Photo Printers Compared: Epson Picturemate What you should know about the Epson Picturemate before you buy one and how in our opinion Dye Sublimation Printers are much better.

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STOP PRESS ! - Threat of Legal Action We have recently been sent a letter from Epson's in-house solicitor about the details we posted regarding their picturemate printer. It seems they feel that we have misrepresented their printer. As we are always trying to provide the customer with the correct information we have made some changes to the original page. In our opinion and the opinion of a large number of our customers (check our customer review pages), we still believe that Dye Sublimation printers offer better quality and value for money than Inkjet Printers when printing photos. We at System Insight believe in giving you the customer the facts and letting you make the decision.

Photo Printers Compared - Epson Picturemate
Like HP, Epson use Inkjet technology to produce the photo. The Epson Picturemate uses one inkjet cartridge that contains all the colours required to print the photo. This cartridge should print 100 photos although this is not guaranteed!. When using the printer you may have to print off a preview sheet to enable you to select which images you require. Paper & Ink Cartridges packs are available and Epson claim a cost per print of 29p.

Heres what a recent customer had to say about their picturemate:

What you should know about the Picturemate

• The resolution of the picturemate is 5760x1440dpi, this is does not mean the image will be better than an image printed at 300x300 dpi (why is this?) Just because a resolution is higher does not mean the image will look better. Dye sublimation printers can print 16.77 million colours unlike the Epson picturemate. Dye Sublimation printers can print 256 shades of a colour on one single dot unlike Inkjet Printers. In a commercial printing evironment a good quality print is 300x300 dpi. Dye sub printers also offer a "square resolution", meaning that the resolution is the same in both directions.
  
• Epson claim a photo life of 104 years, but also mention in the small print "The data is calculated by Epson’s accelerated test and it does not mean Epson guarantee periods" - this seems strange to us.
  
• Epson say that the print cartridge will last 100 prints and the cost per print is 29p. Although again they say "The cost per photo is based on estimated average use conditions. Actual yields will vary based on images, colour balance, environmental conditions and frequency of use." We know of people that have NOT achieved the 100 prints.
  
• If someone should accidentally spill a drink or rest a mug of coffee on them, then your Epson Picturemate photos may be spoilt. We stood a wet cup of coffee on a print from an Epson Picturemate and it WAS marked, when we tried the same with a Dye Sublimation print it was un-marked.
  
  
• In order to choose what pictures you wish to print, you either have to find the file name of the image, use a pictbridge camera or print an "index print" to choose the photo you wish (at a cost of 29p).
  
  So if you only wanted to print one image and you had to print an index print to do this it would cost 2x29p=58p!.
  
  Using a pictbridge camera with any photo printer means that the camera must be switched on all the time the image is been sent to the printer. This of course means that you can't use the camera during the printing process and that you may need a spare set of batteries for your camera if you are printing a number of photo's

We at System Insight believe that you the customer should have the full facts to hand before you part with your money on a product. That is why we provide full product details and let you make a choice.

We also offer a 7 day "try at home" policy on the Hi-Ti range of Dye Sublimation photo printers.