Canon Selphy CP600

Over the last year we've seen all the major home printing manufacturers produce their own compact 6 x 4 in photo printer. Canon offers the widest range of photo printers, which are priced from £119 to £200. The Selphy CP600 is at the top end of the price bracket and replaces the older CP330. The major upgrade here is the onboard 'DIGIC II' processor, which allows digital cameras to talk to the printer faster, thus enabling quicker printing.

The Selphy CP600 is a dye-sublimation printer, which means it uses a special film rather than ink to put colour onto paper. The good thing about dye-sublimation printing is that photos dry instantly. They're also more resistant to weathering and colour fading, something than cannot always be said of ink-based printers.

It also comes with a rechargeable battery pack that allows you to easily take it on the move and print independently of a plug socket. This is a great idea and good for those who don't have much memory capacity in their digital cameras - just print the pictures you want and format your memory card. It's about the size of a tupperware sandwich box, making it truly portable.

Compared to other photo printers we've seen (Epson Picturemate, HP Photosmart 375, Lexmark P315, Dell Photo Printer 540 and Sony DPP-FP30), we think the Canon produces the best prints in terms of image quality. Colours strike the right balance, skin tones are very accurate and black areas are deep in tone, rather than looking grey. There is no 'speckling,' as seen with inkjet models, and the glossy finish gives your photos a professional edge.

It's also extremely easy to print pictures. Either connect your PictBridge-enabled camera and press print, or attach the CP600 to a computer via USB 2 (cable not included) and use the supplied printing software. There's also an infrared port for printing from mobile phones with cameras. It takes 90 seconds to print a photo, which is average for a printer of this type but nowhere near the one-minute speeds achieved by the Dell Photo Printer 540 (issue 182). However, its price per print is excellent - just 23p if you buy a cartridge and glossy paper triple pack.

The downsides are no inputs for memory cards, which isn't much of a problem if your digital camera is PictBridge-compatible, and a high initial cost of £200, which is among the most expensive we've seen. The bundled PC software also tries to be a bit too clever by guessing what orientation your photos should be printed at. You can change this manually but you can't mix and match - all prints have to be in the same orientation to print correctly.

Nevertheless, when you consider how economical it is to run, the quality of the prints and the portability aspect, we think it's the best product in its category.