Have you ever been at a party and taken great photos, but have never been able to provide prints on the spot? Wouldn’t it be great to be there with a little printer that runs on batteries and pops out 4×6″ prints in less than a minute? Well, that’s exactly what the Epson PictureMate Dash is for.

As part of Epson’s personal photo lab line of printers, the PictureMate Dash is the little brother to the PictureMate Zoom which has a built-in CD burner for archiving photos. Both models have a built-in 3.6″ LCD display and work without a PC. The printers support CompactFlash, SD/MMC, Memory Stick, Microdrive, and xD memory cards - so you’re camera should be covered here.

Instead of lugging around the power adapter, a rechargeable lithium-ion battery is available ($50) which slides into the back of the unit and provides you with complete portability.

As I mentioned in the beginning, the PictureMate Dash is a 4×6 printer, so if you’re looking for bigger sizes, you still may want to stick with a higher-end printer (even if it isn’t so portable). But, the PictureMate is perfect for the holiday parties where party-animals can get their pictures printed on the spot.

In our testing, we printed three different test images, testing the printer’s print quality, and speed. From the time we hit the Print button to the time the print finished, it took 45 seconds - Epson’s 37 seconds is measured from the start of paper feed, but 45 seconds is still pretty fast for a photo printer. In print quality, the Epson did a great job at reproducing sharp and vibrant images.

You can still hook up a PC to the PictureMate Dash and use your favorite photo editing software (or the included ArcSoft PhotoImpression) to print, but the luxury of toting this thing around everywhere is a great thing to have.

At $99, this is perfect for this holiday season’s Kodak (or Epson) moments, and earns our rating of 5 out of 5 stars. The PictureMate Zoom retails for $100 bucks more at $199.

Pros

• Good color reproduction.
• Fast print speed (45 seconds).
• Battery option for ultimate portability.
• Large 3.6″ LCD

Cons

• None.

Final Verdict
5 out of 5 stars

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