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General performance
Warm-up (6.97)
The Selphy ES1 warms up very quickly, within 8 seconds. This is on par with other dye sublimation printers and close to many of the compact inkjets.
Power Usage (7.34)
The Selphy ES1 used no power while off and only a minimal amount—3 watts—while in ready status. The chart below compares power usage in watts for six compact photo printers, both dye sub and inkjet.
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Power Usage (watts)
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Off
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Idle
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Ready
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Printing
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Self-Cleaning
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HP Photosmart A440
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0
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n/a
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3
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8
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12
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Epson PictureMate 240
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0
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n/a
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4
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12
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12
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Canon Selphy ES1
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0
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n/a
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3
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32
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n/a
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Canon Selphy CP730
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0
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n/a
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3
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56
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n/a
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Sony PictureStation FP90
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0
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n/a
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4
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55
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n/a
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Panasonic PX20
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1
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5
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6
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31.5
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n/a
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While the ES1 uses a lot more power—32 watts—during printing than comparable inkjet printers, it used the least wattage of any of the dye sublimation printers we’ve tested so far.
Photo Speed/Timing (3.26)
The ES1 was pretty slow in the speed timing category, scoring only better than the Panasonic PX20, which was overall a poorly performing dye sub printer. It printed 4" x 6" prints from a computer in about 80 seconds, which is within about 5 to 10 seconds less than most other dye subs, except for the Sony FP90, which was about 20 seconds faster.
Printing speeds from memory cards were comparable to print speeds from a computer. Notably, the printer would not even recognize some of our larger file sizes, so we weren’t able to test print speeds for this.
If speed is what you’re looking for, then you’re better off with an inkjet printer, such as the Epson PictureMate Flash, which can print in about half the time of the ES1 (and not incidentally, can produce much higher quality prints).
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Photo Print Speeds in Pages per Minute
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From Computer
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From CompactFlash
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Small file
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Large file
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Small file
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Large file
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Sony PictureStation FP90
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1.18
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1.06
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1.36
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1.12
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Epson PictureMate Snap
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1.40
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1.40
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1.36
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0.10
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Canon Selphy CP730
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0.83
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0.81
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0.98
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1.00
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Canon Selphy ES1
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0.74
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0.74
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0.81
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n/a
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Panasonic FX-PX20
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0.73
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0.57
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0.56
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0.48
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HP Photosmart A440
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0.61
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0.60
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n/a
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n/a
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Color Accuracy (2.50)
While the color accuracy score of the Canon Selphy ES1 seems low, compared to other dye sub printers, it’s as good as or better than the competition. The printer’s mean error was 8.60. This is an average measure of how far the printer strayed from idealized values of a standard color chart, the Gretag Macbeth Colorchecker. This chart contains 24 color patches representative of oft-photographed colors and black-and-white tones. The chart below is an example of the chart for reference, not the actual printed chart from the iP1800.
This small printer was quite a surprise, exhibiting very low flesh tone errors, which is good news for portrait and family snapshot picture-takers. White, gray, and black tones also showed low error, meaning relatively neutral black-and-white prints are possible. (Unfortunately, the tonal range itself is limited. See the Monochrome section below.) As with many printers, some blue and green tones showed the highest errors, notably cyan and bluish green. Manufacturers often tweak these colors to make them appear more in line with what they think the consumers like.
Color Gamut (2.35)
The range of colors that a printer is capable of reproducing is known as the color gamut. Most often, this range of colors is compared to a known standard, such as the Adobe RGB color space, which contains 1,225,088 colors. The score we assign a printer is based on the percentage of that color range the test printer can achieve. High-end printers have been known to achieve close to seventy percent, but most printers score within the 40th and 50th percentiles.
There are no color profiles associated with the Selphy ES1, so we created our own using the Gretag Macbeth EyeOneMatch software and the EyeOne Pro spectrophotometer. With this profile, the Selphy ES1 was only able to achieve 38 percent of the Adobe RGB space.
A visualization of these two spaces is shown below, with the wire frame representing the Adobe space and the colored blob within the frame representing the printer profile. There is clearly a gap all around the space, indicating a failure to represent a significant amount of colors, especially magenta, blues, and greens.
Dmax (4.51)
Dmax is a measure of the density of the darkest tone a printer can produce. The ideal value is 2.50, but this is rarely achieved, especially by printers in the compact photo printer category. Dmax values above 2.1 are considered good, with high-end photo printers usually achieving between 2.25 and 2.30.
With a dmax of 2.00, the Selphy ES1 scored just below average for all compact photo printers tested. It was even with the other Selphy model, the CP730, but well below the Epson PM240 (dmax of 2.44), an inkjet printer, and well above the Panasonic PX20 (dmax of 1.56), another dye sublimation printer. (It does not hold that dye subs always have low dmax values and inkjets have high values. Case in point is the difference between the Sony FP90, a dye sub, with its high value of 2.30, and the HP Photosmart A440, an inkjet, with its low value of 1.72.)
Monochrome (4)
We used the black ink cartridge to make our black-and-white test prints. While the Selphy ES1 does indeed have decent blacks for a compact printer, evidenced by its average dmax score, the range of gray tones seems severely limited. Our black-and-white test image showed lots of contrast, but not a lot of middle tones. Shadows were blocked and whites were blown out. Overall, this was very disappointing, especially considering the decent dmax value and the black ink cartridge.
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