Canon's new dye-sublimation photo printer is a departure from the boring old box designs: it's basically a bucket, and is aimed at kids. The bucket part unclips, and is supposed to store wires and accessories rather than sand and a collection of worms. The printer itself is designed for easy operation, with big buttons, a 2.5-inch TFT and accepting all varieties of SD card, MMC and MemoryStick and xD too.
Printing is at 300 x 300 dpi color with 256 hues per color, and up to borderless postcard-size photos—an L-size (4.7 x 3.5-inch) printout takes around 43 seconds. The printer has an option to recognize faces in the imagery and optimize the print and background around them, and even does automatic red-eye correction. Connectivity is USB and IR, with support for the direct camera connection PictBridge, and there's also an optional battery pack.
*$13 for 48 AA, $12 for 48 AAA, $8 for 20 AAA, $8 for four 9V batteries
When we were kids we just used our Polaroids for instant photos, but since today's kids have to haul a printer around along with their digital camera, then this design is pretty neat. Available June 15th, in Japan at first, for around $150. [AV Watch]
DISCUSSION
If its for kids, why does it have parts that can be lost? Kids lose parts the first time they use anything. They just do.