The burgeoning digital photography market means more and more people are interested in printing photographs directly from digital image files. Epson's latest take on the dedicated photo printer is the PictureMate PM290, which comes complete with Bluetooth connection and combo CD-RW and DVD drive.

As with previous models in the PictureMate line, this jewellery-box-sized printer has a strange clear panel in its lid, which appears to serve no practical purpose, but the whole lid hinges up to reveal a 91mm LCD screen, a slot to load photo blanks, and controls, most of them using membrane buttons.

There's an arrow square, with a large 'OK' button at its centre, used for navigating the printer's menus, and individual buttons for the other main functions. You can load up to 25 sheets of photo paper in the input tray, but unfortunately you can't close the printer or transport it with the paper in place. A large panel at the front folds down to form the output tray and also reveals two memory card slots, which between them can handle all the main types of card.

There's a PictBridge socket at the back, too, so you can connect a digital camera directly. Also at the back is a slot for the single ink cartridge, which contains all four coloured inks. Unlike many other dedicated photo printers, the PictureMate has a true black ink, as well as the three primary colours.

A second slot at the rear takes an optional lithium-ion battery, so the printer can be used without a mains connection. The power supply is a separate black block, making the printer still less portable than its lack of a battery does.

The combo drive, which slides out from the side of the printer at the bottom, enables you to archive photos to disc from a memory card and to load photos for printing from CD or DVD. We archived 48 four-megapixel prints in under 75 seconds, so you won't be left waiting around when copying off your photos.

Print speeds are commendably quick, with a standard 15 x 10cm photo taking 43 seconds from an SD card, 44 seconds from a PC and 48 seconds from a PictBridge camera. These times are good in comparison with most competitive printers, which regularly take over a minute per print.

Print quality is also good, with bright, vibrant colours and dense darker ones, thanks to the separate black ink. Prints come out touch-dry, so you can leave the printer unattended when printing photos in batches.

Print costs depend on how cheaply you can find Epson's PicturePacks, which contain both ink and photo blanks for 50 or 150 prints. We found a source for the 150-print pack which gave a cost per print of under 15p. This compares well with the running costs of other dedicated photo printers.

The PictureMate PM290 is an excellent dedicated photo printer. While not the cheapest available by quite some margin, the extra facilities of the CD/DVD drive and Bluetooth connection, coupled with its strong performance on speed, quality and print cost, makes this a sound choice for anybody with a lot of photos to print.