Tag Archives: printer

Polaroid’s Hi-Print 3×3 Was Made for This Analog Moment

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A few years ago, we started noticing the re-emerging popularity of photo printers once again. People wanted to turn photos taken by digital means into physical, printed items that they could use for journaling, decoration, or as a gift or keepsake for loved ones. Some thought it would just be a nostalgic trend that would eventually lose steam. But with 2026 being labeled the “year of analog,” it looks like this printing lifestyle is here to stay for a few more years. And the numbers back it up. Two-thirds of 18–34-year-olds have reportedly turned to analog products to cut down on screen time, a generation that grew up with smartphones now actively choosing to step away from them. It’s not just nostalgia. It’s intention.

Polaroid is one of those brands enjoying renewed popularity, not just with those of us who remember what a Polaroid actually is. Millennials, Gen Z, and even Gen Alpha have been looking at portable photo printers to enjoy this analog craze. The brand has leaned into this cultural moment, and their newest release feels right on time. The new Hi-Print 3×3 is not just a way to print out your digital photos. It also serves as a display frame if you want a particular photo to become part of your everyday space.

Designer: Polaroid

The Hi-Print 3×3 is a compact smartphone photo printer that turns digital images into 3-inch square prints. It’s the newest addition to the Hi-Print family line, sitting between the 2×3 pocket printer and the 4×6 desktop model. It’s ideal for those who prefer square prints rather than the “traditional” size and orientation of Polaroid prints. Each print comes with a peel-and-stick backing, so you can use it in your journals, stick it to walls, or add it to a scrapbook spread. It has a clean, modern look with its borderless, edge-to-edge prints, but if you want to add some personality before you hit print, the free Hi-Print app (available on iOS and Android) lets you layer on templates, stickers, and decorative frames to make each print feel uniquely yours.

The printer also doubles as a display frame, so your current favorite photo can sit on your desk, shelf, or wherever you like to display things. Just print the photo you want, then insert it directly back into the device until you’re ready to swap it out for a new one. The printer has a white, minimalist design, and if you want a pop of color, the photo itself will do all the work. On the technical side, the Hi-Print 3×3 uses Dye Diffusion Thermal Transfer technology, prints in under 50 seconds, and runs on a built-in rechargeable battery that charges via USB-C. It’s lightweight at 390 grams and compact enough to slip into a bag without a second thought. It also comes with 10 sheets of paper right out of the box, so you can start printing immediately.

For those thinking about gifting, the Hi-Print 3×3 hits a sweet spot at $119.99 USD, meaningful enough to feel special without breaking the bank. There’s also a Starter Set available at $134.99 that bundles in extra paper cartridges, which is a great option for someone just getting into the physical printing lifestyle. What makes the Hi-Print 3×3 especially appealing for the creative community is how well it fits into an already existing ecosystem of hobbies. Journaling, scrapbooking, and photo wall decorating have all seen massive growth over the past few years, and a compact printer that produces square, peel-and-stick photos feels like it was designed with exactly that in mind. The square format also makes it a natural companion for anyone who has grown up curating their Instagram grid, since the prints feel familiar in proportion and shape.

Whether you’re a seasoned collector of printed memories, a journaling enthusiast, or simply someone who wants their favorite photos to live somewhere beyond a camera roll, the Polaroid Hi-Print 3×3 makes a very compelling case. The analog era isn’t going anywhere, and honestly, we’re here for it. In a world where everything seems to be moving toward the digital, there’s still something deeply satisfying about holding a photo in your hands, or better yet, displaying it somewhere you’ll actually see it every day.

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This Walnut Box Prints the News You’d Scroll For: Only 10 Were Made

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The first thing most people reach for in the morning isn’t a glass of water or a cup of coffee; it’s the phone. From there, it’s a quick trip through news alerts, emails, and a social media feed that didn’t exist last night. Screen fatigue is well-documented at this point, and the solutions that have emerged tend to be more digital tools designed to manage other digital tools.

Designer and furniture maker Travis Miller decided to approach the problem differently. His Paper Console PC-1 doesn’t ask you to manage your screen time; it simply offers an alternative that doesn’t involve one. The device is about the size of a toaster and sits on a desk or nightstand, printing your news, weather, puzzles, and other personally selected content on demand, one strip of thermal paper at a time.

Designer: Travis Miller

The interaction is deliberately simple. A brass rotary dial on the front selects from up to eight customizable channels, and a single button triggers printing. No menus, no tap targets, no notifications pulling your attention away. The channels can be loaded with whatever content matters most to you, from top news headlines and RSS feeds to weather forecasts, email summaries, astronomy updates, and puzzles like Sudoku and mazes.

Each channel can hold multiple modules stacked in whatever order you prefer, so a single press can deliver a full morning digest: weather first, then headlines, then a journal prompt to think about over coffee. Scheduling is built in as well, so the device can print automatically at set times, silently delivering the day’s content without any input. It’s passive in the best sense.

Inside the walnut and brass enclosure is a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W paired with a 58mm thermal printer. Miller designed and fabricated the case himself, drawing on six years of furniture making, and a 3D-printed internal sled keeps the electronics tidy and mounted. The brass faceplate gives the device the kind of weight and finish that puts it a long way from anything that comes in a retail box.

Miller made only 10 units in this first run, though the full project is open-sourced and documented on GitHub for anyone who wants to build one. That openness suits it well. The PC-1 isn’t a product category or a commercial platform; it’s a personal project that turned out well enough to share. The GitHub documentation is detailed enough to follow and honest about what the build actually involves.

There’s something genuinely refreshing about a device that asks nothing of you except a button press. The Paper Console PC-1 isn’t anti-technology; it’s just more selective about what earns a spot on the desk. Information printed on paper, held in your hand, and torn off when you’re done has a finality that a notification never manages, and for a growing number of people, that difference matters quite a lot.

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Fujifilm’s $170 Instax mini Link+ printer now lets you directly print moodboards from Pinterest

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The smartphone has killed the photo album, turned memories into infinite scrolls, and made physical prints feel almost quaint. But there’s something about holding a tangible photograph that a camera roll of 10,000 images can’t replicate. Fujifilm’s new Instax Mini Link+ smartphone printer bridges this gap with a sophistication that previous models lacked, trading playful pastels for matte black and orange industrial design.

What sets the Link+ apart isn’t just its grown-up aesthetic. The printer introduces a Design Print Mode specifically engineered for text-heavy layouts, graphic work, and intricate illustrations. Whether you’re printing Pinterest inspiration boards, magazine layouts, or poster designs, the enhanced resolution captures fine details that earlier models struggled to render. At $169.95, it positions itself as the premium option in Fujifilm’s smartphone printer lineup, targeting creators who want more than just snapshot printing.

Designer: Fujifilm

Here’s the thing about instant film printers: they’ve always been terrible at text. The Link 3 and its predecessors could handle photos decently enough, but try printing anything with small type or fine line work and you’d get a blurry mess. The Link+ solves this with what Fujifilm calls Design Print Mode, which optimizes the 318 dpi OLED exposure system for sharp edges and clean letterforms. I’ve seen the sample prints, and the difference is immediately obvious. That “FUN THRILLING RIDES” graphic they keep showing in the promo shots actually maintains readability, which sounds basic but represents a genuine technical improvement over previous models.

The printer outputs on standard Instax Mini film, so you’re working with a 2.4 by 1.8 inch image area. Small, yes, but that constraint forces you to think carefully about composition. The app now includes two color modes: instax-Natural for muted, film-like tones, and instax-Rich for saturated colors that pop. You can batch print up to 10 images at once, which makes creating a cohesive series actually practical instead of tedious. Each print takes about 12 seconds from exposure to ejection, and a full charge gives you roughly 100 prints.

And here’s the surprising part – the camera comes with Pinterest integration. You can pull images directly from your boards and print them as mini mood boards or inspiration cards. The app also lets you extract frames from videos, which opens up interesting possibilities for grabbing stills from footage without needing a separate video editor. Frame it, add a text caption or sticker if you want, then print. The whole process happens via Bluetooth 4.2, which means no cables but also means you’re limited to the bandwidth and occasional connectivity hiccups that come with wireless protocols.

The Link+ It measures slim enough to toss in a bag without much bulk, and the vertical printing orientation means you can watch your image emerge from the top slot like a tiny vending machine dispensing art. Fujifilm clearly wants this in design studios and on styled shelves, not just at birthday parties.

The question becomes whether the improvements justify the price premium over the Link 3, which still works perfectly fine for standard photo printing and costs about $30 less. If you primarily print snapshots, probably not. But if you’re printing graphics, working with text, or treating instant film as a legitimate creative output medium, the $169.95 Link+ delivers capabilities the older models simply cannot match. Sometimes maturity means gaining new skills, not just changing your outfit.

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This $995 Printer Turns Your Voice Into Braille Labels

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Picture this: you’re helping your grandmother organize her medicine cabinet, but she’s visually impaired. Those prescription bottles all look identical to her touch. You want to help, but learning Braille isn’t exactly something you picked up over coffee. Now imagine pulling out a compact printer, speaking into your phone, and watching as sticky Braille labels emerge, ready to paste onto each bottle. That’s the beautiful simplicity behind Mangoslab’s Nemonic Dot printer, unveiled at CES 2026.

This isn’t just another gadget trying to solve a problem nobody has. It’s a genuinely thoughtful piece of design that bridges the gap between those who want to help and those who need it. The Nemonic Dot is roughly the size of a stack of drink coasters, a plastic square about 4.5 inches wide and 2 inches thick that connects wirelessly to your smartphone. What makes it special isn’t its size, though. It’s what happens when you open the companion app and simply talk to it.

Designer: MangosLab

The magic lies in the voice interface. You speak a word into the app, and it converts your speech into text, then translates that text into Braille, and finally prints it onto a peel-and-stick strip. No Braille keyboard required. No special training needed. Just your voice and a desire to make someone’s daily life a little easier. It’s the kind of intuitive design that makes you wonder why nobody thought of it sooner.

Mangoslab, which spun off from Samsung’s internal C-Lab research department years ago, originally made their name with a cute sticky note printer. But they’ve evolved that concept into something with real social impact. Traditional Braille label makers cost upward of $1,250 and require users to type directly in Braille using specialized keyboards. The Nemonic Dot comes in under $1,000 and eliminates that learning curve entirely.

What’s particularly clever is how the device handles multiple languages and Braille standards. Because here’s something most people don’t realize: Braille isn’t universal. French Braille differs from English Braille, and there are both six-dot and eight-dot standards to navigate. The Nemonic Dot handles all of this through software translation, meaning it can adapt as standards evolve or when you need to switch between languages. The printer uses electric currents to move ball pins up and down, embossing uniform dots that are 0.6 millimeters high, meeting international standards for tactile readability.

The real-world applications are endlessly practical. Salt and pepper shakers that actually tell you which is which. Spice jars in the pantry. Light switches around the house. Medication bottles in the bathroom cabinet. These are everyday objects that most of us take for granted, but for someone with visual impairment, they represent small daily frustrations that add up. The Nemonic Dot turns those frustrations into solved problems, one sticky label at a time.

What I find most compelling about this design is how it shifts the power dynamic in accessibility. Usually, adaptive technology requires the person with a disability to do all the learning and adapting. But the Nemonic Dot is explicitly designed for friends and family members to use on behalf of their visually impaired loved ones. It’s a recognition that accessibility isn’t just about the end user, it’s about creating ecosystems of support that are easy for everyone to participate in.

The printer runs on battery power or an AC adapter, making it genuinely portable. When your label is finished printing, you press a button on top to trim the strip, and you’re done. The whole process takes seconds. There’s something refreshing about technology that doesn’t try to overcomplicate things. In an era of smart everything and AI everything, the Nemonic Dot does one thing exceptionally well: it turns spoken words into tactile information.

This is inclusive design at its best. Not flashy, not trying to reinvent the wheel, just thoughtfully addressing a genuine need with elegant simplicity. It’s a reminder that the most impactful innovations aren’t always the ones with the most features or the biggest screens. Sometimes they’re the ones that quietly remove barriers and make life just a bit more navigable for everyone.

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Stickerbox: Kids Say an Idea, AI Prints It as a Sticker in Seconds

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Smart speakers for kids feel like a gamble most parents would rather skip. The promise is educational content and hands-free help, but the reality often involves screens lighting up at bedtime, algorithms deciding what comes next, and a lingering suspicion that someone is cataloging every question your child shouts into the room. The tension between letting kids explore technology and protecting their attention spans has never felt sharper, and most connected toys lean heavily toward the former without much restraint.

Stickerbox by Hapiko offers a quieter trade. It looks like a bright red cube, measures 3.75 inches on each side, and does one thing when you press its white button. Kids speak an idea out loud, a dragon made of clouds or a broccoli superhero, and the box prints it as a black-and-white sticker within seconds. The interaction feels less like talking to Alexa and more like whispering to a magic printer that happens to understand imagination.

Designer: Hapiko

The design stays deliberately simple. A small screen shows prompts like “press to talk,” while a large white button sits below, easy for small hands to press confidently. Stickers emerge from a slot at the top, fed by thermal paper rolls. The starter bundle includes three BPA-free paper rolls, eight colored pencils, and a wall adapter, turning the cube into a complete creative kit rather than just another gadget waiting for accessory purchases to feel useful.

The magic happens in three beats. A kid presses the button and speaks their prompt, as silly or specific as they want. The box sends audio over Wi-Fi to a generative AI model that turns phrases into line art. Within seconds, a thermal printer traces the image onto sticker paper, and the finished piece emerges from the top, ready to be torn, peeled, and stuck onto notebooks, walls, or comic book pages at home.

What keeps this from feeling like surveillance is the scaffolding Hapiko built around the AI. The microphone only listens when the button is pressed, so there’s no ambient eavesdropping happening in the background. Every prompt runs through filters designed to block inappropriate requests before reaching the image generator. Voice recordings are processed and discarded immediately, not stored for training. The system is kidSAFE COPPA certified, meaning it passed third-party audits for data handling and child privacy standards.

Thermal printing sidesteps ink cartridge mess entirely. Each paper roll holds material for roughly sixty stickers, and refill packs of three cost six dollars. The catch is that Stickerbox only accepts its own branded paper; using generic rolls will damage the mechanism. The bigger design choice is that every sticker is printed in monochrome, which is intentional. It forces kids to pick up pencils and spend time coloring, turning a quick AI trick into a slower, more tactile ritual.

Stickerbox gestures toward a version of AI-infused play that feels less anxious. The algorithm works quietly, translating spoken prompts into something kids can hold, cut, and trade, but the most important part happens after the sticker prints. It ends up taped inside homemade comic books, stuck on bedroom doors, or colored during rainy afternoons. The box becomes forgettable infrastructure, which might be the kindest thing you can say about a piece of children’s technology designed for creative independence.

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Favor AR Pen Lets You Draw Messages in Air, Print as Photo Cards

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Most of our gifts to friends now are quick messages, emojis, or mobile vouchers that arrive instantly and disappear just as fast. They’re convenient but rarely feel as meaningful as a handwritten note or a physical card you can pin to a wall. Favor AR Message is a concept that tries to bring some of that effort and ceremony back into how Gen Z says thank you, sorry, or congratulations, without abandoning phones entirely.

Favor is a speculative system built around three parts: an AR pen, a tiny photo printer, and a mobile app. You use the pen to draw messages in augmented reality, the app to decorate and package them, and the printer to turn them into physical photo cards. The recipient scans the card with their phone to see the hidden AR message floating above it, like a secret that only appears when you know where to look.

Designers: Junseo Oh, Seungyeon Hong, Yoojin Lee, Youn Taejune

The AR pen, called LIT, is a slim wand that the phone’s camera tracks while you draw in the air. In the app, your strokes become floating 3D text and graphics, animated with light and particles. The designers call this process “LITing,” and it turns writing a message into a small performance, closer to painting with light than typing into a chat window or firing off another text you’ll forget about ten minutes later.

The printer is a compact, pastel-colored box that takes your AR composition and links it to a printed photo card. You can choose selfies, pet photos, or travel shots, then layer stickers and assets on top. On the surface, the card looks like a cute mini print, but when the recipient scans it with the app, the hidden AR message appears in space above the card, like a secret only they can unlock.

The app’s flow is straightforward. You pick a friend, choose a template, LIT your message with the pen, and send or print the card. When your friend receives it, they scan to reveal the AR content, then record a reaction video and send it back. The concept even imagines smart lights in the room reacting when a new Favor is opened, turning the exchange into a tiny event.

The visual language is deliberately playful. The hardware uses soft rectangles, rounded corners, and gentle gradients in lilac and mint, while the app leans into bold purple, bubbly 3D type, and oversized icons. Everything is designed to feel approachable and fun, more like a toy or cosmetic gadget than a piece of serious tech that takes itself too seriously.

Favor AR Message is a thought experiment about how we might make digital communication feel more like a ritual again. By asking you to stand up, wave a pen, design a card, and wait for a reaction, it slows the process down just enough to feel intentional. Whether or not something like this ever ships, the idea of turning AR into something you can hold and revisit is an appealing twist on how we say “this is for you.”

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This E Ink Clock Prints Fortunes and Jokes on Paper Slips

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Time usually passes without much fanfare. Numbers flip on your phone screen, the day blurs from morning coffee to evening TV, and most minutes feel interchangeable. Clocks are background objects, functional but forgettable, doing nothing more than reminding you how late you’re running. There’s no ceremony to checking the time, no surprise waiting when you glance at the display. It’s just numbers counting down to whatever you’re supposed to do next.

Houracle by True Angle approaches this differently. Instead of treating time as something that simply ticks away, it turns each minute into a potential moment of delight. The device is part clock, part oracle, with an eco-friendly thermal printer tucked into the top that spits out fortunes, jokes, riddles, or random facts tied to the exact moment you press the button. It’s the kind of thing that makes you want to check the time just to see what happens.

Designer: True Angle

Click Here to Buy Now: $128 $213 (40% off). Hurry, only a few left!

The design is deliberately retro. A boxy, powder-coated aluminum body with rounded edges, a large orange or yellow button on the top, and an e-ink display that looks like a pencil sketch on paper. The screen shows the time and date, the weather for your selected location, and a small prompt inviting you to press print. Five icons along the right edge let you select modes, fortune, fact, joke, riddle, or surprise, each represented by simple graphics.

Press the button and the printer whirs to life, a satisfying mechanical sound as the paper slip emerges from the top. At 7:42 in the morning, it might tell you destiny took a coffee break and suggest making your own magic. At 11:15, it could mention your brain runs on about 20 watts, enough to power a dim bulb or a brilliant idea. The messages feel oddly personal because they’re tied to that specific minute.

What makes this genuinely charming is how the slips accumulate. They end up on the fridge, tucked into notebooks, or shared with family members over breakfast. Heck, you might find yourself printing extras just to see what weird fact or ridiculous joke Houracle generates next. The lucky numbers printed at the bottom add an extra layer of whimsy that completes the fortune cookie vibe without taking itself too seriously.

The e-ink screen plays a bigger role than you’d expect. Unlike the glowing blue displays most clocks use, this one reflects ambient light rather than emitting it. That makes it easier on the eyes, especially at night, and gives the whole device a calming presence. The screen updates when you interact with it, but otherwise sits quietly, blending into the background.

Of course, the whole thing runs on wall power, which means no batteries to replace or USB cables to manage. The aluminum body is built to last, assembled with screws rather than glue. Houracle also uses BPA and BPS-free thermal slips, sourced from a company that plants a new tree or restores kelp in the ocean for every box of thermal rolls purchased. True Angle designed Houracle with sustainability in mind, using recyclable materials and avoiding planned obsolescence.

What’s surprising is how much a simple printed slip can shift your mood. A clever riddle before bed, a dumb joke during a work break, or a strange fact that makes you pause for a second. These aren’t profound moments, but they add small pockets of joy to days that might otherwise feel routine. Houracle captures the anticipation you used to feel when cracking open a fortune cookie.

The device sits on your desk or nightstand, looking unassuming until you press that button and hear the printer activate. Then it becomes something else entirely, a little machine that marks time with paper artifacts you’ll probably keep longer than you should. For anyone who’s tired of clocks that just tell time and do nothing else, that small shift makes all the difference.

Click Here to Buy Now: $128 $213 (40% off). Hurry, only a few left!

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AI-based LEGO printer turns any subject into replicated pixel art

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Just when everyone is leveraging the power of artificial intelligence (AI), why should avid LEGO fans not dig a share in the pie? Dutch creator, YouTuber, and master brick builder Sten, thought of the obvious and set out to harness the power of AI and built a printing machine entirely from LEGOs that can print any subject into identical pixel art.
The entire building process, along with a demo pixel art made from LEGO pieces, has been documented by Sten on his YouTube channel, Creative Mindstorms. The Pixelbot 3000, as the LEGO printer is called, Sten informs, is ‘capable of creating pixel art of anything using AI.’

Designer: Creative Mindstorms

The Pixelbot 3000 is programmed in Python using help from DALL-E from OpenAI. Sten has managed to program, and create software-hardware integration, in such a manner that you simply ‘type a subject line, hit start’ and the printer takes on from there.

Sten informs, in the video, that he started with inspiration from LEGO printers such as Briccasso, but over time had to improvise a great deal – both with the code customization and the machine functionality – to achieve what he set out to build. He initially used 16 x 16 base plates to print the developed pixel art, but it was later changed to a 32 x 32 grid for better result output.

The basic operation of Sten’s LEGO machine is similar to that of a pick-and-place machine, which has been precisely programmed and created to place large-size LEGO pieces with surprising accuracy on the 32 x 32 grid base plate. Moreover, the machine is designed to pick colors – according to the picture’s demand – and place brick-by-brick to achieve the identical pixel art of an AI image generated. Since LEGO brick colors are limited, Creative Mindstorms reduced its machine’s color palette to 15 base colors including a white background.

The machine does not at any point rely on designing the art or scanning it. It instead uses AI to generate pixel art (using LEGOs) of the image generated in the software. The user can preview the generated image, crop and color grade it, before saving it for printing. When commanded for print, the image is divided into 32 x 32 grid, color and center of each pixel on the base plate is sampled, and the pixel art is then built piece by piece. In the testing, Sten asked AI to create a ‘quirky robot holding a sunflower,’ you can check out how it came out in the video above.

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Handheld printer and scanner concept sticks to tried and true methods of document handling

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We live in a world filled with apps, multimedia content, and digital data, but there are and will always be things written on printed on paper. Official documents are still printed, receipts are still physical, and some people still prefer writing on notebooks and notepads. The gap between physical and digital isn’t that easy to bridge for people who want or even need to have the best of both worlds, even though there are, ironically, a handful of products claiming to offer the perfect solution. As some say, there is no perfect answer, but the best one might actually be the simplest and most straightforward. This concept device, for example, offers what looks like a traditional printer and scanner combo, except it’s something that you can easily store and take from your bag whenever and wherever you need it.

Designer: John Branca

There are quite a few product designs these days that try to unify physical and digital documents, from notebooks and pens that can record your handwriting to smartphone apps that can convert printed or even handwritten text into digital ones. The former doesn’t exactly work for digitizing what’s already printed, while the latter puts the burden on the person taking a perfect photo of the paper. These solutions also don’t work in the reverse, like turning digital files into their physical form, especially when you’re out of the office or not at home.

Scribe is a concept design that combines two things that already exist today, a portable printer and a portable scanner. In a nutshell, it shrinks 2-in-1 printer and scanner combos into a compact design that you can even carry in your hand if necessary. It has an industrial-inspired aesthetic that moves away from the predominant minimalist style, making it distinctive and memorable. It also has a large touch display that makes operating the device simple and intuitive without having to fumble on your computer or phone.

The device uses a feed-type mechanism where a piece of paper slides through the box to get printed or scanned. This does have the limitation of accommodating certain paper sizes only, though that will most likely be the most common use case for scanning receipts and printing out notes. That said, you won’t be able to scan any bound material like notebooks and books, so forget about taking this to the library. Due to size constraints, there’s also only room for a single black inkjet cartridge. ZINK technology might be more compact, but that also requires using special, non-standard paper.

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Scribe is definitely an interesting break from all the app-based, smartphone-centric solutions out there, though it still raises the question of whether it’s more convenient or not. Then again, you can’t print from your phone either, so if you’re going to bring a portable printer with you, might as well have something that can also scan those documents as well.

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HP Sprocket Portable Photo Printers carry bold designs to match your style

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There was a time when Polaroid-style instant cameras made a comeback, riding on the retro and nostalgia wave that was gripping many markets. There are still some of these around that bring joy to the simple act of taking photos and seeing them instantly printed, but some people found the limitations and total cost of ownership a bit too much to ask. At the very least, it required them to carry a camera with them, often bulky and too attention-grabbing, when they already have a perfect camera in the form of their smartphones. That problem led to the birth of instant photo printers, and this fresh batch from the HP Sprocket line put a rather unique twist to that product design by making the printer itself look as stylish and as lively as the photos it prints.

Designer: C+A (HP Licensee)

There are many portable instant photo printers in the market today, but many of them seem to emphasize the “printer” part a bit too much. More often than not, they look like miniature versions of desktop printers, which aren’t exactly the most inspiring designs around. Considering how they’re often used in fun, playful, and whimsical situations, their appearance doesn’t exactly convey the spirit and purpose of the product.

That’s how the HP Sprocket printers differentiate themselves, even if the difference isn’t that earth-shattering. The portable printers sport a textured design that looks almost like terrazzo, giving a bit of a visual flair to the printers. Throw in a splash of pastel color options and you have an accessory that clearly speaks the language of fun.

They’re not all looks, of course, as these are capable ZINK printers. That means you don’t have to worry about messy inks because all the colors are on the special photo paper. Different printer types use different kinds of paper, such as the Sprocket 2×3 printing the smallest photo sizes, while the newer Sprocket Panorama Printer uses a photo paper roll to be able print out panoramic photos, banners, and more. In both cases, HP Sprocket ZINK paper photos have backs you can peel off to reveal a sticky surface for putting on walls, notebooks, boards, and other objects in a more or less permanent manner.

One of the advantages of using portable photo printers over instant cameras is that you can first compose and edit the photos you take with your phone. With the HP Sprocket app, you can easily pick out frames, apply filters, add stickers and icons, and do so much more before finally printing out your masterpiece. And you can print the same photo over and over again, letting you share those fun, once-in-a-lifetime moments with more friends than you could with a single photo.

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