Review: Prynt Pocket Turns Your iPhone Into an Instant Camera

[MacRumors]

Prynt Pocket, priced at $150, is a portable printer that's designed to work with the iPhone, allowing you to print small 2x3 photos wherever you go thanks to ZINK paper, which does not require printer cartridges to work.

There are several of these iPhone-compatible miniature printers on the market, but the Prynt Pocket is unique because it's designed to connect to the iPhone using a Lightning connector, a feature that has both benefits and downsides.

Design

Of all the portable ZINK photo printers that I've tested, Prynt Pocket has the most complicated design and the biggest learning curve when it comes to using the device. The ZINK paper needs to be loaded into a separate paper cartridge in the correct orientation, and then the paper cartridge needs to be loaded into the portion of the Prynt Pocket that attaches to the phone.

From there, you need to adjust the size of the Prynt Pocket using a slider and accompanying button in order to fit it to your iPhone of choice. Then your iPhone needs to attach to the Prynt Pocket via the Lightning connector built into the device. With other printers, you basically unsnap a single compartment, load the paper, and then snap it back into place.

Prynt Pocket is designed this way so you can snap a photo with the device attached to your iPhone and then print it right away. I found that connecting the Prynt Pocket to my iPhone in this way was time consuming, and it wasn't a feature that I thought was useful as most of the time, I want to edit before I print. Editing with the Prynt Pocket attached to my phone was cumbersome, but there is a "Print" button right in the app if you want to snap a shot and then print sans editing.


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Article Link: Review: Prynt Pocket Turns Your iPhone Into an Instant Camera

 

[nexu]

To use the Prynt Pocket, you need to sign up for an account in the Prynt app, and you need to grant the app access to your camera and microphone to use the in-app camera tools.

Okay

 

[erinsarah]

And some industrial designers carried this all the way through to production? Man, this seems like an overly complicated and inconvenient way to print a photo.

 

[SteveJobs2.0]

Reprintculous!

 

[44267547]

And some industrial designers carried this all the way through to production? Man, this seems like an overly complicated and inconvenient way to print a photo.

I would say this is more of a novelty item at $150. It’s something that will never reach the mass appeal for the consumer, just likely for somebody that’s an extreme tech enthusiast that likes gadgets.

 

[Scooz]

Give one to your kid and they are doomed.

 

[pdaholic]

And the best part is that it’s not bulky at all...

 

[now i see it]

Review: Prynt Pocket Turns Your iPhone Into an Instant Camera

Might want to change "Camera" to "Printer"

 

[5105973]

I have a certain nostalgic appreciation for old family photos, particularly a baby picture of my dad taken in the late 1930's.

But it is very tricky trying to preserve most of these modern prints. I don't care how good the paper is advertised as being, just about every photo I've taken in my life that I've painstakingly tried to archive and preserve still faded and needed to be digitally restored in a matter of a few years. Digital photography and cloud storage in tandem with local backups is one advance I wholly embrace.

Well thank you MR for this product review. It's definitely a bit bulky and fiddly and expensive for my needs.

 

[NachoGrande]

Why not just carry another camera at that point.

 

[PlutoPrime]

And some industrial designers carried this all the way through to production? Man, this seems like an overly complicated and inconvenient way to print a photo.

You seem to be taking great creative liberty here with the term "designer"

 

[Jessica Lares]

My PoGo (one of the Zink printers Polaroid did) eventually ended up having the blue line issue too, although calibrating it did fix it. You'd think that'd be something they'd have tackled almost ten years later...

Has MR tried one of the Fujifilm Instax printers? I read awhile ago that those have gotten better. They're pretty expensive too.

 

[jclo]

My PoGo (one of the Zink printers Polaroid did) eventually ended up having the blue line issue too, although calibrating it did fix it. You'd think that'd be something they'd have tackled almost ten years later...

Has MR tried one of the Fujifilm Instax printers? I read awhile ago that those have gotten better. They're pretty expensive too.

I haven't tried the Fujifilm yet. I'll have to check it out. I had the same blue line issue with my Zip once, but in that instance calibrating with blue paper did work. I could not get it to work on the Prynt Pocket for the life of me. I swear I ran that blue paper through it like three dozen times.

 

[Kelly the Dude]

Not for me. I have enough hate for my full size printer to last a lifetime.

 

[Porco]

Part of me is scoffing at this... bulky, needs an account to print(?!) and questionable colour accuracy all for quite pricey small prints...

But then I remember getting my first printer, a huge 24-pin(oh yes) colour dot matrix thing that printed images that looked like you’d sat on it with a leprechaun’s tennis racket and then dipped it in bleach. And I think how far we’ve come, and how exciting it is, even if not for this particular product but how short our memories are and how fast the technology (and availability of it) has advanced.

 

[NightFox]

Might want to change "Camera" to "Printer"

Yeah I thought that at first too, but it means an "instant camera" in the context of something like a Polaroid that provides instant physical photographs (rather than have to have to print them out when you get home or have your film developed).

 

[CJM]

How do these companies raise capital... As dead as Juicero.

 

[erinsarah]

Not for me. I have enough hate for my full size printer to last a lifetime.

Indeed. I dumped my last inkjet printer after I did the math and realized my pre-teens were costing me a fortune to print out color pictures of unicorns and such. Went with a b&w laser and never looked back. Color photos get sent to Target.

 

[millerj123]

Indeed. I dumped my last inkjet printer after I did the math and realized my pre-teens were costing me a fortune to print out color pictures of unicorns and such. Went with a b&w laser and never looked back. Color photos get sent to Target.

We still have a really good photo color printer. It uses about half of the remaining cartridge each time we want to print a photo.

I keep getting ultra cheap b&w laser printers. They last forever, toner is cheap, and the prints don't bleed. I shudder thinking about the old bubble-jet prints I used to make.