Sagem isn't a company you would immediately think of as a printer manufacturer, but the PrintEasy 110 is an excellent example of an unconventional solution to cost-effective printing. The small cream and chalk blue case contains a complete dye sublimation printing engine, which can produce very high quality 15 x 10cm (6 x 4-inch) prints, directly from a PC or PictBridge camera.

Open up the clamshell and click in place a pair of spools with the very thin dye sublimation film between them. This is the only maintenance you need to do and although it's more fiddly than using the cartridges provided with some other dye sublimation printers, you only need to do it every 75 prints.

Glossy photo paper, up to 25 sheets at a time, fits into a cartridge which you plug into the front of the PrintEasy 110. Each sheet feeds through into the printer, which applies layers of cyan, magenta and yellow dye in turn, followed by a layer of clear protective film to complete the print. Surprisingly, although the paper passes through the machine four times, a print completes in under 70 seconds, which is a good time for a standalone photo printer.

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Print quality is excellent, with vibrant colours and pastel tones reproduced as well as vivid ones. The clear coating means prints are immediately usable and don't have problems taking thumbprints. The printer blanks are designed as postcards, where you tear off two perforated edges once the print's complete.

The only slight problem with printing is that any particles of dust laying on print blanks produce white dots on the finished print. Keep new blanks in their polythene bag and transfer them directly to the cartridge to avoid this.

Sagem sells printer packs for the PrintEasy 110, with paper and dye film rolls enough to produce either 75 or 150 prints. The 150 print pack is particularly good value at just £30, giving a cost per print of 20p. This compares very favourably with the majority of inkjet printers designed for individual photo printing.

Controls on the top surface of the printer are straightforward and the print software supplied with the machine is adequate to handle simple printing from image albums you may have on your PC. There's a USB 2 socket for PC connection and another alongside for PictBridge. The latter doubles as a port for Bluetooth or WiFi adapters, both of which are available as options.

This is a superb little dye sublimation printer for fuss-free, quality colour prints from digital cameras, PC or - with the optional Bluetooth adapter - some mobile phones. It's easy and cheap to run and the printer itself is less than half the price of some competitors. Snap one up, as they say.