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General Performance
Warm-Up Time (5.37)
Warm up time is the amount of time it takes for a printer to go from off until it is ready to print. The Epson PM240 took 19 seconds to complete this process. This is slower than most competing printers, including the Sony DPP-F90’s 7 seconds and Canon CP730’s 11 seconds.
Power Usage (8.16)
Like most of its competitors, , the Sony DPP-F90 and Canon CP730, the Epson PM240 did not draw any power when off during our power tests. In ready mode, when the printer is powered up and ready to print, the Epson PM240 drew 4 watts of power. This is slightly more than the Canon CP730’s 3 watts and the same as the Sony DPP-F90.
The Epson PM240 was one of the more efficient printers when printing, using only 12 watts of power as measured by our wattage meter. This is much lower than either of the competitors we tested. The Canon CP730 drew between 50 and 62 watts when printing while the Sony DPP-F90 drew between 50 and 60 watts. The Epson PM240's self-cleaning feature drew between 4 and 12 watts of power, for an average of 12 watts. This is the same average as the HP A440, another small compact inkjet photo printer, although the A440 had a slightly smaller range at between 9 and 15 watts.
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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 Snap
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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 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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Speed/Timing (5.44)
The Epson PictureMate 240 printed color photos at the 4x6-inch size print at 1.4 pages per minute (ppm). Larger file sizes did not influence printing time. PrinterInfo tests photo printing speeds with two different sized color images—one 5.8 MB file and one 18 MB file—at the highest quality setting the printer can handle. The PM240's times were the highest of the four competitors recently tested--the Canon Selphy CP730, HP Photosmart A440, and the Sony PictureStation FP90 being the other three.
The Epson PM240 and Sony FP90 printed color photos at the 4x6-inch print size at 1.36 ppm from a memory card. However, the PM240 slowed down to .09 ppm when printing large files. Both printers performed similarly when printing small, but the Epson PM240 was the slowest of the group when printing large files from a memory card.
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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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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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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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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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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 (4.27)
To test the color accuracy of the Epson PictureMate Snap, we printed out an electronic GretagMacbeth color checker generated from the original LAB values. We measured the values of the printed chart using an Eye-One Pro spectrophotometer and compared it to the ideal values.
The Epson PM240 surpassed our expectations, registering just a 5.03 mean color error and exceeding the level of accuracy of some of Canon’s mid-range consumer models. The Epson 240’s blue tones had more red and less cyan than the original chart values, boosting the apparent vibrancy and giving those colors more of a blue and less purple look. The Epson’s handling of memory and skin colors were also surprisingly accurate for a compact consumer printer.
Color Gamut (3.52)
What this test shows is how much of the standard Adobe RGB color space the printer can accurately reproduce. The more of this space it can fill, the more colors its printed images will contain. On the graph produced by our GamutVision testing software, the solid color form represents the color space that the printer outputs, and the grid is the entire Adobe RGB color space. The closer they are, the more colors the printer can represent and the higher the score.
The Epson PM240 scored higher than the other compact photo printers tested, such as the Canon Selphy CP730 and thw Sony FP90. It covered a good portion of the Adobe RGB color range (48.65 percent), which is reasonable. This seems to be a consistent range for these compact printers, but much less than multifunction inkjets and especially higher-end photo printers, which can score in the sixtieth percentile.
Dmax (8.70)
Our Dmax test evaluates how dark printers can print their blacks. This is a very important print quality factor since the whitest white of prints is set by the paper tone, meaning the darkest black determines the extent of the tonal range. A larger tonal range means better gradations through different tones, such as people’s faces, and corresponds in importance to dynamic range in cameras. We evaluated the darkest black by measuring the ratio of light reflected by the paper. This measurement yields a density value, called Dmax, in which the less reflected light the higher the value. We printed our tests on Epson PictureMate glossy paper as well as Ilford Galerie smooth glossy paper. The prints were also created with both the stock color profile supplied by the printer software as well as a custom color profile we created for each paper.
The Epson PM240 scored extremely well on Dmax, with a value of 2.43. This is significantly better than even the Canon Pro9000, a professional photo printer (Dmax 2.25), and a high-achieving small dye sublimation printer, the Sony FP90 (Dmax 2.30). This score was produced using Epson glossy paper and the stock color profile.
Black and White (7)
The PM240 reproduced black-and-white images remarkably well, Good performance was to be expected considering the printers excellent Dmax score, and the Snap delivered, holding details in the whites and showing fine detail and variations in tones. Unfortunately, the darkest tones were blocking up, and this caused the printer's score to lower.
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