Main Review

Weighing in at a little over 200g, the battery- powered PoGo is a truly portable printing option. Images can be sent to the printer either wirelessly via Bluetooth, or through the unit’s inbuilt USB slot, meaning that images can be easily printed from mobile phones and digital cameras alike.

The prints take form on 2x3in paper sheets that employ Polaroid’s ZINK zero ink technology. The technology, as the name suggests, allows the printer to operate without ink, as the paper contains 100 billion yellow, magenta and cyan dye crystals that are activated by 200 million heat pulses during the 30-second warming process. The PoGo creates each print in around 60 seconds, beginning to end, and about 14 prints are possible on each charge. The prints themselves show an interesting array of tone and colour – subtle tones are all but lost in translation, and the magenta element of the paper seemed overly keen to appear in areas of bright light or high-contrast.

Verdict

It doesn’t appear that the PoGo is really about ‘print quality’ as such, at least not for now. What’s important is that Polaroid isn’t abandoning the ‘instant print’ market. As the first device of this type, there is always going to be a certain element of tweaking that needs to be done, and Polaroid is clearly looking towards the future. A digital camera with integrated 2x3in printing capacity is mooted for release before Christmas, with a 4x3in (Polaroid’s traditional instant film format) camera planned for 2009 – watch this space!

Reviewer: Paul Nuttall