Sony UP-DR80 Compact 8 x 10 Dye-Sublimation Professional Printer

Comments about Sony UP-DR80 Compact 8 x 10 Dye-Sublimation Professional Printer:

I bought this printer for my home studio. It has pretty good quality for its price. The only disadvantage - if you want to print smaller photo, you still have to use the same 8 x 10 photo paper.

Comments about Sony UP-DR80 Compact 8 x 10 Dye-Sublimation Professional Printer:

To start, we have used this printer for a little under a year to make more than 1,000 prints of assorted sizes. Overall, it's a very good quality printer but has a lot of issues to take with its supplies and some smaller functions..

Price - Great. For what it is, it's hard to beat the price.

Print quality - Excellent. It's obviously a dye sub printer as the prints are not the quality of a lab printer, but the prints look excellent. Someone who does not look at photos all day every day (aka an average customer for us) wouldn't know the difference. Initially we were worried about the blacks since obviously there is no black dye, but it's top notch stuff.

Print speed - Excellent. The specs are on for speed.

Reliability - Average - We haven't had any problems with it breaking, BUT within about a month of owning it, the cutter blade stopped cutting straight. It's not a huge deal, but it is annoying to have to trim the top of every photo off. The bigger problem is that the printer sometimes prints a little crooked, so there's a thin white strip on one side of the 8x10 or 8x12. If you've ever tried cutting a .2mm strip off a photo, you know how frustratingly impossible this is (and we use a high quality dual rail radial cutter).

Supplies - Here's where I personally take a huge issue with the printer. It's been addressed before, so I'll try and keep it short. You can read the printer specs above, but what it really comes down to is that the printer does NOT use its available resources. We have around 100 rolls of ribbon in the back of the office that all have at least 2 full, unused sets of panels. If you mix printing 8x10s and 8x12s, then the printer will not use all of the panels. It's just a waste.

Another problem then lies in how the printer uses paper. Since the ribbon use is obviously controlled by some type of electronic system that controls how many prints are done by each ribbon roll, it is mismatched with the paper. In other words, you may get X amount of prints from the ribbon roll, but you get X+2 prints from the paper roll. Sounds great, because you have extra paper. Except ribbon rolls are not sold individually.

What that means in the real world is that you will have a surplus of paper that you CAN'T USE. Which leads into my next point.

Customer Service - Absolutely horrible. Good luck figuring out who to contact. I have tried for 6 months to get in touch with someone to fix my problem (I just want to purchase some ribbon rolls individually), and all of my calls/emails are either to the wrong division (I'm told) or they go unanswered. The problem lies in the fact that SONY no longer technically produces these products. Another company has acquired them, one that is seemingly impossible to get in touch with. The contact form on the website for their "professional" products does not work in any browser that I've tried, and I've been given the runaround for quite some time now.

Conclusion: It's a printer that prints great prints at a good speed. However, be prepared to trim literally EVERY photo that goes through the printer, and if you buy one, be prepared to waste money on supplies that will just sit around because you can't use them. Also don't expect any help from Sony/Profoto customer service, if it even exists.

The question everyone wants to know.. would I buy this product again? No. I'm sure the Fuji ASK series has its own issues, but I would buy an ASK 8x10 dye sub printer over this in a heartbeat. The lack of any type of customer service is just mind-boggling. If there was someone I could readily talk to to fix my problems, I would absolutely buy another one. But there isn't. So I won't.

Comments about Sony UP-DR80 Compact 8 x 10 Dye-Sublimation Professional Printer:

This is a very good printer which rivals the quality of the unprecendented Fuji ASK 1500. My disapointment with it, is the number of prints quoted is inaccurate. If you are printing smaller prints it uses the same length of ribbon no matter what size your picture is. Sony could fix this by making ribbon a separate purchase item. Otherwise all that extra paper left over is worthless. So much for going 'green'

The second problem is trying to get feedback or support from Sony. They make chasing Tech Support an art.

Third problem is suppliers often have the paper/ink on back order and not in stock.

However, it is a reliable printer that allows you to print different sizes and different surfaces from the same roll! At a comparatively reasonable price. So if you can be proactive in you paper/ribbon supply and print mostly 8X12 or package sheets, this is a good buy.

Comments about Sony UP-DR80 Compact 8 x 10 Dye-Sublimation Professional Printer:

Yes This is a very good printer and deserves a 5 star for quality. But the truth is this printer is gonna use 12 inches of ribbon regardless of the size print you make. If you print an 6x8 or just a 5x7 your still wasting the rest. 5x7 is half of 8x10 so that means i would get 100 5x7 prints from a roll that would give me 50 8x10 prints. but it gets worse because they also said if you print 8x12 you will get 42 prints. but when I print just a 5x7 the whole 12 inches is still used with a whole lot of empty space. So THE TRUTH IS THIS PRINTER IS ONLY GONNA GIVE YOU 42 PRINTS REGARDLESS OF SIZE PRINT YOU MAKE.In other words.

42 - 8x12 per roll
42 - 8x10 per roll
42 - 6x8 per roll
42 - 5x7 per roll
42 - PACKAGES which can be set up as 2 5x7 or 9 2x3 or 4 3x5

There are two rolls per box so our grand total is 84 prints per box ....

They said 50 8x10 per roll - actual prints are 42!
They said 100 5x7 per roll - actual prints are 42!
UNLESS YOU PRINT TWO 5X7 AT THE SAME TIME BUT NOTE IT WILL BE THE SAME IMAGE!

SO IF YOU BUY THIS PRINTER IT IS A VERY GOOD PRINTER BUT IS BEST USED FOR FULL PAGE PACKAGES and 8x10 or 8x12 printing.

Comments about Sony UP-DR80 Compact 8 x 10 Dye-Sublimation Professional Printer:

I recently purchased the DR80 Dye-sub printer from SONY because Olympus does not make a dye-sub printer anymore or provide the paper and ribbon. The SONY printer is compact and uses a roll of paper which is cheaper than the Olympus. However, the paper is inferior to the Olympus paper. Much thinner, tears easily and less resistant to scratches etc. I am very disappointed in the SONY paper quality. The images come out OK.

Comments about Sony UP-DR80 Compact 8 x 10 Dye-Sublimation Professional Printer:

I use this printer at events and at home.

Easy to use, great print quality. Love the different type surfaces you can print.

Prints are great value as long as you're printing 8x10's or 8x12's.

Only negative so far is I bought the 3 year extended warranty and after much work I never did receive the actual contract from Sony!! It's DIFFICULT to wind your way through their maze of "support" departments.

Comments about Sony UP-DR80 Compact 8 x 10 Dye-Sublimation Professional Printer:

•Things that are great about it
Do you have the 3C certificate?It's very important to us.

Comments about Sony UP-DR80 Compact 8 x 10 Dye-Sublimation Professional Printer:

Out of the box, the prints are clear, great color, and the continuous tone print I have been wanting. Ink jet and lasers do not come close to these prints. Judging by the cost of supplies, the prints are not too expensive, either

Comments about Sony UP-DR80 Compact 8 x 10 Dye-Sublimation Professional Printer:

Using this at events and at desk. Simple to setup, use. One walk-thru and everyone could use it. Pictures are clean and sharp. Reloading paper and ribbons is simple.

Comments about Sony UP-DR80 Compact 8 x 10 Dye-Sublimation Professional Printer:

If you have a program like photoshop you can improve the pictures and get an impression expectacular

Comments about Sony UP-DR80 Compact 8 x 10 Dye-Sublimation Professional Printer:

I use this to print photos I shoot at a horse race track. I was taken back at first by the price but have been very pleased with the results. It produces great prints in a speedy enough process to keep my customers happy.