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Olympus P-10 Digital Photo Printer

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CNET editors' rating: 3.0 stars Good
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Product summary

The good: Speedy; adorable yet functional design; prints directly from a digital camera; easy to use.

The bad The bad: So-so print quality; limited features for the price; no removable media slots or LCD; lousy tech support.

The bottom line: The Olympus P-10 is fast on the draw, but its lackluster prints and limited features don't justify the price.

Specifications: Printer Type: Compact photo printer - Dye sublimation - Color; Max media size: 3.95 in x 5.83 in; Connectivity technology: Wired; See full specs

Price range: $349.99

CNET editors' review

Reviewed by: Kristina Blachere
Reviewed on: 04/30/2004
Released on: 08/29/2003

Printers aren't Olympus's bread and butter. The company makes only a handful, and as you might expect, they're all photo printers. Olympus's latest, the P-10 Digital Photo Printer, billed as the fastest portable photo printer on the market, is certainly speedy, but for $200, we expect either top-of-the-line output or an abundance of useful features. Unfortunately, the P-10 has neither. We're big fans of the Olympus P-10's cube-shaped design; it's cute, simple, and at 7 inches high, very compact. It looks like a petite workgroup laser printer, complete with a 50-sheet input drawer that slides out of the front panel. The ink ribbon slides out of a hatch in the side panel. The P-10's silver-matte body is offset by a dramatic teal-blue front panel. The only control on the body is the power button. You can connect the printer to your PC via the USB port in the back (cable not included). The P-10 also supports PictBridge, so you can connect any compatible digital camera to the USB port on the front panel. On the downside, the P-10 doesn't have removable media slots or an LCD, so you can't print directly from your camera's memory card. If you don't have a PictBridge camera, you'll have to print through your PC. If you demand a lot of options, such as a card reader, you may be happier with a printer that has more features, such as the HP Photosmart 245. Olympus was pretty stingy with the P-10's features. On the included CD-ROM you'll find the standard drivers but none of the bundled image-management and image-editing software we've come to expect with snapshot printers. Even its drivers are basic. The print window has only three accessible tabs: Paper, Graphics, and About. Within each tab, Paper covers paper size, number of copies, and borderless printing; Graphics contains a slider bar for adjusting brightness, contrast, gamma, and sharpness; and About just tells you what version of the driver you're using. We expected a little more.

Like many snapshot printers, the P-10 comes with a small 5-print starter pack that includes a ribbon cartridge and paper. A 40-print replacement pack costs $35, and a 100-print pack costs $65, for a per-print cost of 65 or 88 cents, respectively--a bit on the pricey side. One notable quirk: Olympus's 4x6 paper is slightly smaller than its alleged dimensions. The Olympus P-10 performed very well in CNET Labs' speed tests. It cranked out a 4x6 borderless photo in 1 minute, 4.2 seconds--among the fastest times we've seen.

CNET Labs' photo-printer speed test (Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Minutes per page

Olympus P-10

1.07

Canon CP-300

1.50

Sony DPP-EX50

1.54

HP Photosmart 245

2.36

The P-10's prints should please the average digital photographer. At first glance, our test photos appeared smooth and detailed, with pleasing colors. On close scrutiny, however, we saw jaggies in details such as clock hands and noticed a general loss of detail in both shadows and highlights. For example, we could barely see a white egg against a white background or the dark pebbles in a fish tank. The colors in the P-10's prints are also a bit cool, especially compared to those in top-rated prints such as the ones produced by the Sony DPP-EX50 or the full-size Epson Stylus R300M. Skin tones look especially pale.

CNET Labs project leader Dong Van Ngo contributed to this section. The printer comes with a standard one-year warranty. Phone tech support is available Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. ET. On Olympus's Web site, you'll find a Learning Center with helpful, if general, digital-imaging tutorials. But when we went looking for information on the P-10, we couldn't find specific FAQs or a manual, which is totally unacceptable. We also struck out when looking for driver downloads. You can contact e-mail support 24/7, but the site was down every time we tried to get through. Olympus's tech-support site needs a major overhaul.

See more CNET content tagged:: Olympus Corp.,; printer

User reviews

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Showing 1 of 1 user reviewSee 1 user review
3.5 stars

"photo printer"

by K. Johnson on October 8, 2005

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Olympus P-10 Digital Photo Printer: $349.99

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Reviews from around the Web

machome.com

Editors' rating: 20

Summary: PictBridge-compliant digital camera

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goodgearguide.com.au

Editors' rating: 50

Summary: While the initial outlay on the CAMEDIA P-10 is inexpensive, its running costs are higher than many Kodak and Canon printers and its print quality is not as good. However, it is a very neat unit, so if you're looking for something that won't take up to mu

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