Canon Selphy ES30 Dye Sublimation Portable Printer Review

Review of the new compact photo printer, the Canon Selphy ES30, which uses dye sublimation to create lab-quality photo prints.

Dye sublimation works by infusing dye into the paper, which creates a more permanent print, using a very similar method to that used to process digital photos in professional print labs.

The Canon Selphy ES30 range of compact photo printers and this model primarily works on 6x4 postcard-size paper. Paper and ink are loaded together using a special cartridge, and each cartridge can print 50 postcards. Each of the postcards has a tear-off strip to remove the white borders.

Printing can be done by inserting a memory card directly into the printer and using the onboard software, or you can connect to a desktop PC with a USB cable (not included). Once you tell the printer to print, it loads a postcard by spooling it out the bottom of the printer, then rotating it through 90°!

It then proceeds to print the yellow ink, then the cyan ink, then the magenta and finally the black. The whole point is done in about 1 minute 20 seconds and is of equal quality to an online photo printing service, but they work out at about 20p per print.

The device makesmakes a bit of noise when printing, which you can hear in the video, but it's no louder than a laser printer. It seems loud as it's a small device.

The print quality is very good. However, the colours are darker and less saturated than intended. Installing the colour profile in Windows helps a little, but I often have to increase brightness and saturation in Photoshop before sending it to the printer. I have also had problems with reading from memory cards. It is very picky about the card format and the image. I can't get it to read anything directly from my Canon 80d; it just shows "Incompatible JPEG".

Overall, it's a great little printer, if a little noisy.