Do you ever wish you had a device that could make a small, low quality print out of one of your photos with a self-adhesive backing so that you could stick it to something? No? Well read on anyway - you might change your mind!

This is the Polaroid Pogo portable photo printer…

Polaroid Pogo 1

Polaroid Pogo 2
The PoGo connects to your camera via PictBridge or to your laptop or cellphone by bluetooth (so you can feel very 21st century by beaming photos across the room to the little printer). It produces 3″ by 2″ prints on special heat sensitive paper which means it doesn’t use ink - the picture is created by heating crystals in the paper (indeed Zink, the name of the paper, stands for “Zero-ink”). This means there’s no need to worry about the ink running out on you.

What you do need to worry about, however, is the battery running out. The battery life is really very short meaning you pretty much have to charge it at every opportunity if you really want to be able to use it when you’re out and about. I recently took mine on holiday and didn’t bother taking it out with me but when I got back to the hotel at the end of each day I printed some of the day’s best shots and stuck them in a holiday album (a Moleskine notebook) which was a nice thing to be able to do. Try fitting an inkjet printer in your suitcase!

Unfortunately, the battery life isn’t the biggest problem - it would be generous to say the print quality is average. Sure, what comes out is recognisable as the photo you put in but both the reproduction and range of colors ends up being fairly different and the prints often come out a bit liney.

Really the PoGo is not a serious printer, it’s a toy and its price relative to the few other portable printing options out there reflects that. For all its shortfalls, if you’re willing to accept it for what it is, it’s actually a lot of fun and I don’t regret buying mine. If you’re tempted, I’d suggest a quick search for “Polaroid PoGo” on Flickr so that you prepare yourself for the kind of print quality that can be acheived and save yourself a little disappointment down the line!

One more thing - just like classic Polaroid film, some people have found ways to manipulate the zink medium to produce some crazy effects. Check out this video of PoGo manipulation - these guys discovered you can use the PoGo to print on bill paper (shop receipts) which is prett neat…

Photo Manipulation: Zink-PoGo from Frenky on Vimeo.