Polaroid is abandoning instant film, but if you’re going to miss the feel of getting a small print in your hand a minute after snapping a picture, the company has a solution: A battery-powered printer that fits in your pocket. I got a chance to test out the new pocket printer and I am not disappointed.
Called the PoGo, the printer spits out 2-by-3-inch color photos that can be peeled apart to reveal a sticky back. It can receive photos wirelessly from some cell phones, or via a cable from a digital camera. However, I will warn you now: Do not expect great picture quality from the $149 PoGo. The colors are strange at times, which is especially noticeable in the skin tones. There are faint lines across the print; artifacts from the printing process.
That is besides the point. Sometimes you have to scrafice something to get something else better, right? So why not sacrifice a little picture quality to make it as portable as possible. And to be honest, none of the Polaroid portable printer I have tried have been up to pare. If you have seen the “instant” prints from the Polaroid portable printer family, then you know a little about the technology about the prints. However, the PoGo prints a little differently. The printer uses paper with billions of embedded dye crystals. It selectively heats them up to produce different colors. There is no ink, toner, or liquid chemical in the process. The prints come out dry. That explains the accuracy of colors.
With no ink to buy, the only cost of using the printer is the paper, which it eats in packs of 10. They have to make up the money somehow so these paper packs cost $3.99 each, or $9.99 for three. That’s a little steep compared to regular photo printers, but cheap compared to instant film, which costs around $15 for a 10-pack.
For a cell phone to connect to the PoGo, it needs, first of all, a Bluetooth chip. However, not all Bluetooth-equipped cell phones work with the PoGo. My iPhone didn’t work unfortunately, however, and old Blackberry that I had did the job perfectly. Compatibility is probably going to be an issue and if you are buying it to print strictly from your phone, I suggest you make sure it is compatible.
Another thing I did not like is the fact that the printer has no LCD screen or memory card slot. Most printers have these features, and I am sure again, they had to sacrifice portability for a LCD and a memory card slot, but that would have been oh-so-convenient. Both way, I enjoyed it and if you are looking to print on the fly for fun (not professionally of course) then I recommend this printer. If I were in high school or middle school, this would be the perfect gift. I think middle or high schoolers would love being able to pull out their cellphones (that most teens have these days), take a picture, peel off the back and put it on their lockers or something.
Let’s face it. Journalism in the future will be different. The changes may be disorienting to those who are used to the old ways of doing things, but change is definitely coming. A morning routine for my father on Sunday’s was to wake up, fix himself some coffee, go outside and grab the newspaper, and read the paper front to back and share some of my mother’s stories (she was a journalist) since my sister and I had no interest in the news at the time. My mother and father would both highlight the news in the paper and answer any questions we had. In, what seemed like the next day, both my mother and father had ditched the paper and were reading the news online. That is where it is going, and it is only a matter of time before we see newspapers and magazines shutting down worldwide.
