5 Best portable printers to print your smartphone photos
Tyler Lee
Back in the day before digital cameras arrived, cameras relied pretty much exclusively on film. This meant that if you wanted to take a photo, you had to be sure of the photo you wanted to take before you pressed the shutter button because short of buying or wasting film, you had no do-overs.
These days with digital cameras and also our smartphones, we get to take as many photos as we like (storage allowing) and never have to worry about wasting film. That being said, there is a certain charm when it comes to physical photos and if you’re looking to print some for your own personal collection, then check out some of the best mobile printers we’ve found.
When it comes to mobile printers, it’s hard to beat Fujifilm in this regard. The company’s series of Instax instant cameras and mobile printers are a pretty popular choice and the Instax Mini Link is no exception. It comes with an accompanying app that lets users edit their photos with fun filters and frames before they print, and it boasts a printing speed of about 12 seconds, letting you print your photos in little to no time.
Typically speaking, most portable photo printers tend to print 2×3-inch photos which is fine for the most part, but if you wanted something a bit bigger, then perhaps Lifeprint’s printer could be it. It offers larger than average photo printing at 3×4.5-inches, making it bigger than the standard mobile printer.
It also supports sharing where friends and family members can share and print their photos on your printer wherever they are in the world. There’s even a pretty unique augmented reality feature where you can embed videos in your photos, resulting in some unique effects that you can print and keep.
If you’re the type that enjoys scrapbooking and collecting photos from your travels and events in life, the Canon SELPHY QX10 could be a printer worth your consideration. It lets users print in varying sizes so that you can choose the right size that fits your scrapbook.
The printed photos also come with a special coating that makes them a bit more resilient to spills and fading, plus there is a light adhesive on the back that lets you stick them into your scrapbook or a pegboard. The accompanying app also lets users edit their photos with filters and effects before printing them out.
Back in the day when film cameras were the default standard, Polaroid made a name for itself by allowing users to snap photos and print them on the spot. The company is still carrying that tradition forward these days with devices like the Polaroid Hi-Print, a printer that lets you print photos on the spot from your smartphone.
It supports wireless printing over WiFi or Bluetooth, and with its rechargeable battery, you can bring it with you wherever you go, like to parties or even on your travels so you can print photos on the fly and share them with people you meet.
In case it wasn’t obvious, one of the drawbacks to these small portable printers is that obviously the quality of photos cannot compare to a dedicated photo printer, but if you’re looking for quality, then the HP Sprocket Plus could be the next best thing. Reviews of the printer have indicated that quality of these prints tends to be of high-quality compared to the competition.
Similar to other portable photo printers, the HP Sprocket Plus comes with an app that lets users edit photos before they print, plus it can even print photos from videos, so in case you missed a moment with your camera, you can always pull it from a video and get that printed instead.