Tech Test: Polaroid printer pocketable, practical

Tag : LCD Power Tester

NEW YORK -- Polaroid is abandoning instant film, but if you'regoing to miss the feel of getting a small print in your hand aminute after snapping a picture, the company has a solution: Abattery-powered printer that fits in your pocket.
Called the PoGo, the printer spits out 2- by 3-inch color photosthat can be peeled apart to reveal a sticky back. It can receivephotos wirelessly from some cell phones, or via a cable from adigital camera.
Don't expect great picture quality from the $149 PoGo. The colorsare a bit whacky, which is especially noticeable in the skin tones.There are faint lines across the print, artifacts from the printingprocess.
But who cares? Consumer Polaroids were always lo-fi, and that waspart of their charm. The PoGo prints look like leaves from thePolaroid family tree. In fact, they're reminiscent of the small,sticky-backed prints from the i-Zone, an instant-film camera of the'90s.
But the technology in the PoGo is quite different. The printer usespaper with billions of embedded dye crystals. It selectively heatsthem up to produce different colors. There is no ink, toner orliquid chemical in the process. The prints come out dry.
With no ink to buy, the only cost of using the printer is thepaper, which it eats in packs of 10. These cost $3.99 each, or$9.99 for three. That's a little steep compared with regular photoprinters, but cheap compared with instant film, which costs around$15 for a 10-pack. (Polaroid film is still in stores, but stocksare expected to run out next year. After that, Fujifilm will be theonly maker of instant film).
Polaroid films have always been a boon to experimenters. Peopleused to peel apart the films fresh out of the camera then smear theimage onto paper to produce attractive "emulsion transfers." Othersmassaged the prints coming out of their SX-70 cameras, distortingthe image in entertaining ways.
The thermographic, or "heat-writing," technology of the PoGo alsois somewhat hackable. Flitting the tip of a soldering iron across aPoGo paper produces streaks of yellow. Slowing down yields red, andpausing produces blue. Set a clothes iron to low heat and pass itover the edges of a photo to apply a blue-green border.
A simpler form of thermographic paper has been used in fax machinesfor a long time, and it's not known for holding up over time. Itdarkens with heat, which can make it illegible. That makes me a bitconcerned with the longevity of the PoGo prints, yet Polaroid saysthey will last 15 years in normal indoor lighting conditions.
A clearer disadvantage of the thermographic process is that itneeds a lot of heat, and thus energy. The rechargeable battery inthe PoGo is good for only 15 prints. I could easily see myselfbringing the PoGo on vacation, printing out photos to put in ajournal or stick on postcards, but the need to bring a poweradapter that's as big as the printer itself is a turnoff.
Then there's the question of compatibility. For a cell phone toconnect to the PoGo, it needs, first of all, a Bluetooth chip. Butnot all Bluetooth-equipped cell phones work with the PoGo, and it'snot easy to figure out which ones do, because printer compatibilityis not something many phone shoppers ask for.
Out of 12 Bluetooth cell phones I tried, half worked. There didn'tseem to be any particular trend in the results. An advanced phonelike the iPhone failed, while a simpler one like the Samsung Traceworked. But I found it didn't match my results in all cases: It says theLG Voyager doesn't work, but it did for me; and that the LG Venusdoes work, while it didn't for me.
Mating the PoGo to a digital camera is easier. It will accept aconnection via USB cable from any camera that adheres to thePictBridge standard, which has been widely adopted.
To make things even more convenient, it would have been nice if thePoGo had a memory card slot and an LCD screen, so you could pickthe picture to print. Some photo printers have these features. Andwhile we're at it, why not add a lens to it? Then we'd have a realPolaroid instant camera again.
Until then, the PoGo will fill a niche for those who need prints onthe fly. The sticky back alone nearly doubles their usefulness. Andwhile it's nice to be able to snap pictures with a phone and seethem on the screen, having a real picture in your hand is stillspecial.
The PoGo goes on sale July 6 in Best Buy stores, and July 20 atTarget.