Canon Selphy CP1500 wireless compact photo printer review

Many of today’s portable or pocket photo printers are capable of producing a single print size, whether 2-inch by 2-inch mini-prints or 4-inch by 6-inch snapshots. . Canon’s $139.99 Selphy CP1500 wireless compact photo printer, the fourth iteration of the Selphy CP series we’ve seen since March 2014, can (with an inexpensive optional adapter) deliver up to four different sizes, some with adhesive backing and some without. Like its publisher-award-winning CP1200 and CP1300 predecessors, the Selphy CP1500 is relatively fast and produces high-quality prints at very competitive running costs, earning it the third consecutive pick in the series as our compact photo printer. favourite.

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Not just an incremental upgrade

I don’t know why Canon skipped the “CP1400” model number, but this year’s Selphy certainly brings a lot of new and improved features, which we’ll detail in a minute. Let’s talk about the overall design of the printer first. In the United States, it is available in black or white…

The two Selphy color options (Credit: Canon)

It is also available in other parts of the world in pink. (The CP1300 was available in all three colors throughout.) And while the CP1500’s size and weight—2.5 x 7 x 5.4 inches (HWD) and 2.5 pounds loaded with paper and ink—are almost identical, old and new models do not. look a lot alike.

The new Selphy CP1500 (right) is not as complicated as the previous model, the CP1300 on the left. (Credit: Canon)

An optional $90 battery that the company rates for about 54 prints on a charge adds an additional 0.6 pounds, bringing the printer to just over 3 pounds not including its AC adapter and power cord.

The optional battery is good for just over 50 prints. (Credit: Canon)

The control panel consists of a few buttons – Menu, Back, OK (Enter) and Power – anchored by a 3.5-inch LCD touchscreen (slightly larger than the CP1300’s 3.2-inch screen). Navigation is done via a four-way pad with the OK button in the middle, but the rest of the button array has been helpfully reduced from eight to just three.

The streamlined control panel has five fewer buttons than the previous model. (Credit: Canon)

Competing 4 x 6-inch compact dye-sublimation photo printers (commonly referred to as dye-subs) include the HP Sprocket Studio, Kodak Photo Printer Dock, Liene 4×6 Instant Photo Printer, and Kodak Mini 3 Retro (3×3) Portable Printer. All of their control panels are bare bones compared to the convenient controls of the Selphy CP series.

The main reason for the onboard commands is that, as we will explain in the next section, this Selphy can print from several types of USB and SD flash memory devices. The dry dye ink cartridge loads into a compartment on the right side of the printer.

Ink cartridges load in a compartment on the right side of the chassis. (Credit: Canon)

Photo paper (about 18 sheets) loads into a removable tray that slides out the front of the printer and finished prints land on top of the input tray.

The paper feed trays fit into a front compartment. (Credit: Canon)

Out of the box, the CP1500 prints 4 x 6 inch photo postcards. For $13 you can purchase an additional paper cassette which adds three more print size choices: L size (3.5 x 4.7 inches), card size (2.1 x 3.4 inches) and square label (2.1 x 2.1 inches). Media for each of these three sizes (but not the 4 x 6 inch stock) are available with or without a sticky (adhesive) backing.

The $13 PCC-CP400 adapter supports three additional print sizes. (Credit: Canon)

The bundled software not only lets you specify the print size, but provides templates for creating collages and other layouts from images from your smartphone, your favorite cloud sites, or both.

Finally, as mentioned, the Selphy is a dye-sublimation printer. Unlike portable Zink (zero ink) photo printers which use special paper infused with colors released by the application of heat and produce images in a relatively quick single pass, the CP1500 performs four passes. The first three swipes lay down cyan, magenta, and yellow ink, and the last applies a clear coat that protects the image from fingerprints and dust and helps colors pop. Canon claims that with proper storage, images from the Selphy should last a century.

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Using the Selphy CP1500: Connectivity and Software

The CP1500’s standard interfaces include USB 2.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g and Apple AirPrint, as well as ports for USB-C (not USB-A) flash drives and SD and microSD flash cards. The SD card slot is located in the upper left corner of the compartment that houses the paper cassette, while the USB-C port is on the back of the chassis.

You can also print from a few apps for mobile devices, Canon Print/Inkjet Selphy and Canon Selphy Layout 3.0. The former is a basic driver for printing from a number of iOS or Android apps, while Selphy Layout lets you do all sorts of tweaks, fixes and improvements, such as applying filters, overlaying text or using frames, banners and collages.

You can print vignettes, collages and other layouts from Canon’s Selphy Photo Layout app. (Credit: Canon)

The latest version allows you to choose a gloss, semi-gloss or satin final finish or imprint patterns in the overcoat layer that give your images a subtle textured appearance. You can also embed QR codes in your prints that will send the viewer to a specified URL when scanned by a smartphone or tablet camera.

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Fast, lab-quality prints

Canon claims that postcard size prints (4 x 6 inches) from the Selphy CP1500 take around 41 seconds and credit card size photos (2.1 x 3.4 inches) around 23 seconds. It’s on the fast side of average; even most photo-centric desktop inkjet printers aren’t as fast at producing 4-by-6 prints. (The Canon Pixma G620, for example, takes about 46 seconds.)

Since the Selphy doesn’t come with Windows software (although you can print it from most Windows programs, just like you would from any other printer), I ignored our PC Windows benchmark in favor of printing our test images wirelessly from a Samsung Galaxy Note smartphone. running the latest version of Android and the Canon Print/Inkjet Selphy app. (I’ve also printed a few postcard-sized photos from USB sticks and SD cards, which take an average of 38 seconds each.)

The old Selphy CP1300 printer and the 2022 Liene 4×6 printer produce the same photos in about a minute each. The HP Sprocket Studio Plus took a dismal 2 minutes and 5 seconds (although that was in 2019; chances are HP has updated its firmware and software since then). The Kodak Mini 3 produces its 3-inch-by-3-inch borderless images in 43 seconds each, while that company’s 2017 Photo Print Station takes nearly two minutes. Conclusion: The Selphy CP1500 is one of the fastest compact photo printers on the market.

As far as print quality goes, while I’m not a fan of the thin and somewhat flimsy feel of Canon’s photo paper for this device (it’s definitely not postcard paper), the results are consistently excellent. Colors are vivid and accurate, with true blue skies and oceans and realistic skin tones. Detail is fine, with no noticeable graininess even in areas with relatively light ink coverage.

Please note, however, that these ratings are based on comparisons between comparable portable photo printers. Even dye-sublimation compacts fall short of brilliantly colored, highly detailed snapshots of a five- or six-ink photo-optimized desktop printer, such as the aforementioned Canon Pixma G620 or Epson Expression Photo XP-8700. Of course, desktop inkjet printers generally cost more, are much larger, and cannot print three different sizes of stickers, nor are they as easy to transport, set up, and use.

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The price you pay: printing costs

While shopping for consumables for the Selphy CP1500, I found a variety of bundles and offers. Consumables come in packages containing both paper and dry dye ink cartridges. A pack good for 108 postcard-size prints sells on Canon’s site for $35.99 (about 33 cents per photo), with smaller packs costing a few cents more per print.

Each consumable pack includes paper and ink. (Credit: Canon)

You can find great deals on 4 x 6 inch consumables; I’ve noticed lots on Amazon and eBay, for example a four-pack of Canon’s RP-108 kit mentioned above (432 prints in total) for $124.99, bringing the price down to about 29 cents per Photo. Smaller sizes aren’t as good, especially self-adhesive backings. A pack of 18 card-sized stickers (2.1 inches) will cost you around 83 cents per print on Canon’s site.

By comparison, prints from the Liene 4×6 will cost you around 50 cents each, and the HP Sprocket Studio and Kodak Photo Dock around 44 and 39 cents respectively. The Kodak Mini’s 3-inch square prints cost about 30 cents each. This makes the CP1500 one of the cheapest 4 x 6 inch photo printers.

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Verdict: another Selphy winner

Canon easily claims another Editors’ Choice award for the Selphy CP1500. The new printer offers a host of enhancement and beautification features that set it apart from the pack, as does its relatively low price and very competitive cost of consumables. Like its predecessors, this Selphy is an affordable way to turn your family’s phone pictures into beautiful photos and stickers.