A Hands-On Review of the DNP DS620A Portable Printer

High-end inkjet, online labs, and even the local pro-lab (if you are lucky enough to still have one) serve the printing needs of most professional photographers, but there are times when being able to provide prints on-location can be a significant profit driver for many working pros. Wedding photo booths, corporate events, holiday portraits, even dog shows or amateur sporting events are all opportunities to turn your pixels into prints—and profits.

In order to do this, you need to be able to quickly print durable, high-quality images with a printer that can do so reliably, without requiring constant ink and paper replacement.

There is no doubt that high-end inkjet output quality has reached a level where many see little difference from silver halide. But there are multiple reasons why inkjet technology isn’t the best choice for printing on location. Inkjet printers can take minutes to print, the prints frequently need to dry before they are touched, ink costs can be steep, and the printers are simply not designed to stand up to the rigors of high volume, on-location printing.

Dye sublimation? That’s a different story. It’s a print technology that uses heat to quickly transfer cyan, magenta, and yellow dyes to the paper. Because there are no individual droplets of ink for each color as with inkjet technology, many photographers feel that dye-sublimation printers are similar in tone to traditional silver-halide prints. Each dye is transferred one at a time and at the end of the process, a protective clear coating is placed over the print. This coating protects the image from UV rays and gives the print water resistance similar to that of typical photo-lab prints.

The DNP DS620A is a dye-sublimation photo printer that can output 4 x 6, 5 x 7, 6 x 8, or 2 x 6 “photo booth strip” prints. It takes as little as 8.3 seconds to print a 4 x 6, can crank out up to 400 prints an hour, and it offers both matte and glossy finish options. While not light at 26.4 pounds, it is one of the most compact printers in its class at just 10.8 x 14.4 x 6.7 inches. Designed for heavy use by working photographers, the DS620A retails for $995 and there’s an optional 3-year/150,000-print warranty. Media is available in 4 x 6, 5 x 7 and 6 x 8 rolls that provide 400/230/200 prints each respectively. As with all dye-sublimation photo printers, the proper dye ribbon is included with each paper roll.

What We Liked
It’s fast. If you’re used to waiting around for inkjet prints, the DNP DS620A’s 8.3 second print speed is almost instantaneous. You barely have time to click print and turn your chair toward the printer before the print is sitting in the tray. Comparing the print quality with images from my local Fuji Frontier minilab, I was hard-pressed to see a significant difference at 4 x 6. Media pricing, while not inconsequential, was also comparable to prints at my local Fuji Frontier minilab.

When images are printed, the DS620A cuts them to the proper size and they are dropped into the print tray ready to be handled immediately—this includes the 2 x 6 “photo booth strip” prints. Keep in mind that in order to print true multi-image photo booth prints, you will need some sort of app or program that will lay them out for you. This is easily done in Photoshop, but doing it on location will require a more automated solution.

The media is easy to load properly and gives an audible confirmation that you have done it correctly. The low-power standby mode is a nice feature—the DS620A wakes from it quickly with minimal warm up time. Finally, a nice option for the DS620A is the ability to pair it with DNP’s WPS-1 Wireless Print Server. ?This allows you to print directly from tablets, phones and even some Wi-Fi connected DSLRs. This really opens up your on-location options since you can send prints to the DS620A from phone/tablet photobooth software, such as Simple Booth from National Media Brands (simplebooth.com).

What We Didn’t Like
The DNP DS620A isn’t a cheap printer, nor are any dye-sublimation printers in its class. With high-end inkjet printers at a quarter of the DS620A’s price, this is something to consider. Print sizes are also significantly limited. You’d better want 4 x 6, 5 x 7 or 6 x 8 (or be running a photo booth), because you won’t be selling those high-margin 11 x 17 prints with this unit.

Worth noting is that DNP has flagged a few operational issues in the Apple version of the DNP printer driver, such as slow job spooling and inaccurate previews when adjusting color in the driver, but I tested the DS620A on a MacBook Pro and didn’t encounter any issues.

How It Compares
Canon has long offered their Selphy dye-sublimation printers as consumer 4 x 6 printers. For a low volume use, they may fit the bill and the price is right, however, they print slowly, do not print larger than 4 x 6 and are not intended to withstand the rigors of day-in and day-out printing. A more logical competitor might be the Mitsubishi CP-K60DW-S and its less expensive $600 price tag. The Mitsubishi is slightly larger, slightly slower, has slightly more expensive print costs and a shorter available warranty. All in all, though, it is hard to argue with the quality, speed and durability of the DNP DS620A. It is a printer designed with the rigors of event photography in mind.

Josh Root, a Washington State-based photographer, writer and editor, is also the former editor-in-chief of photo.net. He is passionate about his wife and two sons, fast lenses, fly fishing and a strong coffee.