HiTi 630PS Photo Printer

Author: Ian Cunningham
Published on: 21-07-2003
Views: 31581


Discuss this article [ comments]

Performance

How the HiTi 630PS performs

The 630PS is no slouch when it comes to printing, and will rattle off print in under 1min 30secs when connected to a PC. If you are using a memory card, the printing time dips to a slightly slower 2mins.

Printing

The printer works on a 4 pass process, one pass for each colour (YMC) and then one final pass for a protective overcoat. Each time a new pass is about to begin, the paper rewinds out the back of the printer to begin the next pass. Watching the image formed one colour at a time is rather fun to watch!

The final image produced is extremely impressive, with excellent colour contrast and no banding, dithering, or dots. The image is on a par if not better than images from other dye sublimation printouts we compared with.

Conclusion

The final rating

After searching for the perfect photo printer for a long time, I think I have found it. It is not often I am overwhelmingly impressed by a product, but this is one of those occasions. This printer costs just over half that of similar specification dye sublimation printers, and provides some outstanding results. It is very hard to distinguish between the prints from this printer paired with a good digital camera, and those from a traditional film camera. Even when we printed direct from the camera with no editing, we achieved some excellent results. Photos printed straight from a 1.3MP camera were still of a reasonable quality, although you will need a good 3MP camera taking hi-res shots to make the most of the high print quality.

There is the initial cost of around £219.95 in the UK. The consumables are equally well priced at around £16.95 for 50 sheets of paper and a cartridge - working out at a very friendly 34p per photo in just under 100 seconds.

HiTi also manufacture a version of the printer with the same specs, just without the controller and memory slots for a very reasonable £129.95.