Canon Selphy ES40 Portable Photo Printer

The Canon Selphy ES40 portable photo printer is small and compact, fun and easy to use, and it prints some amazing photos. It doesn't offer a whole lot of options, and you can only print 4x6 photos--but if that's what you're looking for, you can't beat this Selphy.

Wow. That's what I thought when I saw the sample pictures come out of this little printer, the Canon Selphy ES40. Wow. The colors were some of the best I've seen from any photo printer. That shouldn't have been such a surprise--I'm always pleased with results from Selphy, and so far I think dye-sublimation printers really do the best job on photos--but this little ES40 is so small that I didn't believe it would be able to compete with some of its bigger brothers.

Again, the Selhpy is a dye-sublimation printer--it uses a proprietary ink ribbon and special paper) that allows printing from a wide variety of media. Like other Selphys I've tried, a color 4x6 photo took just over one minute to print. Because it's a dye-sublimation printer, the photo comes out of the printer and is pulled back in several times to add new colors to the print. This one has an interesting twist--literally. When the printing begins, the photo paper comes out of the printer and rotates from landscape to portrait before it runs through the machine.

Basic photo-editing features such as frames and calendars are easy to use on the printer and there is a fairly useless voice-guidance system in case you have trouble figuring out the eight buttons. The printer has a carry handle (it weighs less than five pounds, about two kilos). A Bluetooth adapter is an extra $49.99, which would allow you to print easily from your phone or computer without any wires; but it also accepts a very wide variety of memory cards.

If there's a downside to this printer, it's that you're committed to buying ink and paper from Canon. Ink and paper come together; on Canon's site, 100 sheets of paper plus ink are $31.99 (4x6), though I saw them a bit cheaper on PriceGrabber.

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