A digital photo printer is an essential part of most photographers' home studios. If you're investing for the first time you're likely to end up choosing between a multifunction inkjet and a dedicated photo printer like Sony's DPP-FP90.

The advantages of the latter are that you get better dedicated photo support, standalone operation and in most cases better results. Given Sony's success in the photography market it's no surprise to see an impressive range of support and features in this portable offering, beginning with the large 3.6-inch LCD screen that allows you to preview, correct and edit photos on the fly.

There are various ways to view your favourite pictures, including a USB connection for direct link to a PC and a Pictbridge/USB port to print direct from a camera, USB memory stick or for connecting a Bluetooth dongle to print wirelessly. You'll also find card slots for Compact Flash, SD and MemoryStick, so you can be sure that almost every convenience is well covered.

Once the printer picks up an external storage device you can browse the contents in a range of view modes on screen, set up a slideshow or select a layout to create index cards, calendars or ID photos.

You'll also find a decent array of editing options to correct specific elements of the image such as red-eye, contrast, brightness and sharpness, or apply a range of filters to enhance the picture. If you don't want to get involved with this sort of manual editing or aren't sure how, there's also an auto touch-up control that'll improve the image for you.

As you'd expect with all this connectivity, getting the printer up and running is fast and easy. Once you've scrolled through your collection, made any necessary photo corrections and are ready to go, simply hit the print button and within seconds the FP90 kicks into action.

Printing is handled one colour panel at a time, so the paper makes four passes through the printer before your photo is ready. Impressively, you'll see a 6 x 4-inch print ready in under 45 seconds, which is fast for a consumer product of this kind. We were also impressed with the results, and could see no difference in quality here in comparison with the sort of professional level printing you might usually pay for elsewhere.

The wide range of connectivity, editing options and excellent performance means there's precious little else you'll need from a dedicated photo printer, but unfortunately there's one other all-important factor could that prove to be its undoing. Shop around online and you can pick up the FP90 for about £150, but it doesn't come with an ink cartridge or photo paper so you'll have to buy this separately. You'll find a 40-print pack available for about £15, and a 120-pack for about twice this price, so take this into account when you buy.

At that price you're paying about 37p per printout (25p if you pick up the larger pack). Considering that photo printing services from the likes of Jessops and other high-street stores and Web-sites charge as little as 10p per print, you're paying a hefty additional premium for the convenience of a device like the FP90.

If you're prepared to pay up for both the initial purchase of the printer and replacement ink and paper, you'll certainly have no issues with either the features or performance of the FP90. It would be wise to investigate other printing services first, though, to make sure this sort of premium is really necessary.