Even though the film machine has long faded out of the market, Fuji Instax mini and other types of Polaroid cameras, with their cute appearance and instant shooting characteristics, have lived unexpectedly well, proving to the market once again the strong purchasing power of sister papers.
If it is troublesome for girls to take a Polaroid out, LG's portable printer Pocket Photo (Chinese name: Qupaide) may be a better solution, and in addition to physical photos, people can permanently retain the electronic version.
parameter
appearance
The official offer is pink and white, but the front and back of both versions are pure white.
NFC logo stickers are pasted on the front of the machine, and LG's metal logo is on the lower right corner.
The back is really pure white.
The bottom of the machine is the notch for output photos.
There is also a circle of smooth silver trim around the slot, but it is also made of plastic.
The front and back sides of the machine are printed with "love". Although the friction of the hand is effectively enhanced, the surface with too many lines is easy to accumulate dust and oil stains, leading to white "aliasing".
There is only one start button on the left side of the machine.
The power on button is equipped with a status indicator.
On the power on button, there is still a Japanese and Korean style slot for hanging holes.
There is only one mirco USB cover on the left side of the fuselage.
The printer uses mirco USB interface for charging, and the RESET hole is above the interface.
The top of the machine is the entrance of printing paper, and there are also instruction stickers.
The only operation after opening the cover is to put in the printing paper.
Although the workmanship of the printer is not good, the appearance design is very careful.
Printing Principle
The machine needs to be used with special zink photo paper. Its printing principle comes from Polaroid's zink technology. In essence, as long as it can enter the photo bin, their photo paper is universal.
And zink is actually the abbreviation of Zero ink, that is, inkless printing technology. There are special crystals on the printing paper. The printing head heating device can sublimate (blue, red, yellow) pigments and enter the photo paper to produce colors and form images. The print head supports 256 temperatures, corresponding to different grayscales, to control the depth of colors.
Because of its small size and high processing costs, the price of photo paper is not low. LG's official photo paper is priced at 99 yuan/box (30 pieces) in X East, which is equivalent to 3.3 yuan/piece, compared with Polaroid zink photo paper (about 1.5 yuan/piece) is also expensive.
Application and operation
Pocket Photo needs to be used with the official app of the same name. The whole process is to process the photos in the app and then output them by the printer.
application It is a picture browser, It is mainly used to complete picture selection and post-processing. However, it seems that the app's interface has not been updated for a long time, and its design style seems to remain at the level of Android 2.3/iOS5.
The homepage can display photos in the phone according to folders, timelines and other forms.
Although the post-processing tools are not as perfect as those of beautiful pictures, the tools such as text, filter, brightness, contrast, saturation, slice, and photo frame are quite complete.
A special feature in photo processing is the function of embedding customized two-dimensional codes. You can "enter" the website, time, address, and even contact information in the QR code (the pop-up box in the right figure has not even been translated into Chinese==!).
After processing, you can print directly, Through NFC connection and Bluetooth transmission, photo data will be transmitted to the printer wirelessly. The printing time of the machine is about 1 minute, and the official nominal is 45 seconds.
The output size is 3 inches (5 * 7.6 cm), and the fineness is not a problem. However, due to the principle of zink photo paper, the photo paper itself is light blue, so the printed photos will be a bit blue in terms of white balance.
Of course, the general problem of insufficient contrast of Polaroid can also be regarded as a feature. The absolute accuracy of white balance seems to have little significance for these real-time printing devices.
However, compared with print quality, its battery life will be a bigger problem. When the machine is fully charged, 15 photos can be printed continuously, but the charging time is up to 1.5 hours (built-in 500mAh battery).
summary
advantage:
It is available immediately, and the waiting time for imaging is relatively short (Polaroid still has to throw photos...)
Beautiful appearance design, and the machine is relatively light (similar to the volume of 10000mAh mobile power supply)
Disadvantages:
The photo paper is too expensive and the size is too small (the cost of a 3-inch photo is 3.3 yuan)
The battery life of the machine is short but the charging time is long（ Unable to print when charging)
This is a pure and interesting niche product, which is mainly used for traveling to visit relatives and take group photos. It may even be used for taking additional ID photos. The appearance of a girl's heart can impress many younger girls. It may also be used as a gift for younger girls, but the cost performance is different.
