If what you want to print isn’t well-sized to your printer paper, you can always crop your photos using apps on your smartphone, including your photo printer’s companion app. Battery Life

We reached out to Victure with our concerns. The company responded, telling us it uses the same manufacturer as Kodak for its portable printer. It’s certainly not unheard of in the tech world for two different companies to use the same manufacturer, but they typically offer different features and app interfaces to differentiate themselves. The Mini 2, which connects to your phone via Bluetooth to retrieve photos and print them, is an easy way to print wallet-sized photos at home or on the go. Portable photo printers typically print a single size of photo: 3x3, 2.7x2.7, and 2x3-inch prints. While the larger 3x3 sizes work well for portraits and selfies, the wider 2x3 format is more appropriate for landscape photography. It’s easy to get intensely serious about photographic kit and technique but, sometimes, photography should just be fun," says our own Matthew Richards. "There’s certainly a lot to be had with the Instax Mini LiPlay. It continues the decades-old tradition of truly instant photography, where you can take and share pictures anywhere and everywhere, capturing and preserving treasured memories on the fly." At 4.5” x 3.0” x 1.0”, and 7 ounces, the LifePrint 2x3 Hyperprint was by far the smallest and lightest we tested. It was also the fastest by far, taking around 30 seconds to print a photo. Some of this speed comes from using Zink (Zero-Ink) technology that combines the ink and photo paper.Even after finding the printer in our Bluetooth settings, our problems continued. We had nothing but issues trying to connect this portable photo printer to our Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. We’d also suggest looking at the battery life of the printer, as it determines how many prints you can make before recharging. Look for printers with long-lasting batteries and consider whether they use standard batteries or rechargeable ones.

No, these portable printers are designed to work with smart devices such as your phone –and, in the case of the Instax Mini LiPlay, to print directly from its integrated camera as well. Do I need a physical cable to connect to the printer? The main difference is in the type of printing method. Instax models use the same instant photo paper present in the brand’s instant cameras for a real film look, there are several models out there that use Zink (or “zero ink”) paper tech. This is photo paper that takes on colour in a process that uses crystals and heat, but this is notable for a slightly poorer image quality. The Polaroid Hi-Print is a little different than either approach, using dye-sublimation for accurate colours. Print speed We began each test by determining ease of setup and compatibility with iOS and Android devices. We connected each printer to a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, and an iPhone 12 Pro Max. These printers operate wirelessly, using WiFi or Bluetooth technology –or, in the case of the Kiipix, using a mirror! What paper do these printers take?

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There are plenty of more powerful image editing apps out there. Still, having these options built into the app is a nice touch. You can even use the app to capture new photos, without having to switch over to your smartphone’s camera interface. Never used a mini printer before, and are you a little nervous about technology generally? Don't worry: the handy Kodak app for Android makes this printer a breeze to use.By making use of the Near Field Communication (NFC) capabilities of this printer you can enjoy printing in seconds: it’s compatible with both iOS and Android via the Bluetooth connection. So what’s different about the Fujifilm Instax Mini Evo? It’s intended as a hybrid between analogue and digital, and actually has a 3-inch LCD screen on the rear. This allows the user to easily browse and select images to be printed, as well as do minor edits and adjust settings. The Mini Evo is designed to bridge the gap between an instant camera and an instant printer, and as such it can also be used to print photos directly off your smartphone’s camera roll. Setting up the Step was easy. Its companion app (available for iOS and Android) walks you through the process, connecting your phone to the portable printer via Bluetooth.

I always have their latest smartphone in hand, a new laptop on my desk, and a game installed on my console, ready to review. The Tests Unlike the wider one, we think this is slim and light enough to stash in your bag and bring on your travels, and the bigger square size works well for a wide range of shots including landscapes, portraits, close-ups and more. While setting up the printer using a Bluetooth connection, it appeared on our smartphones as a Kodak printer. This conflicted with the Victure’s instructions that the device will appear in our Bluetooth pairing list as a “photo printer”. Since we already had a Kodak printer in our test group, it took quite some time to sort this issue out.We then used both smartphones to snap a large variety of photos to test with our lineup of portable printers. On the Galaxy S21 Ultra, we took photos with the 108MP wide-angle camera, along with the 10MP telephoto lens. On the iPhone 12 Pro Max, we tested shots taken with the phone’s 12MP camera system. Once the shooting was complete, we selected an image from each of the following groups: Once printed, photos appeared crisp with a surprising amount of detail. However, the color reproduction was not always accurate.

In addition to writing hundreds of articles for PCMag, over the years he also wrote for many other computer and business publications, among them Computer Shopper, Digital Trends, MacUser, PC World, The Wirecutter, and Windows Magazine. He also served as the Printers and Scanners Expert at About.com.There’s no charging the Kiipix Portable Mini Printer, nor any need to plug it in. Simply load it with Instax Mini film, place your phone face down on the scanner (with the brightness cranked all the way up – trust us), use the reflective mirror to ensure it’s properly aligned, and then you can manually crank out the prints yourself. The devices we tested a variety of different printing techniques. Three of the printers used dye sublimation, which uses heat to transfer ink from film sheets to photo paper. This process takes time. Each sheet of photo paper passes through the printer four times to lay down each layer of color before the final print emerges. The Instax Mini LiPlay is not marketed specifically as a portable printer, so this one may be easy to miss. Instead, it's one of a new breed of hybrid digital instant cameras that offer the functionality of an instant camera, a digital camera, and a portable printer in the same device. None of the printers we tested offered exceptional battery life. Most could only print between 8 and 12 photos before needing a charge. If you want to print additional photos, you will need to carry a portable charger along. More Articles You Might Enjoy This depends on the printer. The Instax Link series uses actual instant film (the same as you put in Instax film cameras) to produce an authentic instant print. This is a definite stylistic choice, giving you a low-detail, low-fidelity, analog quality that can't be achieved on traditional printers, but comes at a cost –as instant film is pretty pricey.