Review: Canon Selphy 4×6 Photo Printer

Given that I’m taking pictures again, I wanted a way to make nice looking prints of my favorites so that I can show them off and see what other folks think. We’ve got an all-in-one inkjet printer that’s not bad, but it’s also shared with everyone in the house, and everyone in the house expects it to have 8.5″ by 11″ paper in it at all times. It’s not so much that they would try to print to it while I’m printing photos as that I’d load it with 4×6 paper and then forget about it…and then somebody’s school report would appear in 4×6 pages.

I looked around and found the Canon SELPHY CP910, which turns out to be just a nice little printer. It prints 4×6 photos, and that’s pretty much all it does. It has an SD card slot, and you can connect to it from a computer via a USB cable or WiFi. It makes about one print a minute, possibly longer over WiFi. It’s tiny, about 7″ wide by 5″ deep by a little over 2″ high, and costs from $85 to $99 depending on where you buy it.

It isn’t an inkjet; instead it uses cartridges of a colored film and special photo paper, which you buy together. $32 at Amazon gets you 108 sheets of 4×6 paper and enough “ink” to print all 108 of them, which works out to about 30 cents a print. By comparison, our local Fedex store charges about $15 for 24-36 prints, if I remember correctly, or from 42 to 62 cents a print, and is rather less convenient.

I’ve had it for a week and a half and have made forty-some prints in that time. Of all of them, only one printed badly, and I think it was probably my fault. The Selphy is meant to be portable, and so the place where the paper tray snaps is in covered by a plastic access hatch. If you leave the paper tray in the printer while the printer is turned off there’s a gap where dust can get inside, and I think that that’s what happened. Since then I’ve consistently removed the paper tray, put it in a drawer, and closed the hatch when I turn off the printer, and since then all of the prints have been normal.

One of the reviewers at B&H photo says that he brings a flock of Selphys to parties, to make instant prints of the photos he’s taking. Apparently they just keep working, and the ink usage is always right in line with the paper supply. Certainly, that’s been my experience so far.

So if you need 4×6 prints with no fuss, it seems like a nice deal. If you buy one, though, be sure to by a box of paper and ink; the printer comes with just enough to make a very few prints.