Zink printers: 8 Best Zink Instant Cameras & Printers (Zero Ink, Inkless)

Опубликовано: September 17, 2020 в 4:36 pm

Автор: alexxlab

Категории: Dispensers

8 Best Zink Instant Cameras & Printers (Zero Ink, Inkless)

Scott Gilbertson

Gear

Sep 14, 2019 8:00 AM

We’ve been testing so-called Zink printers and instant cameras for months. These are our favorites.

If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED

Featured in this article

Best Overall (Dual Camera + Printer)

Kodak Smile Classic

$150 at Amazon

Best Photo Quality

Kodak Smile Instant Print Digital Camera

$100 at Amazon

Best Zink Printer

HP Sprocket Photo Printer

$130 at Amazon

A Print-Happy Camera

Polaroid Mint Instant Print Digital Camera

$96 at Amazon

4 / 9

Film may have largely disappeared, but the photograph is sticking around. We’ve covered the best instant-printing cameras that use Fujifilm’s Instax technology for the past year or so. They produce Polaroid-style prints, but there’s another option: Zink printing.

Zink is short for “zero ink.” It eliminates the annoying need for (and running out of) ink cartridges in your printer. Instead Zink prints hold layers of ink in the paper itself. When the image prints, a pressure-based process mixes the ink around to produce the image. Zink produces more traditional prints that look like what you’d get from a professional printer (without the professional quality), instead of the Polaroid-esque big-bordered pics of Instax cameras.

Zink printers are slower than Instax to spit out your images, but they’re done the minute they emerge. They’re also sticky-backed. Zink prints tend to have better dynamic range—meaning there is a broader range of color and tone in the image—compared with Instax prints, but they struggle to produce the rich blacks you get in Instax prints.

Since the technology is basically the same across all of these devices, you’d think the results would be similar, but we found a surprising amount of variation when we tested different cameras and printers. Below are our top recommendations for Zink-based cameras and printers.

Kodak

Best Overall (Dual Camera + Printer)

Kodak Smile Classic

Kodak’s newest offering, the Smile Classic brings instant-camera nostalgia to the present with a design that’s reminiscent of Polaroid, but sleeker and slimmer. It spits out larger, 3.2 x 4.5-inch prints with a white border that gives them a much classier look than the smaller images Zink devices usually print. It has a nice fixed-focus 2-mm f/2.2 lens and a 10-second self-timer button, though no selfie mirror.

The Classic can also do double duty, serving as a printer for your phone. Connect via Bluetooth to the Kodak mobile app and print anything from your device. Its larger print paper is more expensive but worth it. The added printing flexibility and excellent lens make the Classic our favorite Zero Ink camera and printer.

$150 at Amazon
Kodak

Best Photo Quality

Kodak Smile Instant Print Digital Camera

The Kodak Smile produced the best images of all the Zink cameras we tested. It’s simple, compact design makes it easy to take with you, and the sliding on-off mechanism prevents you from accidentally snapping images in your bag. The 10-megapixel sensor isn’t the best we tested, but it’s more than capable of producing quality 2 x 3-inch Zink prints. The fixed-focus lens can be limiting, but it’s in keeping with the Polaroid’s instant-camera tradition of fixed-focus images.

The image results are great. Combined with other niceties—like an LCD viewfinder for reviewing images and a built-in editor for tweaking images before printing—make the Smile the best choice for most people looking for a Zink camera.

$100 at Amazon
HP

Best Zink Printer

HP Sprocket Photo Printer

If you don’t need a camera, and just want to print the images you take with your phone (or even DSLR for that matter), the Sprocket Photo Printer offers the best results. It’s roughly the size of a phone—a little larger than the cameras on this list, but not by much. The Sprocket connects with iPhone, iPad, or Android phones via Bluetooth, and its mobile app lets you edit and customize your photos before printing. There’s also an option to tile your images onto multiple prints for a larger, pieced-together image.

The printed results are the best of all the devices we tested and have deeper blacks than other Zero Ink printers and cameras.

$130 at Amazon
Polaroid

A Print-Happy Camera

Polaroid Mint Instant Print Digital Camera

The Polaroid Mint Camera and Printer combo is a stylish, well-designed little package (just slightly bigger than a deck of cards) available in a variety of colors. The vertical orientation isn’t always what you want, but it mirrors how most of us shoot with our phones.

Its 16-megapixel sensor is also notably better than our top pick, and the selfie mirror is helpful, but Mint has a huge limitation: Everything prints, even the duds. If you want to review your images, the Kodak above is the best choice. If you’re OK with printing everything, the Mint produces great results.

$96 at Amazon

The best instant photo printer you can buy right now

Instant photo printers are sort of the quieter, less-cool sibling of instant cameras, but they’re arguably more practical. They don’t quite tap into the nostalgia-fueled fun of pulling out an Instax camera at a party, but they’re a more versatile means of getting to the final product: a real, live photo print you can touch and feel. In an age where virtually all of our photos live in digital storage on our devices or on social media feeds, a physical print is kind of magic.

There are plenty of ways to turn the photos on your phone into physical prints, but most of them involve waiting for shipping or finding a kiosk in a brick-and-mortar store, both of which are terrible prospects. Mobile photo printers eliminate the wait — they’re small enough to be carried in a purse or a bag so they can go where you go.

Our top pick, the Polaroid Hi-Print, isn’t exactly the most portable, but it produces the best color and print quality by far. It’s still small enough to fit into a larger purse or bag, but refill cartridges are on the bigger side and are definitely not going to fit into an evening clutch. For better portability and fun social event-friendly features, we like the Canon Ivy.

We tested instant printers that produce smaller 2 x 3-inch or 2.4 x 2.4-inch photos. There are also compact printers that work with bigger 4 x 6-inch photo paper which are better suited for scrapbooks or frames, and different small size formats, like Fujifilm’s wide Instax. But for the purposes of this guide, we stuck with the two options mentioned. All of our picks come with free iOS and Android apps that you’ll need to download in order to use them, and they all worked without problems on both platforms.

Polaroid Hi-Print

$79$10021% off

The Hi-Print isn’t the most portable, but it produces excellent quality prints with its dye-sub process.

$79 at Amazon$100 at Best Buy

Polaroid Hi-Print

The best instant photo printer

The Polaroid Hi-Print is unique because it’s actually a mini dye-sub printer, which is the technology most bigger color photo printers use. It applies yellow, red, and cyan layers in three separate passes. While this happens, the printer’s companion app indicates what’s going on, and you can watch the print move in and out of the printer as different color layers are applied. It’s not the retro fun of watching an instant photo print develop in front of your eyes, but it’s neat. It also results in high-quality prints with rich, accurate color and good contrast. There’s some banding in areas of solid colors if you look really closely, but it’s only visible from about a foot away — much closer than you’re likely to view it.

The Hi-Print app is also very straightforward and easy to use. There’s no way to sync up your Google Photos or social accounts for direct access; if that’s a priority, you’ll want to look at the Zink printer options below. There are also just a few “sticker” options to apply to your image preprint, but the text typefaces are the best-looking among the printers I tested. They made me want to put funny text on my photos. There are also standard color and exposure adjustments available, along with some colorful frames that, like the text options, surprisingly don’t suck.

Print refills include an entire cartridge that produces an unfortunate amount of waste.

One does not simply add more photo paper to the Hi-Print, either. Each refill is actually an entire printer cartridge with a spool and everything. Each one includes 10 sheets of photo paper ready to go, and they’re sold in boxes of two — so 20 prints per package. The photo sheets come with a little detachable tab on the bottom, so you can grab the photo out of the printer without putting your fingers on the image. You can also have a peel-off backing to make your photo print a sticker.

Unfortunately, the Hi-Print’s system makes for a lot of plastic waste. Every time you add a new cartridge, you have to take the old one out and throw it away. (Polaroid’s support page says the company can’t recycle them for you, and my local curbside recycling guidelines rule it out since it uses more than one kind of plastic.) It’s a shame that you can’t reuse it in some way. The cartridges are also much larger than a pack of Zink or Instax paper, so it’s not the most practical option if you want to carry a lot of paper refills with you.

The Hi-Print produces vivid, accurate colors.

Another downside is that this is a proprietary print format — unlike Zink, which is used by many different mobile printer brands. If Polaroid decides to stop making the Hi-Print, you’ll be stuck with a printer that doesn’t work.

The Hi-Print is also more expensive than other mobile printers. The printer itself costs $100, and a single 20-sheet refill pack costs $17. (Though, at the time of this writing, you can find a three-pack of refills for $50 on Amazon.) That makes the price per print around 85 cents. That’s much higher than the Zink alternatives, which are more like 50 cents per print.

The Hi-Print isn’t the best choice if you’re looking for ultra-portability, an abundance of fun stickers, or the very best cost per print. But the prints are much better than the other options we tested. The text options you can apply to images are modern and fun, and the app is very easy to use. If print quality is a priority, then the Hi-Print is your best option.

Fujifilm Instax Square Link

$139

The Instax Square Link produces instant photos in an instantly recognizable, classic format. Instax Square photo paper is a little pricier than Fujifilm’s standard, credit card-shaped instant format, and the Square Link has a few gimmicky features that most people won’t use regularly. But for instant prints on true photo film sheets, it’s hard to beat.

$140 at B&H Photo$139 at Target

Fujifilm Instax Square Link

Best Instax photo printer

The $140 Instax Square Link uses Fujifilm’s square format film sheets. Like the instant cameras of yesteryear, the Square Link’s prints develop over the course of a few minutes once they leave the printer. They’re not as big as traditional 3 x 3 Polaroids, but this format is about 1.5x larger than the standard Instax Mini film used by most of Fujifilm’s instant cameras and printers.

Instax film delivers rich blacks that Zink printers can’t match, and the Square Link’s default Bold print setting produces pleasantly rich colors. But quality comes at a price: photos work out to about 90 cents each. If you want to do a lot of printing and quality is less important, take a look at our Zink printer recommendations below.

Instax Square prints are good, nostalgic fun.

The Square Link companion app for iOS and Android is more straightforward to use than the Mini Link 2’s. There are a few gimmicks, like an AR print mode that will display doodles, animations, and text on your photo when you scan a QR code. But overall, there are fewer gimmicky features than on the Instax Mini Link 2, which is just loaded with them.

If you want to capture some of the nostalgia of instant photography along with the convenience of a mobile printer, you can’t beat the Square Link. It’s not the cheapest way to print photos by a long shot, but it’s a lot of fun, and the resulting photos are of good quality.

Canon Ivy

$100$14431% off

100

$100$14431% off

The Canon Ivy is the best option that uses Zink paper, which is cost-effective and more portable than other types of cartridge refills.

$100 at Amazon$100 at Best Buy

Canon Ivy

The best Zink photo printer

The best mobile printer for parties and social occasions is the Canon Ivy. It takes commonly used Zink paper, and it offers the best photo quality of the Zink printers we tested, with good color reproduction. Its companion app also appears to get timely updates with appealing, seasonally appropriate new “stickers” to apply to photos. When I used the app in late July, it had been updated recently with Pride and Juneteenth art by illustrator Sabrena Khadija.

The printer itself is slimmer and more portable than the Instax or Hi-Print, and it’s more cost-effective, too. The printer retails for $99.99, and 50 sheets of paper cost $24 on Amazon at the time of this writing, working out to about 50 cents per print.

Color accuracy is good, and the sticker options are fun.

I did encounter one problem during testing: using an iPhone 11 running iOS 15.6, the app crashed every time I tapped on the option to connect my Google Photos account. This worked fine on Android, so it seems to be an iOS-specific problem. If you’re an iPhone owner and you rely on Google Photos for image storage, then I wouldn’t recommend the Ivy. I didn’t have any problems accessing photos stored on the iPhone itself or connecting to my Instagram account, which is probably how most iPhone owners would want to use the printer anyway.

Otherwise, the Ivy is a great option for someone looking for portability and value over the best possible print quality.

HP Sprocket

$77

The HP Sprocket’s photo quality isn’t quite the best in the Zink class, but it is portable and cost-effective with a good companion app experience.

$77 at Amazon$80 at Best Buy

HP Sprocket

The best cheap instant printer

We considered two Zink printers for this category, the Sprocket and the Kodak Step, both of which are products licensed by C&A Marketing. The $80 HP Sprocket comes out ahead but not by a lot. Print quality is okay, but the printer adds some unattractive sharpening and brightening that looks like a bad HDR effect. It probably won’t bother most people, but if photo quality is a priority, the Canon Ivy is a better choice. But overall color reproduction is acceptable on the Sprocket, and I can’t say the same about the Kodak Step, which adds way too much red to images. You can correct this by adjusting the cyan / red slider in the app, but you need to do this before every single print.

Photo quality isn’t as good, but the Sprocket represents the best value.

The Sprocket has some nice features, too. The onboarding and initial setup that the app takes you through is helpful and clear. Plus, you have the opportunity to rename the printer as it appears in the app and decide which color the printer’s indicator light will glow. It’s not quite as slim as the Canon Ivy, but it is small enough for a large clutch-style purse. A pack of 100 photo sheets retails for $45 on Amazon at the time of this writing, so the cost per print is under 50 cents. If you aren’t too picky about photo quality, then the Sprocket is a good deal.

“Printed” cakes and chocolate: Russian scientists have created a 3D printer for making food with improved properties printing” of high-value food products. The goal of the development is to create food products enriched with vitamins, micronutrients and antioxidants, which are becoming less and less in conventional products. Scientists have already tested the printers, and they managed to get dough and chocolate, but further – more: the specialists plan to create artificially grown meat on the printer without losing its useful properties.

The problem of the lack of important macro- and microelements in ordinary food today has reached unprecedented proportions: manufacturers are increasingly replacing familiar products with industrial analogues, and many people suffer from a lack of elements necessary for the normal development of the body. Scientists are confident that this could lead to massive “hidden hunger” around the world.

Eating well is very important, as it provides the opportunity to live an active and healthy life. However, being full is not enough. Even with a normal diet and sufficient calories, “hidden hunger” can occur. This is a form of malnutrition, which is caused by a monotonous and unbalanced diet.

“Hidden hunger” is characterized by the consumption of predominantly starchy foods, rice, wheat and corn, sugar and fats; such a diet is now relevant for more than a third of the world’s population because of the cheapness and feeling of satiety. Foods that contain starch do not have enough vitamins, iron, iodine, zinc, selenium, other beneficial macro and micronutrients and important nutrients, leading to serious health problems.

From the shadow of covid into a global problem

In 2021, according to the international media Project Syndicate, it was COVID-19 that brought the concept of “hidden hunger” out of the twilight. For example, the coronavirus pandemic has significantly affected the lives of the people of South Africa, and the problem was not only the shortage of food rich in nutrients.

Income, which affects getting enough calories and adequate nutrients, has taken a backseat during the pandemic. The fact is that in South Africa, hunger was the result of a lack of access to normal food. Limited access to nutritious food in low-income areas, as well as the high cost of energy for food storage and preparation, and the lack of access to land for home-grown food production, have had a devastating effect. 47% of South Africans simply ran out of money to buy the food they could afford before the pandemic. Strict controls in the era of coronavirus, lockdowns, curfews, job losses, rising prices have all led to “hidden hunger”, not only in South Africa, but in many other parts of the world.

The pandemic has also made it clear that the consequences of “hidden hunger” can be detrimental to human health, namely, to its immune system. People who ate poorly, or ate normally, but foods without the necessary nutrients, fell ill with covid and fell ill with other serious viruses and infections are more likely. Among other things, the pandemic has highlighted the close link between the course of COVID-19 and the most serious disease of “malnutrition” – diabetes. Data from Cape Town, for example, shows that people with covid who had diabetes were four times more likely to be hospitalized and three times more likely to die due to COVID-19.than patients who did not have diabetes.

The pandemic has exacerbated food insecurity and highlighted the severe effects of hunger, but has also provided an opportunity to find potential solutions to increase access to healthy food. So, against the backdrop of a disruption in the supply of food, in the same Africa, local food systems began to emerge, supply chains between small farmers and the population, “people’s restaurants” serving daily subsidized healthy meals, vegetable and fruit shops, farmers’ tents, food banks and other. This all helps to support the income of local producers and the health of the local population, since most of the government food packages distributed to locals turned out to be of zero nutritional value.

“Hidden hunger” has previously been more common among the poor, and the initiatives mentioned above are working. However, today scientists are sounding the alarm, because every year the percentage of people who lack nutrients in their food is increasing, and no longer always depends on the person’s wealth or the availability of food. We again return to the fact that mass food producers, unfortunately, often do not monitor the adequate amount of nutrients in food.

Healthy food in a healthy body!

In order to solve the problem of “hidden hunger” and its consequences, in addition to attracting local farmers and subsidized food banks, scientists from all over the world are trying to find another, more massive and convenient solution.

For example, Russian scientists from the All-Russian Institute of Plant Genetic Resources named after N.I. Vavilov proposed to fight “hidden hunger” with the help of an actively developing strategy of biofortification, or biofortification – a set of measures to improve and increase the content of essential substances in the main food sources through selection and the use of fertilizers with the necessary composition. Employees of the institute in their work spoke about the potential of grain crops to produce varieties with a higher content of target compounds necessary for a healthy and safe diet.

From biofortification to “printing” of cakes and chocolate

In solving the problem of “hidden hunger”, scientists from the Moscow State University of Food Production (MGUPP) have moved even further. The specialists decided that the production of alternative food using 3D printers and farms would significantly reduce the negative effects of starvation and lack of nutrients. Food created on a 3D printer can be enriched with the missing components so that the necessary macro- and microelements are better absorbed in the human body.

3D printers are devices that allow you to create three-dimensional objects based on digital models, printing a digital model layer by layer using special plastic. Scientists from MGUPP experimented a little with a conventional printer and created one that can “print” food at the cellular level. Farms with 3D food printers are already producing experimental food with might and main, and students and graduate students, in addition to collecting devices by hand, are establishing production technology.

“Food printers” differ from conventional ones in that they are modified with food raw materials instead of plastic ink. Relatively simple components are inserted into the printer: chocolate, dough and puree masses, with which you can make cakes, pancakes, chocolate or other desserts.

Soon, scientists are planning to artificially grow meat. The process will be a little more difficult, but no less interesting. First, the meat will be ethical and popular due to its production technology. Secondly, scientists plan to use the biopsy method – they will pinch off a piece of tissue from animals without injuring it, isolate cells from it, which will be propagated in special bioreactors. This step will take about a couple of months. Next, the specialists will prepare raw materials for the printer: they will print a special plant-based substrate, apply living cells to it, alternating layers of animal and plant materials. This happens with the help of a nozzle – a device with one or more calibrated spray holes, which allows you to print both cellular material and plant fibers.

Aleksey Kuchumov, Vice-Rector for Research and Development at MGUPP, says that the university has created a unique revolver-type extruder – a conical nozzle at the end of the printer tube that regulates the outgoing stream of raw materials. Inside there is a drum, different raw materials are fed into it. This allows you to speed up the production process and use as few parts as possible.

The “bioprinting” technology used at the university is unique: it allows you to create a product that a person needs for health reasons and tests, working according to a given digital model. Bioprinting has an applied value in specialized nutrition, and with its help people can get a personalized amount of missing vitamins, microelements, and antioxidants. Someone lacks magnesium, someone lacks iron, and these components can be included in the composition of “printed food” to make up for the deficiency in each individual person. You can take dietary supplements and other pills, but it is enriched foods that increase digestibility and benefit the human body. Now scientists are working on a database of smart recipes that will serve as instructions for a 3D printer, like a recipe book for a chef. With everything else, the printer also performs the function of a refrigerator or freezer with different setting temperatures – it is designed in such a way that the necessary climatic environment will be formed for each type of raw material: from temperature to humidity.

The university is also opening a laboratory for the production of “cultured” meat, together with 3D Bioprinting Solutions, which provided bioprinters for researchers.

Healthy food printing machine made from 99% domestic materials. In the future, this food production technology can be used as the basis for vending machines that will print products or dishes according to the customer’s order if the machine is installed in an office or shopping center.

Now the production of “printed” products is estimated as an expensive process, but soon scientists hope to find solutions in order to reduce the cost of production of the same cultured meat and equalize its cost with natural.

Author: Vladlena Martus

Photo: MGUPP press service

Chemistry – Safetin LLC

Mapped from 1 to 20 (out of 39 items)

836.53 rubles

Buy
Select to Compare
Add to Personal Catalog
564.26 rubles

Buy
Select to Compare
Add to Personal Catalog
993. 05 rub

Buy
Select to Compare
Add to Personal Catalog
2.596.40 rub

Buy
Select to Compare
Add to Personal Catalog
1.540.21 rub

Buy
Select to Compare
Add to Personal Catalog
954.91 rub

Buy
Select to Compare
Add to Personal Directory
631. 34 rubles

Buy
Select to compare
Add to Personal Directory
1.930.86r

Buy
Select to Compare
Add to Personal Catalog
170120 Electrical contact cleaner “HUPcontactXtra”

170120 Electrical contact cleaner “HUPcontactXtra”
Application of the HUPcontactXtra cleaner:
Spray parts or contact surfaces to be cleaned and allow dirt to drain off. If heavily soiled, the process may need to be repeated. Since the product does not burn, no shutdown is required on energized units.
Properties:
HUPcontactXtra is a safe cleaner based on non-flammable solvents. The product is odorless, physiologically safe, does not contain aromatic compounds and is therefore well tolerated by the skin compared to conventional cleaners. It has excellent characteristics for protection against leakage currents and creeping currents. It evaporates very quickly and leaves no residue.
Weight 0.450kg.

3.414.51 rub

Buy
Select to Compare
Add to Personal Catalog
877.30 rub

Buy
Select to Compare
Add to Personal Catalog
915. 45 rub

Buy
Select to Compare
Add to Personal Catalog
993.05 rub

Buy
Select to Compare
Add to Personal Catalog
1.033.82 rub

Buy
Select to Compare
Add to Personal Directory
1.033.82 rub

Buy
Select to compare
Add to Personal Directory
566. 89 rub

Buy
Select to Compare
Add to Personal Catalog
720.78r

Buy
Select to Compare
Add to Personal Catalog
643.18 rubles

Buy
Select to Compare
Add to Personal Catalog
2.049.23 rub

Buy
Select to Compare
Add to Personal Catalog
720.

Zink printers: 8 Best Zink Instant Cameras & Printers (Zero Ink, Inkless)