Reviews by category
Polaroid PoGo Zinc Mini Printer
Buy Now...
It is very small and runs in a built in rechargeable battery so you can happily print with no mains power around.
It is 12x7x2.2cm and weights 220grams. It will fit easily in a bag or at a push in a pocket. The special coated paper comes in packs of ten or thirty. The sheets are 7.5x5cm. Images can be printed direct from a camera or phone using Bluetooth or by direct connection using Pict Bridge.
One of the images I took using a decent camera was at a concert and I aimed at the rows opposite me getting clear images of the first four people in three rows so even if the images are small if you give it a decent image you can clearly make out the individual people, even at that size.
There are two connectors and a single button on the unit. The left side has the on/off button (although it will turn off automatically after a short period of inactivity to save the battery) and a USB socket. Between these are three small pinhole LED’s. The right side has the A/C input.
The end of the unit has a push closure that allows the lid to be lifted. You then insert a pack (or part of a pack) of the special paper taking care to leave the blue sheet on the bottom as this is a test sheet that needs to go through first. Close the lid and once charged you are ready to print.
When I first saw this I asked a question and the gentleman from Boston (I do not mean Lincolnshire) promised me an answer. When I chased up with Polaroid later I was again promised an answer and again in the late summer at the launch I asked the question again. As I never got a reply I sort of knew the answer would be no. The question I asked was surely this unit would be ideal for issuing temporary ID’s take an image with a digital camera or even a phone and then transfer or beam the image to the Polaroid Zinc printer.
However to make the image a sensible size it needs the facility to print it four images to a sheet, here it fails as it cannot do this. The sheets that it prints on have a sticky backing sheet so ideal to adhere to anything. Printing four copies may seem overkill but one could be retained at the issuing point etc. The alternative would be to allow other information such as name and company to be printed and the printed sheet itself could be the ID but that would require extra software.
On the face of it this is the ideal medium for anyone on a night out, however speaking of the main category who indulge in nights out -the young- they are not interested in having printed photos. They seem to prefer the image on their phone. The days of having a photo in your wallet seems long gone.
If anyone can think of a mass market use apart from the security angle let www.gadgetspeak.com know and you never know you may make this tiny printer a success.
From the time the image is transferred to the printer till it emerging (dry) from the unit is around a minute.
Beaming from a phone or PDA requires a Bluetooth handshake but it works without problem. Printing using Pict Bridge from a camera also works well. The quality is excellent if you give it a good image to start with, it is not a miracle worker so if you give it a poorly lit mobile phone image the printed output will be poor. However a good sharp digital camera image will give a good final result that is all but immediate. Remember the Polaroid Instamatic camera, well this technology sort of works the same way but during my tests anyway the images were dry (instamatics were not) and the images do not seem to fade (instamatics did).
The price of the camera that comes with a pack of ten sheets is stated at £99.95. However the bigger cost is likely to be additional supplies of the sheets of paper that work out at as much as 40p each. Convenience never was cheap. I did find Amazon selling the 30 pack at £7.48 including shipping so that brings it down to 25p a sheet.
The price of the camera that comes with a pack of ten sheets is around $100. However the bigger cost is likely to be additional supplies of the sheets of paper. Convenience never was cheap. I did find Amazon selling the 30 pack at $12.99 including shipping so that brings it down to 15¢ a sheet.
The price of the camera that comes with a pack of ten sheets is stated at £99.95. However the bigger cost is likely to be additional supplies of the sheets of paper. Convenience never was cheap. I did find Amazon selling the 30 pack at €13,84 so that brings it down to 46¢ a sheet.
Doing my Internet searches found the Polaroid PoGo Zinc Printer at a best price of £88.80 including delivery from the first link below.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001APNVTQ?ie=UTF8&tag=gadge0a-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634
Doing my Internet searches found the Polaroid PoGo Zinc Printer at a best price of $99.95 including delivery from the first link below.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0019UGCLG?ie=UTF8&tag=gadge0a5-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789
Doing my Internet searches found the Polaroid PoGo Zinc Printer at a best price of €133,40 including shipping from the first link below.
| add to del.icio.us | Digg this review |
| StumbleUpon | |
!!
