If you've ever taken a look at the Canon SELPHY CP740 or the SELPHY CP760 you will be familiar with the set-up and the operation of the new CP780. Capable of producing lab quality, postcard-sized prints, this compact desktop printer is perfectly targeted towards the family user who's keen on printing out home snapshots without the burden of ordering online or popping along to the high street developers.

On taking the SELPHY CP780 out of the box it's clear this is a gadget to have fun with. The buttons are big and bright, there are easy memory card slots so you can instantly print images without having to spend time uploading them to your computer first, plus there's a small but functional LCD monitor.

A bit of set-up is required in order to get started with the printer. Just to see how intuitive this was we attempted to get started without unsealing the Printer User Guide that comes bundled in. As well as plugging it into the mains (a battery pack is available giving you the opportunity to print up to 36 sheets of Postcard size paper, but this is sold separately), you also need to insert the colour ink cassette and set up the paper. The User Guide was needed to work out which way round the paper should go, but other than than it wasn't bad going. The printer was set up within a few minutes.

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The SELPHY CP780 is available in four different colours - pink, blue, silver and white - and being priced at £129 it seems perfectly placed as a gift for a teenager. If you have a camera that's PictBridge compliant it's possible to print wirelessly, or alternatively it also takes onboard CompactFlash, SD and Memory Stick memory cards. There's an adapter available to buy that allows you to insert xD, MicroSD and Memory Stick micro so there's not necessarily any need to worry about connecting the printer to a computer.

But if you do, with the SELPHY Photo Print software installed it's possible to get a little more creative with your shots. As well as being able to select multiple images to print on screen you can also add elements such as prints, stamps, speech bubbles and frames.

If you prefer to steer clear of a computer then the LCD screen on the CP780 makes it easy enough to select prints and control effects. The 2.5-inch screen tends to cram lots of information into a small amount of space, but if you press the 'Menu' key and work through the Print Settings it's clear and quick enough to make adjustments.

As well as setting the printer to automatically enhance shots by correcting red-eye, hiking up the optimisation settings or adjusting the colour effect (sepia, positive film and black and white are all possible) you are given the opportunity to add a border or adjust the page layout. As well as being able to print one single image, if you want to recreate a photo booth style you are given the option to print up to eight images on one sheet of paper.

Once the SELPHY C780 gets going it's a little on the noisy side. Nevertheless it manages to get through 6x4-inch prints at an impressive speed. None of the print sizes takes longer than one minute to produce and once finished the output is surprisingly dry.

It's quite a pleasurable process to watch and reminded us a little of that magical moment waiting for a Polaroid image to emerge. Feeding the paper back and forth, the dye-sub thermal transfer process lays down colours one at a time, starting with the yellows, then the magentas, cyans and finally the overcoating.

The results were surprising for a fairly budget printer. We pushed the SELPHY CP780 very hard by forcing it to produce highly detailed, contrasty shots with vibrant and subtle colours. It was a little nerve racking watching the colours being laid down and we were dubious it would manage to do our shots justice.

However, the end results were absolutely superb. You'd only be able to spot the grain if you looked at the prints very closely in natural light and the apparent resolution was very impressive. Our only small gripe was with the blacks, as these could have been a bit more contrasty. In a colour photo this isn't so much of an issue, but when we printed out black and white shots they looked a little greyscale and lacked 'oomph', due to the lack of a separate black ink layer.

The only major drawback of using this quite specialised SELPHY printer is the availability and price of the colour ink cassettes. We found it quite difficult to track down stockists who sold SELPHY media and these definitely weren't as readily accessible as ink cartridges for other Canon printers such as those in the Pixma range.

The Canon Selphy CP780 is a high quality printer that's well priced and easy to use. Small enough to fit on a shelf, and with plenty of options for printing without being connected to a PC, it would make a perfect gift for a teenager. Quick to print and with impressive image quality it would be tempting to prints shots from a day or night out, on a regular basis. With that in mind you're going to need to stock up on plenty of paper and ink. Unfortunately, we found it something of a challenge finding a stockist for SELPHY media.