Built to travel, the eminently portable PIXMA mini 260 folds away into its trendy, white shell complete with pull-out carrying handle. Especially neat is the way the input and output paper trays combine to cover and protect all the fragile switches – although not the large, clear and bright 2.5in colour LCD – while in transit. Better still, they hinge open in such a way that, unlike many postcard printers, the footprint doesn’t double in size when you actually want to use the printer.

 

 

Compatible with regular 10x15cm photo paper as well as 10x18cm (wide) paper stocks, the 260 is more versatile than many postcard printers. This carries through to the wide range of interfaces that include USB, PictBridge and IrDA as well as a built-in memory card reader, which supports the vast majority of fl ash memory card types without the need for extra adaptors, although the lack of xD card compatibility is a notable exception. You can also buy an optional BU-20 Bluetooth adaptor as well as an LK-60 rechargeable battery for the printer, which cost around £50 each.

The layout of the print head and cartridge chamber seems to indicate that Canon designed the printer to take a combined four-colour CMYK cartridge of dye-based inks, as well as a separate pigment-based black ink. This has been used to great effect in printers like the iP4200, upping the contrast and colour range of photo printing without going to a full six-ink process. As it turns out, the smaller section of the cartridge cradle is unused and the 260 uses a single four-ink cartridge.

With its meagre range of inks, we weren’t expecting too much in the way of outright quality, but throughout our tests we were frankly amazed by the printer’s wide colour space and tonal range. From subtle skin tones to bold, vivid colours, graduating blue skies and highcontrast shots, the 260 performed better than any other postcard printer we’ve seen to date.

As well as outputting top-quality, 10x15cm images in just over one minute, the 260 has excellent built-in image adjustment features, such as brightness and contrast adjustments, red-eye reduction and face lightening. With a combined ink and paper cost of about 27p, it is not the cheapest postcard printer to run, but the print quality makes it worth every penny.