Product Reviews

The Fujifilm Printpix CX-400 photo printer differs from other photo printers due to the inclusion of a novel thermal print technology producing a coloured image from a sandwich of cyan, magenta and yellow layers incorporated within the dedicated coated paper. The proprietary Printpix system uses only thermal energy from the print head as well as UV light to fix the image and requires no additional ink ribbons or cartridges. There are several benefits from this thermal-autochrome process including some claimed ecological advantages as well as long term image stability and durability, but the most obvious is the ease in setting up coupled with minimal maintenance thereafter. That said, loading the roll of 4in Printpix paper onto the holder and removing to store in the supplied case once printing is over, is a bind.

The device wouldn't appear out of place amongst Fujifilm's range of photo-finishing equipment installed in high street labs up and down the country, but looks odd sitting next to any Mac. With a footprint of 250 x 330mm and a maximum height of 179.5mm, it's smaller than the majority of inkjets but a detachable print delivery tray at the front adds another 130mm, so you will want to place the 5kg printer to the rear edge of your desk. A 100mm x 7m paper roll that will produce up to 40 6in x 4in prints is supplied with the printer. After a couple of minutes installing the paper under the mauve cover located at the top of the printer, we were up and running straight after a few seconds of noisy startup.

Get your cards

On the front of the printer are two media slots for direct printing: one for SmartMedia and the other for a PC card adaptor. These are commonly available for all the current media formats and Fujifilm includes a dual xD-Picture Card and SmartMedia adaptor for its digital camera users. If your camera uses CompactFlash, or any of the other formats for that matter, an adaptor will have to be purchased separately. Wisely, Fujifilm have included support for Microdrive using the additional

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travel-kit. Inserting a card into either slot, but not both simultaneously, brings up the images onto the tiny 1.8in colour monitor and large files do take some processing. While it's imperative to see your images for direct printing, a larger or better detailed screen would have been more helpful. There is an array of buttons, a rocker switch as well as a thumb pad located beneath the screen and using those and navigating the on-screen instructions can be circuitous at times, but after some experimentation, it all falls into place. However, all this is superfluous if you intend to print from your Mac using the supplied USB cable.

Unfortunately, Fujifilm's user-friendly FinePix Viewer software and printer drivers are not Mac OS X compatible and require Mac OS 8.6 to 9.2. However, the printer can act as an OS X card reader. A video out socket and supplied cable supplied allows for images to be viewed on a TV monitor, but most home users are unlikely to adopt that mode of operation. Using the FinePix software allows the same choice of options available directly from the printer. The maximum print size, with or without borders, is 7in x 4in, although the default is the popular 6in x 4in, however there are a number of other choices, including 3in x 4in, multiple printing of up to 25 images on a single 6in x 4in, and there are a number of ID settings for printing passport size images and the like. Each print is automatically trimmed and there is even an option to print to 3.9in x 4.7in (100 x 120mm) to fit a CD jewel case.

Digital effects include monochrome and sepia finishes and images can can be rotated and cropped as well as adjusted for brightness, density, contrast and colour. The printing process is one of continuous tone, as opposed to laying a number of ink dots to represent a pixel, so the images are extremely high quality. Time trialFujifilm quotes print speeds of around 100 seconds for borderless 6in x 4in prints, but we could only manage two minutes at best. Still, this is similar to most dye-subs and faster than most inkjets, with the exception of the Canon i950. Picture quality is first-class, with detailed images displaying excellent colour reproduction and good contrast.

The CX-400 is fast and incredibly simple to use, and it's only consumable is Printpix paper. The inclusion of the media reader allows direct printing compatibility with all makes of digital cameras, albeit with the purchase of an adaptor for some formats and increases its versatility. For sheer convenience, quality and the potential for many years of durable, fast prints the Printpix CX-400 is very compelling.