatible.

The other obvious shortcomings common to all portable dye-sub printers are that 1) paper/cartridge are prioritery and on the expensive side, and 2) print size is limited to a maximum of 4x6 (4x8 in some cases). These I accept for now, because I want the quality and durability of dye-sub prints (as opposed to inkjet prints). Hopefully these will improve with time.

As no other printer today has everything I hope for (see above), I am still giving the Sony DPP-FP30 5 stars for its excellent quality prints.

Awesome!!!! 2005-05-15

I've had this printer for a few months now and I've never seen a better one!! The pictures look as good as the ones I got from a photoshop here in town. If I could give it more stars I would! The only problem I've found so far is that they print on postcards. You wouldnt know it til you turned it over, but still.

AMAZING! 2005-03-15

This printer is amazing. I don't know why it is so cheap. The pictures are great, it is compact, and very easy to use.

great little printer 2005-03-01

nice, small, compact printer. quality of the photos is great using dye sublimation printing. fun to watch the picture come together color by color. a little time consuming, but worth it.

Awesome little printer 2005-02-19

I spent a lot of time reviewing these dye-sub printers. I rarely print from a memory card, so that feature was not important to me. Watching this thing do its magic is a lot of fun! 3 passes to apply color, then the last pass for the glossy coat.

I got it mainly for its portable size. It is tiny! Another plus is that it comes with a paper pack and ribbon.
The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is that the photos are a tad (just a tad) flat. I think it has more to do with the sony paper. My full size canon i960 makes a better print on the canon glossy paper.

Other than that, this is a fantastic little device!