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It’s easy to get intensely serious about photographic kit and technique but, sometimes, photography should just be fun," says our own Matthew Richards. "There’s certainly a lot to be had with the Instax Mini LiPlay. It continues the decades-old tradition of truly instant photography, where you can take and share pictures anywhere and everywhere, capturing and preserving treasured memories on the fly."
Even the best iPhone printers generally need to be charged. But with the Kiipix Portable Mini Printer, you don't have to. You just have to crank it manually to get prints out, so no batteries or electricity are needed. So how does it work? Simply insert the Instax Mini film and open up the printer. Then turn the brightness of your iPhone to full, and place your iPhone on top of the printer. Push the button, turn the crank and watch your pictures roll out. This simplicity makes this the cheapest iPhone printer on our list, although note that the Instax film is quite costly. As such, the bulk of our testing is based on real-world use. What kind of batteries are used? Are they easily rechargeable or replaceable once depleted? Does it use instant film or printer paper, and what are the cost-quality implications? How good is the connection to your phone or other smart device? Is the printer simply portable, or is it actually practical to use while on the go? How to choose the best portable printers Finally, there are instant film cameras, which use the same film that you find inside instant cameras. This can be pretty costly though. For more details, see our article. what type of instant film do I need? Finally there are Zink printers that use zero-ink paper, embedded with color crystals, that offers the cheapest printing option –with often middling quality that's neither as good as a dye sub print, nor as intentionally lo-fi as an Instax print. Do portable printers need ink?
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Overall, this is a quirky yet intriguing little device, and we're not sure how many people would find its unique combination of features useful. But if you're one of them, then it does what it promises, very well.
The Instax Mini LiPlay is not marketed specifically as a portable printer, so this one may be easy to miss. Instead, it's one of a new breed of hybrid digital instant cameras that offer the functionality of an instant camera, a digital camera, and a portable printer in the same device. Images from your iPhone can be moved, rotated, and zoomed in/out before printing, although you don't get any other editing features. Meanwhile, the camera itself sports a 28mm f/2, has a 4.9MP sensor, and lets you store up to 45 images internally, or more if you add a microSD card. There's a built-in flash, and a self-timer, and you can shoot as close as 10cm from your subject.It records sound too. And of course, you can connect it to your iPhone and print photos from there as well. You can also control the camera via your iPhone if you need to do some remote shooting. So you really do have the best of all worlds.
This depends on the printer. The Instax Link series uses actual instant film (the same as you put in Instax film cameras) to produce an authentic instant print. This is a definite stylistic choice, giving you a low-detail, low-fidelity, analog quality that can't be achieved on traditional printers, but comes at a cost –as instant film is pretty pricey. iPhone printers connect up to your phone wirelessly and allow you to print either photos you've just taken or otherwise stored on your phone. These printers are portable and run on batteries, so you don't require a charger to use them.These printers operate wirelessly, using WiFi or Bluetooth technology –or, in the case of the Kiipix, using a mirror! What paper do these printers take?
The simplest way of connecting your iPhone to this printer is via NFC (near-field communication). That might sound technical, but in practice, it means you just have to lie your iPhone on top of the printer and the free iOS app will launch automatically. Think about why you want to print pictures on the move. Do you want the absolute best image quality? Choose a dye-sublimation printer. Do you want the cheapest prints, regardless of quality? Go for a Zink printer. Do you want the coolest prints? You'll probably want an Instax-based printer. They print in one of three different ways. One is using Zink (short for zero ink) photo paper. This is the cheapest type of iPhone printer, although the quality isn't usually the best. An alternative approach is called dye-sublimation, aka 'dye-sub'. This process uses heat to transfer dye to the printing material, and your photos will look better than if they were printed on a Zink printer.There’s no charging the Kiipix Portable Mini Printer, nor any need to plug it in. Simply load it with Instax Mini film, place your phone face down on the scanner (with the brightness cranked all the way up – trust us), use the reflective mirror to ensure it’s properly aligned, and then you can manually crank out the prints yourself.
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