Samsung SPP-2040 review

We've reviewed many Samsung laser printers in Shopper, but this is the company's first compact photo printer. The SPP-2040 is a stylish little device, with smart plastics and a slim LCD screen.

The SPP-2040 comes in a box that's divided into separate compartments like an iPod's. Opening it reveals a baffling exhortation to "touch the moment". The printer's main parts come in bags with matter-of-fact name tags such as 'paper cassette' and 'power adaptor'. We searched among them, but the moment had gone.

'Forever' seemed an inauspicious word to find printed on the jacket of Samsung's quick start guide, but installing the driver was painless. Dye-sublimation printers don't need to be aligned or calibrated by the user, so we were able to start printing as soon as we'd fitted the supplied 10-sheet ink ribbon.

Replacement consumables are available in 40- or 120-sheet packs of paper and ink, but neither are particularly easy to find online. Using the 120-sheet packs, each 6x4" print costs around 24p, which is very competitive. Unlike Canon's Selphy range, no other paper sizes are available.

Samsung says this printer can produce each photo in as little as 60 seconds. It didn't quite reach this speed when printing from a PC, but it did complete six test pictures in six minutes and 53 seconds. The Dell Photo Printer 540 reviewed in Labs, Shopper August 2005 was about five seconds faster per print, but the SPP-2040's print quality is higher.

Because dye-sublimation prints are created by diffusion, they sometimes suffer from soft outlines. Those from the SPP-2040 are sharper than most, but we noticed a characteristic bleed in one of our test shots. Part of the subject's pale arm inherited a blue tinge before disappearing into his navy T-shirt.

Dye-sublimation prints aren't susceptible to grain, but they occasionally exhibit a subtle blockiness. This was visible in the light skies of many of our test shots, but only picky people would be likely to notice.

The SPP-2040's print quality might fall short of Epson's PictureMate 500, reviewed in What's New, Shopper October 2005, but it's faster, cheaper and just as easy to use. We'd recommend it as a quick photo printer to partner a mid-range digital camera, but for this price you could buy an A4 photo inkjet.