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Pocket-Size Printers

M. David Stone
 & M. David Stone Contributing Editor

Our team tests, rates, and reviews more than 1,500 products each year to help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.

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    Buying Guide: Pocket-Size Printers

    Contents

    Thanks to camera phones, nearly everyone—and certainly anyone who wants one—has a camera handy virtually all of the time. But a big part of the fun of taking pictures is sharing them, and there are times when sharing a file won't do. What you need is a printer that's small and light enough to carry without a second thought, so you can print those pictures on the spot. Indeed, there are a very few printers that fit the bill: small enough to fit in a (relatively large) pocket and light enough to bring with you anywhere.

    All of these pocket-size printers are built around a relatively new print technology called ZINK, which uses special paper with embedded dye crystals. Because the printers use a thermal print head to create images, they don't need to be much bigger than the paper they print on. For the wallet-size photos that all of these printers are designed for, that means they don't have to be much bigger than a wallet.

    The choices in ZINK printers currently come in two varieties. The Polaroid PoGo Instant Mobile Printer and the Dell Wasabi PZ310 Mobile Photo Printer are both standalone printers that you can use with any cell phone or digital camera. The Polaroid PoGo Instant Digital Camera, on the other hand, integrates the printer and camera in one unit, making printing a ... uh ... snap.

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    Dell Wasabi PZ310Dell Wasabi PZ310 Mobile Photo Printer
    ($149 direct)
    Only the second printer in the U.S. to use ZINK technology, the Dell Wasabi PZ310 Mobile Photo Printer is a near twin to the Polaroid PoGo Instant Digital Camera. It's small enough to fit in a pocket, weighs just 8 ounces, and prints photos at 2 by 3 inches in about 1 minute per photo. It can print from cameras and cell phones over either Bluetooth or PictBridge connections, and is available in black, blue, and pink.


    Polaroid PoGo Instant Digital Camera : PrintingPolaroid PoGo Instant Digital Camera
    ($200 street)
    The Polaroid PoGo Instant Digital Camera is effectively the same printer as the Polaroid PoGo Instant Mobile Printer, but a little faster and with a camera included. The camera adds about 4 ounces to the weight, for a total of 12 ounces, but integrating the camera and printer makes printing pictures immediately after taking them easier, more fun, and, ultimately a qualitatively different experience than having a separate camera and printer.


    PrintingPolaroid PoGo Instant Mobile Printer
    ($80 street)
    Although it's last on this alphabetical list, the Polaroid PoGo Instant Mobile Printer was the first ZINK printer available. Even so, (with the exception of the Polaroid version that includes a camera) no one has yet improved on it. It has all the same features as the Dell Wasabi PZ310 Mobile Photo Printer—small size, light weight, and the ability to print over either Bluetooth or PictBridge connections—but it comes in a slightly different choice of colors: black, pink, and red. And, for the moment at least, the Polaroid version is a lot cheaper than the Wasabi.

    About Our Expert

    M. David Stone

    M. David Stone

    Contributing Editor

    My Experience

    Most of my current work for PCMag is about printers and projectors, but I've covered a wide variety of other subjects—in more than 4,000 pieces, over more than 40 years—including both computer-related areas and others ranging from ape language experiments, to politics, to cosmology, to space colonies. I've written for PCMag.com from its start, and for PC Magazine before that, as a Contributor, then a Contributing Editor, then as the Lead Analyst for Printers, Scanners, and Projectors, and now, after a short hiatus, back to Contributing Editor.

    I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who worked on every "Project Printer" blockbuster PCMag ever produced, often writing 15 or more reviews for the year's big printer blowout. (I snuck in a single review one year when I was writing a book, strictly so I could keep that claim alive.)

    I've always worked for PCMag as a freelancer, which has freed me to take time away to write nine books, be a major contributor to four others, and write for other publications, including Wired, Computer Shopper, Projector Central, and Science Digest, where I was Computers Editor. I also wrote a computer column at one point for The Newark Star-Ledger.

    Although I started my career primarily as a science (mostly physics and astronomy) and science-fiction writer (published in Analog), my non-computer-related work runs the gamut from the Project Data Book for NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (written for GE's Astro-Space Division) to the script for a video overview of a top company in the gaming industry (that would be gambling, not video games). My books include The Underground Guide to Color Printers (Addison-Wesley), Troubleshooting Your PC (Microsoft Press), and Faster, Smarter Digital Photography (Microsoft Press).

    Having covered a wide range of subjects, I've developed a serial expertise in many of them. The ones most relevant to my current work at PCMag.com are all imaging technologies.

    The Technology I Use

    I buy new PCs for my writing desk infrequently, because it takes a week or more to customize the settings the way I want them. At the moment, I have an HP Envy tower running Windows 10, but it's old enough to have a Windows 7 sticker on it. Its latest lease on a longer life is courtesy of a newly installed 500GB Samsung SSD 870 EVO.

    Elsewhere in my house is an assortment of older and newer PCs. The older ones are dedicated to specific tasks, like the one I've been using to slowly digitize all the paper stored in my filing cabinets, while the newer ones are testbeds for printer and projector reviews.

    For writing, I use Microsoft Word 2003, because I find it too annoying to take my hands off the keyboard to give mouse commands using the Ribbon. My workhorse printers are a Xerox Phaser 6280 color laser and a Dymo LabelWriter 450 Twin Turbo for labels and stamps. I also have a Canon Pixma iP8720 for printing photos, and a Canon ImageFormula DR-C225 for scanning.

    My first computer was bought to replace my IBM Selectric for writing. After rejecting both the IBM PC (which had just been introduced) and the Apple II because of the keyboards, I chose a Vector Graphics Vector 3 CP/M machine with dual floppies. The first MS-DOS machine I was willing to use for writing was the IBM AT, with its much-improved keyboard compared with the original PC and its gargantuan 20MB hard drive.

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