Epson PictureMate Show Digital Photo Printer

The Epson PictureMate Show prints photos that are dazzlingly sharp; and it doubles, less effectively, as a digital photo frame. Despite the handle it's not particularly portable, and if you want to take advantage of the large (7-inch) tilt screen as a photo viewer, you'll have to overcome both the printer's boxy ugliness and the strangely low-res screen. But if you want to print lab-quality pictures, you'll not be disappointed by the PictureMate Show.

With the PictureMate Show Photo Printer, Epson has made a digital photo printer that can honestly live up to the phrase, "lab quality." In comparing this printer's output with photos printed on other dedicated photo printers (which I thought were generally excellent), the colors from the PictureMate Show excelled.

The Epson PictureMate Show was almost exactly as fast as the PictureMate Charm; a 4x6 print took 52 seconds to print (the Canon Selphy takes just over a minute. The printer offers a few basic on-board photo editing options, such as red-eye removal, and a few color options (sepia or black-and-white). The printer can only be used with the included remote control, which makes sense if you're using it as a digital frame but can be a bit cumbersome when you're actually printing photos (I touched the large, tilting screen a few times, forgetting that it wasn't a touchscreen but wishing it was). Also, the screen's resolution is 800x480 dpi, which isn't particularly good or sharp.

The Show can print without being attached to a computer (it accepts a wide variety of SD card and is PictBridge compatible; it can also connect via USB to a computer).

As big as the screen is, photos don't look all that great displayed on it. It's not got a huge amount of internal memory, either--it comes with 270 MB built in, though of course you can up that by using a memory card.

The printer doesn't come cheap, either, at about $300. A Bluetooth adapter will run another $39, with ink and paper another $37.99 for "about 150 glossy photos." So while it does a great job on lab-quality photos, if you're serious about wanting a digital photo frame, you might want to consider buying one separately, since this big box isn't going to complement anyone's decor.

Disclosure: Review samples were provided by the manufacturer. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.