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Getting Creative with Compact Printers

If you love the Polaroid-style prints of an instant camera, but would rather shoot on a smartphone or digital camera, then a compact photo printer is perfect.

Mini printers are fun and intuitive to operate. With the right choice, you can start printing memories with hardly any hassle. Keep reading to discover the best personal photo printer today!

Why use a mini printer?

Mini printers are tailored to young people enormously. As so many modern memories are captured on smartphone cameras, producing a physical memento quickly is a novelty, and an opportunity to explore new ways of showing off photos.

Many mini photo printers circumvent the need for ink. A lot of them employ zero ink (Zink) technology which embeds colour crystals in the paper, which change colour when heated. This means your photos are ready instantly, as opposed to Polaroid-style film printers, and there’s no need to accommodate ink cartridges which increase the printer’s bulkiness.

Mini printers often use remarkably robust film, with a lot of manufacturers advertising long-lasting prints that won’t fade for up to 100 years. This makes them a brilliant way to store mementoes – generally, our photos are stored digitally or on the cloud, which is unreliable in comparison.

What to use a mini printer for

• Journaling/scrapbooks: if you’d like to embellish any written logs of yours, a compact printer is a brilliant way to add some colour. This may appeal to more seasoned photographers, as a scrapbook of your photographic journey is a keepsake to treasure.
• Pinboards: one for the students; pinning up your Polaroid-sized photos is the perfect way to adorn your walls with memories.
• Custom stickers: Mini printer brands offer film/paper with sticky backs, making your printer double up as a sticker maker. The possibilities using this are virtually endless.
• Keepsakes: you can easily fit one of these credit-card-sized prints in a wallet or photo album, for instance. Portable printers can produce personalised photo gifts, adding a personal touch to your photos.

What makes a good compact printer?

• Wireless Connectivity: Most compact printers use Bluetooth or other forms of wireless connectivity to share photos from their smartphone directly to their printer.
• Versatile printing options: many portable photo printers have to offer unique features. Most do this by offering different sizes and dimensions, and different films with various borders. Most have corresponding smartphone apps to help you customise your prints even further.
• Compact size: The overwhelming majority of photo printers are mighty beasts. However, some don’t need robust, large prints for what they want to achieve, making size and usability a key selling point, which mini phone printers cater to.
• Print quality and speed: this is usually a secondary appeal to these printers, however they’re important factors. The best mini printers have around 300 DPI (dots per inch) and can develop prints in about a minute.

Canon mini printers

The Canon Selphy QX20 is incredibly popular. It can produce credit-card-sized prints, but can also take 6.8 x 6.8 cm square paper. The printer’s main new feature is that its prints are borderless, meaning your colourful photos will take up the entirety of the paper. It also prints faster than its predecessor, the QX10, at 40 seconds per page. Three colours are available for the Canon Selphy QX20: grey, white and red.

The Canon Zoemini 2 Mini Photo Printer is a more compact affordable choice. It takes the printing mechanism from the instant camera of the same name for the bare essentials. Its size is its biggest appeal at 177g, as well as a 50-second print speed.

The Canon Selphy CP1500 Compact Photo Printer is a much more sophisticated mini printer choice. It’s slightly larger than the pocket-sized ones usually seen, allowing it to print postcard-sized photos. While it requires either mains power or a battery attachment (Canon NB-CP2LI), it’s the best compact printer on the market and the easiest way for photographers to start producing professional prints. The requirement for ink cartridges may put some users off; however, it offers the same ease of use as standard mini printers like smartphone connectivity. The Canon Selphy CP1500 comes in black as well as white.

Instax mini printers

Fujifilm Instax’s line of instant cameras is hugely popular and is complemented by a catalogue of instant printers. These are notable for the range of Instax mini film sizes they take, and their efficiency too.

The newest Instax printer, the Instax Mini Link 3, takes new approaches to its old system. Instax AiR Studio allows users to add ‘in-the-moment’ 3D AR effects to their photos while taking their photos. Click to Collage mode combines with the camera to print a series of photos as a collage, in the same way as a photo booth. For more ease of use, the Mini Link 3 now charges via the more widespread USB-C port, rather than Micro-USB. Alongside white, Instax offers a Rose Pink and Sage Green colourway.

Fujifilm provides the free Instax Mini Link App for its printers, which enables you to control your printer with ease. The Instax Share and Instax UP! Apps allow users to edit, share and store their printed photos too.

The Instax Link Wide allows you to print in landscape orientation, and the Instax Square Link printer accepts the same film as the popular Instax Square SQ1 and Square SQ40.

HP Sprocket

The HP Sprocket family of instant printers is one of the most popular and varied on the market.

The HP Sprocket 3x4 Instant Photo Printer excels with the size of its prints. Most similar printers offer a 2x3” paper size, but this model produces larger 3.5 x 4.25” prints. The paper’s sticker back utility is also incredibly versatile.

Despite these features, it has a surprisingly thin design. It also has a useful RGB LED indicator on the front. Like many instant printers with companion software, its HP Sprocket app enables you to customise your photos before you print them and explore creative borders, filters and more.

If you’re aiming to create some photo booth strips, for example, then the best choice is by far the HP Sprocket 500 panorama printer. This model loads with cassette paper, allowing you to print fun strips of photos which you can stick anywhere.

Polaroid Lab + Hi-Print printers

The Polaroid Lab Instant Film Printer is a fun, unconventional choice of instant printer. Its three-lens system uses solely film chemistry to produce its instant prints, acting as a mini darkroom to take your smartphone photos directly to film. As it uses a genuine photochemical process to produce authentic film exposure, each print has a charming classic look. If you want your photos to look as if they were taken on an instant camera, there’s no cooler way to do it.

If you want a standard pocket printer, the Polaroid Hi-Print Mini Printer has an awesome retro design and produces crisp 2x3” prints.

What film do I need?

It’s helpful to know from the outset what film or paper you’ll need to use. We’ve compiled this table to cover each printer mentioned so you can get stuck in with the fun of instant printing.

We hope this article has inspired you to get started printing pocket-sized photos as mementoes, gifts and more. If you’re looking to up your physical photography game, our range of professional printers takes you all the way up to printing on A2 fine art inkjet paper. Discover our range of digital cameras, lenses and more for the perfect combination.

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By Thom Pyle on 12/11/2024