Epson PictureMate Zoom (PM290) Photo Lab Printer (Silver)

Work as advertise. Wish I can buy ink separate from photo paper. I have at least 10 to 15 people ask about the printer. I guess Epson should give a discount for advertisement I done for them with this printer.

Pros: great print quality. Cons: eats up print cartridge fast. Must buy replacement with photo paper combo kit (unless you try off brand).

It may be small, but big on picture quality. I had seen this machine a couple of years back at a scrapbooking convention, and had already seen the quality of the pictures. I was impressed for it's size, I didn't expect much. I do already have a much larger EPSON printer that is over 24" long, that cost over $1000 when it came out, and can print 13x17 pictures with not only 10 cartridges of ink, but 5 of them being black. Yes, this is a phenomenal printer too, especially since I do so many black & white photos, but certainly not portable. I wasn't able to find this PictureMate printer anywhere in a store, no matter where I looked, but didn't consider going directly to Epson at the time. I was just surprised it couldn't be found at Best Buy or other Computer stores. Two years later, I attended another CRAFT HOBBY ASSOCIATION convention and took a class, which was not sponsored by Epson. This class changed my thinking about scrapbooking and my style at this time in my life, wanting to simplify everything. I got to use this PictureMate printer in that class; print as much as I wanted, and try all the menu settings and options out of the box. I have never used my camera flash storage directly to printer before either. I always download all my photos, and store them in folders, and rotate them and organize them in Photoshop Elements, which is time-consuming and vulnerable at the same time. The printer takes many camera's flash storage, and it was simple without having to read manuals. It was super fast & easy, and I LOVE the index prints. It also surprized me having all those different print sizes that would fit on a 4x6 borderless (if you choose) sheet of photo paper. Two years after I initially saw it, I realized it had been improved and had more options, including the cd writer! How convenient! This PictureMate is even better than I expected. I originally wanted this just to take this to scrapbooking crops and our annual scrapbooking retreat since it has power cord, but can even run 9 hours on rechargeable battery! I thought it would be great to have current pictures from crops and conventions and be able to print them out to scrapbook them immediately in some of my class projects! But since I took that new class showing me how to scrapbook a condensed version of a calendar year into a smaller book with plenty of journaling pages from Creative Imaginations, I've got this printer on my desk and used it quickly to put together mini-books from our summer vacations. SO, I'm kind of glad that I had waited because i got even more for my money, payed the same price as I would have at Epson, and earned rewards from AMAZON for doing so! What I didn't expect, is that my larger photo printer would be getting dusty!

The pictures you get are gorgeous. If you want to pay about a buck a pic, that is. The ink cartridge DOES NOT LAST! We get between 35 and 50 pictures, not 150. This is the second time it has happened, and we use the cartridge well before the "use by" date. See the reviews on the cartridge pack for verification. This was our first Epson, we usually only buy HP, and this will be our last. Too bad Epson would rather make a buck on print packs than be customer loyalty oriented, but what else can we expect these days?

i highly recommend this product...the print quality is proffessional grade it is fast in printing multiple prints the cd burner is a really nice fearture you can add clip art make wallet size prints and even edit the pictures. i have no regrets in buying this printer only con i can say about it is that it doesnt print 5x7 but thats ok not really a big deal