Geeky Traveller

It’s not often that you would think of a printer as being a travel gadget. After all, traditionally printers were quite large and even some of the photo printers that started coming out were still quite boxy. Enter the Epson PictureMate Dash.

First off, I often post things here that sound and look interesting to me but I actually own the Dash. Someone at Epson was kind enough to offer me a complimentary printer to try it out in exchange for an honest review. However, I would never postively review something if I didn’t honestly feel that way about it. Luckily, the Dash is truly an awesome printer so I am very happy to sing its praises right now.

Why would you want a printer for travel? I can think of several reasons. For one thing, if you’re traveling in a group, it could be nice to return to your hotel room or cottage and print up the day’s group shots or any photos someone else in your party really wanted a copy of. We all say, “oh I’ll send you the pictures” but sometimes it’s easy to forget or be lazy, so if you have a printer at your disposal on hand immediately, it’s easy to do it right away. To make the process super simple, you can print directly from your camera’s memory card and at 3.6″, the LCD is enormous and tilts for easy viewing (as well as doing cropping and minor editing).

It could also be useful on business trips. If you’re photographing a conference, for example, or an office event, or taking pictures of new products, you can print the shots up right on the spot to have on hand as a hard copy.

The size of the printer is perfect for travel purposes because it’s small enough that it could conceivably fit pretty easily in a carry-on bag. In fact, it’s so small that my husband refers to it as my “lunch box” because it has a carrying handle and honestly isn’t much bigger than an average lunch box would be.

The quality of the printer is fantastic. I am extremely satisfied with the photos I’ve printed out. Also, the speed is insane. Not only does it print out excellent photos, but it actually spits them out in 37 seconds from start to finish. The prints will resist fading for over 90 years in a glass frame or 200 in an album and they resist smudges, scratches, water, and (important!) fingerprints. As for the photos themselves, like I mentioned, you can do some minor editing directly on the printer – you can crop your image, remove red eye, brighten, play with fun color effects like B&W and sepia toning, and more. There’s also some fun software that allows you to play around a little more.

If you’re traveling with your laptop, you can plug it in to that and print up any images on your hard drive, but a computer isn’t necessary at all – if you choose to print from the memory card directly (and it supports most common memory cards including XD and SD), you can simply print by plugging it into an outlet for power. And that’s it!

I can’t adequately express how thrilled I’ve been with this printer. I take a ton of pictures on a daily basis (just call me the Momarazzi!) and it’s been wonderful to use it to print out so many of my photos.

You can find out more about the Epson Dash here. You can get one from that site for a VERY reasonable $99.99 US.

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