Home > Consumer Reviews > Kodak EasyShare Photo Printer 500

I couldn't be more delighted with this printer. It has capabilities that are amazing. Cropping is easy and the prints are professional quality - sometimes better.

Please... find another photo printer.

We purchased three units, based on the great reccomondation from Best Buy. Right now, one is making us manually feed the paper (it no longer auto-feeds), another had the same problem, but is now no longer functioning correctly, and the third is only starting to act up. We had taken one back when the auto-feed stopped working and had BestBuy replace it, but then the new one immedietley didn't auto-feed right out of the box! A friend of mine who purchased this based on my high reccomndation (after the first week of use) is now also having an auto-feed problem (he's saying that he has to manually feed each page, but he's ok with it). So with a review of four products (five if you count the one we replaced at Best Buy), this is a poor choice for a photo printer. :(

Buyer Beware.

I purchased this product based on the type of prints this printer offers. The dye sublimation prints are great because they are waterproof (spill water on them, wet fingers) unlike most photo printers which are inkjet & will run if they get wet.

I also like the fact that I can put this printer in my camera case & take it with me for instant prints for family members & friends no computer required.

Fist the bad: (1) set-up with Mac OS 10.4x was not absolutely completely easy plug 'n play, but I mess around with Macs a lot, so I figured it out without too much difficulty, and most probably would (2) this printer is sloooow...not once it starts printing (its is actually pretty quick once the print gets going), but initializing ther printer, and going from either the media card to the printer, or from the computer to the printer takes too long for me- maybe it is the file size, but I want the best prints I can print, so I am going to keep the high resolution, large file size jpegs, or maybe it is the G4 iMac I have it plugged into, but I suspect it is the printer. It also takes forever to go from picture to picture when navigating through a media card plugged into one of the included card slots - all of our cameras are pict bridge cameras, so this is a potential work-around (but it sucks up the camera's battery life) (3) the buttons don't respond immediately when you push them - there is lag (turning on and off, printing, etc - this bothers the heck out of me (4) I don't care for Kodak's easy share software in the least bit - pales in comparison to iPhoto

Things I like: (1) it serves the function as a card reader/transfer device to dump pics from the removable media into a computer, and has several different slots (CF/SD/memory stick) (2) it has bluetooth, which is probably a good thing if one wants to print from a camera phone, although, I am guessing it will be slow based on its performance doing other things (3) Dye sub technology is hard to beat for a 4x6 snapshot printer (4) relatively (I say relatively) cheap prints if you buy the large paper/cartridge combo (5) I don't consider it expensive - I think we paid around $130

My conclusion: if you want a toy to play with at home and do some of your own prints, it is fine provided you have a little patience with it. Compared to uploading photos online (or taking your removable media to WalMart, Target, Walgreen's, CVS, etc) and having prints done professionaly it cannot compete from a cost or quality standpoint. The quality limitation is simply a function of the 3 color film process - although prints are more than passable, they just don't match up to the comercially processed ones. Also, it would be nice if the printer's LCD had a tile view so you could see thumbnails of four, or even eight images at a time so one doesn't have to go though every picture to find the one you want when printing from media (a disclaimer on this point is that I didn' RTFM, so if it does actually have a tile view, I kind of look like a fool!).

On first glance this appeared to be a good photo printer. And, in fact, the photos printed were of very good quality. The downside is that after printing 6 or 7 photos (4" x 6") the print cartridge was empty! I also could not get the printer to read the photos stored on my Smart Card taken from a new Nikon Cool Pix camera (cards from Canon digital cameras worked with no problem). Bottom line - I returned the Kodak printer and bought an HP.