Lab – Canon Selphy CP1300: relative color accuracy

The Canon Selphy CP1300 belongs to a hybrid genre. It is a compact photo printer, but one that can hardly be considered nomadic. Indeed, it cannot slip into a pocket and needs to be connected to the mains to operate.

10×15 cm prints

That being said, it remains quite discreet for a printer capable of printing 10×15 cm photos. To do this, it uses the so-called “thermal sublimation” printing process, which uses a real cartridge that must be inserted into the side of the machine. Printing is done in several passes: three layers of different colors (cyan, magenta and yellow) are successively printed on the paper before a final layer of varnish is added to protect the photo.

Ordinarily, thermal sublimation makes it possible to maintain a very good level of sharpness. Like its “little sister”, the Canon Selphy Square QX10, it produces fairly accurate color prints. But what about the Selphy CP1300?

A slightly high average delta

It is considered that the delta E must be less than 3 for the human eye not to perceive colorimetric drifts, and that of the Selphy CP1300 reaches 9! The fineness of printing is there, but, as far as color accuracy is concerned, this CP1300 does little better than most mobile printers. In this area, the current best student in our comparison is the Square QX10, with an average delta E of 5.8.

In the case of our CP1300, it is mainly green, cyan and magenta that drift the most, followed by red. The blue and dark gray hues are catching up a bit.

We look forward to seeing you very soon for the rest of the test of the Canon Selphy CP1300 on The Digitals.