At $39.99 for 100 sheets of paper-the most economical way to buy supplies-the cost per photo works out to 40 cents each.
On the plus side, the photos scored reasonably well for water and scratch resistance in my tests.Īnother important issue for the Pandigital printer is its running cost. There's also an issue with photo lifetime: Pandigital warrants the photos against fading for only 10 years in dark storage (as in an album), compared with, for example, 200 years in dark storage or 96 years framed behind glass for Epson PictureMate Charm photos. More generally, the photo quality was acceptable for some photos, but far below the level you would expect for an inkjet printer today in almost all cases. Details in dark areas turned into solid black blocks in still other photos. Light lines on a white background simply disappeared in one photo, and a blue sky with white clouds turned into a nearly solid white block in another. Key issues include colors that were outside of a realistic range for several photos, an obvious reddish tint in some shades of gray in a monochrome photo, obvious aliasing (aka jaggies) in the spokes of a wheel in one photo, and a loss of detail in both dark and light areas in several photos. Output quality, unfortunately, was significantly worse than you'll get from most of today's inkjets. Results printing from other sources were similar, at 1:11 to 1:31 printing from an SD card, USB key, and a Canon PowerShot S60 camera. It's certainly well within the 41 second to 1:37 range for current dedicated photo printers in general. I timed it at an average 1 minute 14 seconds for a 4-by-6 on our standard test photos printed from a computer, compared to a 41 second average for the Editors' Choice Epson PictureMate Charm. The Pandigital printer scored reasonably well on speed. Similarly, to print from a camera or computer you only need to plug either one into the printer, and print using the camera's print commands or an appropriate program on the computer.Īs I've already mentioned, the printer doesn't offer any editing features-not even for such basics as cropping or red eye removal-which makes the printer somewhat limited in capability but extremely easy to use. Once the printer is set up, printing from a memory card or USB key is a simple matter of plugging in the card or key, using the front-panel arrow keys to move to the photo you want to print, and hitting the Enter key twice.
I installed the printer driver on a Windows Vista system, but according to Pandigital, the disc also includes drivers for Windows XP, Windows 7, and Mac OS X 10.5 and higher (but only for Macs using an Intel CPU). To print from a computer as well, insert the supplied CD and run the automated installation program. To print from a memory card, USB key, or camera, simply load paper in the paper tray (the printer comes with a pack of 5 sheets), insert the tray in the printer, and plug in the power cord, all of which shouldn't take more than a minute or so. Setting up the Pandigital printer is a snap. It can also print directly from PictBridge cameras. In most ways, however, it's well behind the competition, with a mere 1.4-inch color LCD preview screen and no built-in editing features, even though it can print directly from a USB key or memory card. In addition to portability, the printer earns points for ease of use, which I'll come back to shortly. Even better, because ZINK technology embeds the ink in the paper-in the form of dye crystals-the only consumable you have to worry about carrying with you is the paper itself.
At 1.5 by 6.2 by 6.75 inches (HWD), it's small enough to fit in a coat pocket, and at 1.75 pounds complete with a full tray of paper, it's much lighter than most small-format printers. Most of the Pandigital printer's strong points are related to its portability. Unfortunately, although the photo quality is higher than for the earlier ZINK printers, it still falls short of inkjet quality. The Pandigital Portable Photo Printer ($130 street) is the first with 4- by 6-inch output, so it's a second-generation model (though it's Pandigital's first). But the first-generation ZINK printers-the Polaroid PoGo Instant Mobile Printer and Dell Wasabi PZ310 Mobile Photo Printer, were limited to 2- by 3-inch output. (The next most recent was thermal dye technology, which I first reviewed in 1992).
When ZINK technology was announced in December 2007, it was the first new printer technology in years that was potentially of interest to a wide range of people.