Sagem is now selling its photo printers under the better-known Agfa brand in the UK exclusively through Argos catalogue stores.

It's a small machine, about the size of a bag of sugar, but with a 25-sheet paper tray that plugs in at the front.

It has a 63mm LCD display, so you can preview the images that are to be printed, and a menu system controlled by a circle of buttons.

Like printers from the company's earlier Printeasy range, the Photo Printer AP2700 is a dye-sublimation device, which means the solid, waxy ink is transferred from a very thin film ribbon to the postcard-sized print sheets using a thermal print head.

It lays down each of three colours and then overcoats the whole print with a protective clear film. Despite having to pass the print through four times to complete the four layers, the printer completed prints in just over a minute.

Set into the left-hand side are sockets for all the main memory card types including, somewhat surprisingly, one for the largely discontinued Smartmedia format. Opposite these, in the right-hand side, are sockets for connecting a PC, a digital camera and a TV – you can use the Photo Printer AP2700 to run a slide show.

Photo prints are not quite as natural as from the Printeasy printers, which gave a very high-quality printed image. Here we saw a slight blue tinge to the output, though the definition was very good and images were sharp.

There are two image enhancements that can be selected, one for automatic red-eye removal, where you don't even have to indicate where the eyes in the photo are, and the other a photo sharpener called Crystal Image.

There are only enough print blanks and ribbon supplied in the box for five photos, which is a mean move as all users will then have to fork out another £40 for a 150-print consumables pack as soon as they buy the printer.

This gives a cost per print of 27p, considerably higher than from typical ink-jet photo printers. As consumables are tied to the Photo Printer via a smart card, there's no opportunity for using third-party products, either.

See also:
Sony DFP-FP90
Epson Picturemate PM240