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.
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]