The Sony DPP-FP50 is a dye sublimation printer that prints photos on either 6 x 4-inch or 5 x 3.5-inch postcards. Technically it is very similar to a number of other dye sub printers on the market, so you flip down the cover on the side and slide in a ribbon cartridge, then insert the paper in the front and you're good to go.

Naturally you have to use Sony's proprietary print consumables, which is also true of other dye sub printers, with a 40-pack (two packs of paper and one ribbon cartridge) costing £13 or 32.5p per photo. An 80 pack is £19, which is 24p per photo and a 120 pack costs £29, which is also 24p per photo.

We had to hunt around to find these prices as the cost of consumables varies, but if you pay the right price then your photos will be quite economic and the quality is as good as any other 300dpi dye sub printer.

We would have hoped that the Sony would be a tiny printer that you could take on holiday, and while it's not exactly large, it measures 210 x 182 x 67mm and weighs 1.2kg ready to print.

Portability is one thing but usability is a whole different ball game and this is where we have issues with the DPP-FP50. You can plug a PictBridge camera into the PictBridge port and then use the camera screen to print your photos very successfully. Alternatively you can connect the printer to your PC or laptop with a USB cable and use the supplied PictureGear Studio 2.0 software to print your photos.

Either approach works well but things are less rosy if you use the card reader slots (Compact Flash, Memory Stick and SD), as the LCD screen is a five line monochrome display that doesn't display images, and neither can you print out a contact sheet to have a preview of your photos.

You can connect the printer to a TV through the TV-out port and use the remote control to navigate around the contents of the memory card but this looks like a workaround to overcome the inadequacies of the display, and we fail to understand why Sony didn't specify a decent colour LCD screen, as it would have made the DPP-FP50 into a truly mobile photo printer.

This is a decent dye sub printer that churns out 6 x 4 prints in one minute and twenty seconds. The running costs are reasonably low and the print quality is good, however the monochrome text display makes this printer rather awkward to use.