Digital Home Thoughts: Epson PictureMate Dash Review

What Doesn't Come With the Dash
Now that we have taken a look at what comes with the printer, why not take a look at what doesn’t. Face it - no technology gadget is ever complete without those pesky little things called accessories and the Dash is no exception to this rule. First up is the Epson PictureMate Print Pack, which comes in two flavors, matte or glossy. The Print Pack is kind of a new concept to me and one that I kind of like. Instead of buying your ink and paper separately, it's bundled together. The Glossy Print Pack comes with 150 sheets of glossy 4”x6” photo paper and a photo cartridge. The Matte Print Pack comes with 100 sheets of matte photo paper and a photo cartridge. The photo cartridge life tends to mirror the amount of paper included, so when you run out of paper, a new photo cartridge is most likely needed as well. So instead of having to replace everything separately you can just replace it all at the same time. The Picture Packs seem to be priced reasonably also. The Glossy Print Pack retails at $39.99 and the Matte Print Pack retails at $34.99.

Next in the line of accessories is the optional Internal Battery. Yup, even though it's advertised as a portable printer, a rechargeable battery can only be had if you buy it separately. Honestly the lack of an included rechargeable battery does bug me a little considering this printer is supposed to be portable, but I can get over it because I really can’t see myself in a situation where I would need to print photos and not be able to find a wall jack somewhere. Still, it’s nice all the same that the option exists. The internal battery supports printing for about 140 photos or 5-6 hours of LCD viewing time. Unfortunnately I was unable to test this because a battery was not included with the review unit that I was sent. The battery retails at $49.99.

Other accessories include a carrying case and a Bluetooth adapter. The carrying case, which retails at $34.99, is a water resistant case designed to carry and protect the Dash and its accessories. Finally, there's the Epson Bluetooth Photo Print Adapter, which lets you print wirelessly from devices that have Bluetooth support, such as cell phones and PDAs. The Bluetooth adapter goes for about $39.


Figure 2: Epson PictureMate Dash Picture Pack.

Putting It Through Its Paces
Ok, now for the good stuff, what exactly is this printer capable of? Well according to the documentation that I received with my review unit, it can print borderless 4”x6” photos in just 37 seconds. Well I decided to put this to the test. I also decided to test how well it handled large print jobs, the overall quality of the prints, and how easy it is to operate out of the box. The Dash supports JPEG files or uncompressed TIFF files with resolutions ranging from 80x80 to 9200x9200 pixels. It accepts most of the memory formats used by digital cameras, such as SD, MMC, xD, Memory Stick, and CompactFlash to name a few. You can also attach a camera, external hard drive, or flash drive via the USB port located on the back of the printer.

To get started I inserted an SD memory card with sample photos on it. On the top of the printer are botha 3.6” LCD screen and the controls for the printer. The controls consist of several buttons, including Power, Menu, Back, Zoom, Display, Stop/Clear, and Print. Using the four-way directional pad that's located in the middle of the buttons, I was easily able to select and print the photos I wanted. The selection process also allows you to determine the number of prints you want of each photo. The resulting prints looked great. This is impressive because for my first round of prints I had left all the printer settings at default. To test the speed of the printing, I timed six separate prints using different photos of varying degrees of complexity. Epson’s claim of 37 seconds per print was spot on. Out of the six, four took exactly 37 seconds to print, one took 36 seconds to print, and one took 38 seconds to print. Next I inserted an SD card with 60 of my photos on it, selected them all, and hit the print button. Here is where I ran into an interesting issue, the paper feed tray of this printer only accepts 20 sheets at a time. So I ended up having to reload the paper three times during my 60-photo-print. While this was kind of annoying, the speed with which it prints and the quality of those prints made up for it. Sacrifices must be made to make a printer this small. Other than having to reload the paper three times, it handled the 60 prints like a champ, never missing a beat. After this and a battery of similar tests that I performed, I must say that I am quite impressed with the printer overall.