Canon SELPHY CP900 Wireless Color Photo Printer

We can't get this printer in the UK yet so I had to purchase from the US but apart from a brief stay in customs it all arrived fine. The single reason for purchasing the printer is that it can print directly from an iPad over WiFi without needing the need for a router and it does that just great and I'm very happy with the print quality. There are a couple of points to be aware, it uses coloured film to produce the photo and it does it a layer at a time printing CMYK so the paper is passed back and forth through the printer 4 times laying down each colour. This means it is a little slow printing but the resulting photo is totally dry and ready to handle as soon as it is finished and the film cartridges are easy to handle and as the printer is portable means there will be no spills and leaks as it gets thrown around. The cartridges do have a fixed number of prints they can produce and the one that comes with the printer is only capable of 5 so make sure you order more cartridges and paper as once a cartridge has produced its set number of prints its useless, you can't squeeze another print out, you can't refill them. As the cartridges are basically a spool of coloured film its also important to understand that printing a little colour of pic of something is going to use up one print, the same as printing a full borderless image so there is no point in trying to be efficient and conserve 'ink'. However buying more cartridges and paper isn't too expensive and you can get kits that bundle them together but it does means being reliant on Canon as no one else can produce 'refills. Another thing to point out is that if you want truly portable printing and go for a battery option you also need a charger and the two of them together cost more than the printer itself and they set external to the printer and plug into the power port on the printer so the printer is never free of wires. This is a real shame and its unfortunate that Canon couldn't find a way of making the battery clip on to the printer itself but I guess one positive is that as the battery is pretty large, much larger than anything for a camera or camcorder it should last a long time in between charges. In summary I am really happy with the printer and everyone I have shown it to agrees and if you need photo printing on the move with an iPad, iPhone etc its really the only option I have found that does it this well, yes its a pain the battery is external and you yes you need special consumables but all in all I have no regrets purchasing it. Oh and one last thing, I wanted to take full size screen prints from the iPad (pushing the Home and Sleep button together) and print them out but if you do that you can only print with a border and not borderless as it cuts off the edges of the image so if you find prints losing part of the image switch borderless printing off. This is done within the Canon app for the iPad/iPhone which you need to download to use with the printer, you can't print natively from the iPad direct to the printer in the way AirPrint works you do need the free Canon app.

Please note up front: As others have researched through Canon and stated, it does not work with Windows 8. If that's the operating system you're locked into using, you'll have to unfortunately look elsewhere for printer options.I primarily print 4x6 photos now and I bought this printer to save on the cost of constantly replacing ink cartridges and to enable wireless print from an iPhone. So far, mission accomplished on both goals. I had no problems configuring it to print from my iPhone 4S even without installing any software. Wireless connections can be tricky to establish and those having problems might want to ensure that their router is allowing new connections or try the Ad Hoc method of building a connection directly from their wireless device to the printer. The software itself installed without issue on my 64 bit Windows 7 computer and functions simply and with no errors or crashes. The print quality of pictures taken with my iPhone is, however, very disappointing as far as skin tone and texture is concerned and isn't consistent with the satisfying quality shown on the phone display. And that's irregardless of whether it's printed via wireless from the phone, printed from an SD card inserted into the printer, or printed from the Canon printer software using auto enhance. It might be related to my particular phone and I have yet to try printing from my wife's iPhone 5 so maybe that will prove better and maybe your experience will be different. I have no experience with using this printer and an Android device. On the other hand, feed it a file from a different source, even un-retouched, for example from my Canon 60D, and the quality and detail is incredible and really makes this printer a keeper. I'm also very pleased with the fact that the pictures will be very durable and fade resistant over time due to the dye sublimation process and the additional clear layer that the printer lays over the print. Although I don't plan to do so, it's also capable of becoming completely portable by adding a specially designed battery pack. I'm very satisfied with this printer and highly recommend it if it suits your needs and you can use it with one of the officially supported operating systems.