Epson PictureMate PAL PM200

The Epson Picturemate Pal 200 closely resembles a high-tech, small picnic basket complete with a basket lid and pivoting handle. The lid flips up to display a two – inch LCD screen and few buttons. In addition, the lid also doubles itself as an input support for the paper. One amongst the buttons labeled as “Open”, opens a panel on the printer’s front side.

It conceals nearly two memory card slots and does double duty as the output tray. The device measures 6 inches deep, 8.5 inches wide and 5.7 inches tall and weighs only 5.3 pounds.

Its small size and handle makes it portable. However, one has to carry along the power cord and AC adapter, which could be unwieldy.

It is a simple task to set up the picturemate pal, irrespective of whether you use it without a PC or with a PC. For those who want to do PC free printing, just plug in the power adapter and power up after you insert the ink cartridge. You will have to wait a few minutes for the ink cartridge to charge the first time you do this. Simply insert a memory card and follow LCD instructions on the LCD to print. Just hit the Select All button if you want to print all the pictures within the card. Select the All button, then select the number of copies of each image you need and select the green print button. For those who want to choose and pick, scroll the images with the help of arrow key. As you scroll through the entire batch and look at them, you can print the images one at a time.

Using the menu, you have the option to print the sepia or black and white or color photos. Ensure that you switch the color effects mode to normal when you are done with the effect. The cancellation of the setting has to be manually done. Otherwise, all the subsequent photos would have a similar effect. In addition, you can also employ the photo enhance feature, which permits you to correct those photos which are backlit, too dark, or too light by tweaking the sharpness and contrast and improving the color. Unfortunately, you can’t portray the changes; your only option is to turn the feature off or on.

Epson makes selection of the ink and paper cartridges for the Picture Mate Pal extremely simple – ink and paper come in the print packs, with the count of ink calibrated to the quantity of blank sheets in pack. The moment your paper runs out, hence does the ink. Epson ink cartridges are simple cassettes which are insertable at the back of the printer. All that one needs to do is to select between the matte and glossy finishes.