Xiaomi Pocket Photo Printer Review

With the popularity of electronic devices, people are more accustomed to viewing photos on mobile phones and other devices. Printing photos seems to be slowly moving away from our daily routine. But I think real photos can still give people a real feeling. Today Tookfun will introduce a portable photo printer-Xiaomi Pocket Photo Printer.

Different from common inkjet printers and laser printers. Xiaomi pocket photo printer uses ZINK inkless technology to print. The printer itself does not need ink, embeds color dyes in the paper, and heats the paper through the print head to form images. In this way, there is no need to consider the issue of dye consumables. So how does this portable photo printer perform? Let’s actually experience it below.

Appearance details

On the right is the main package of the pocket printer (the original package contains 5 sheets of ZINK photo paper), and on the left is the optional ZINK photo paper. The packaging follows the usual style of Xiaomi, using white packaging, simple and atmospheric.

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Unpack the host. At first glance, the pocket printer looks like a power bank. Because no matter the shape or size, it is basically the same size as the daily-use power bank. The whole shell of the printer is directly injection molded. The surface mold is brightly polished. The shell is composed of upper and lower parts, which should be assembled through bayonet. Therefore, we cannot see the screw holes in appearance. There are four bumps on the bottom to prevent scratches caused by friction between the bottom of the printer and the desktop.

Due to the design of the art seam, the gap is too large visually after the shell is assembled. But to a certain extent, it can avoid assembly shortfalls and avoid scratching. Provide users with a good feel.

From left to right below the logo are the Bluetooth indicator, battery indicator, micro-usb charging port, and power switch.

The other side is the printing outlet. The photos we want to print will come out from here. The small hole on the left is the print indicator, which will light up during printing.

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Then we look at ZINK photo paper. The size of the photo paper is 2*3 inches. If there is no specific concept, let me give you an example. On the left is the size of bank cards, access control cards, and bus cards, and on the right is the size of Xiaomi pocket camera photo paper. Now I feel that you in front of the screen must feel it. This size is still small.

Actual use

Let’s introduce the process of printing photos.

First, we have to download the Mijia app. Because the pocket printer belongs to the Mijia ecological category, if you have used Mijia’s smart home products before, you can directly connect it for easy use. Turn on the printer, press and hold the power for two seconds to turn it on. Then open the app and find that the device is already displayed in the app. At this time, you are prompted to press the power button to confirm the connection.

Let me explain here. If the battery of the pocket printer is too low, it may cause the connection to fail. So when using it, please pay attention to the power of the printer.

After the connection is successful, the standby state is displayed in the app. Next we start looking for photos to print.

After the camera is successfully connected, we need to load the photo paper into the printer. Push the top cover of the printer down and push it open with a little force. After pushing it open, we can see the photo paper slot and related instructions. There is a reset button in the middle.

Follow the instructions on the camera body to install the paper. Be sure to put the orange colour correction card at the bottom.

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After the paper is loaded, we can start printing. We import this photo into the software. After importing it, you can see some interfaces, which are the tool interfaces of the basic image editor. The photos we want to print can be edited as required, and some filters can be directly applied. After editing, click the arrow in the upper right corner and click the printer icon in the upper right corner to print.

The sound during printing is quite loud, similar to the sound of mobile phone vibration (for reference only). I did not test the specific sound level. One bright spot is that the animation displayed in the app during printing is good. It is basically synchronized with the printing process. This detail makes me a little surprised.

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Photo effects. Because the photo is printed with a slightly darker tone, the shadows are severely bluish and the colors are not accurate. And photo paper is high-gloss, I personally don’t like high-gloss photo paper. Because it always reflects light so I can’t see the content of the photo. I hope to launch matte ZINK photo paper in the future.

Because the photo paper is glued, we can paste the photo wherever we want. This is also quite good.

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I printed a few more photos with different effects. There are night scenes and humanistic photos. Generally speaking, I am less satisfied with the photo effects. The photo details are missing and the colors are not particularly accurate. This is related to ZINK inkless printing technology. Although this technology can avoid the impact of ink consumables on the printer, it is limited by the limitations of imaging technology and the imaging effect is poor. This can be considered a trade-off.

Special function

After experiencing photo printing, I actually don’t have a very good impression of this product. However, after experiencing its features, the favorability has improved. That is its AR video photo function.

Simply put, when you print a photo, you can upload the video (up to 15s) to the APP simultaneously. Then it can play video when shooting with AR camera.

If you don’t understand, just look at the result of the operation.

I feel that this function is quite interesting, you can play with it. This kind of little sentiment is still good.

Other functions, such as adding audio to photos, are similar to adding video. In addition, it can be used to make some collages, and can also be used as emergency printing ID photos.

Conclusion

A total of about two days of experience, the overall feeling is still a little surprise.

Advantages: small, portable, AR and other features are good, you can try.

Disadvantages: poor printing results, inaccurate colors.

Suggestion: If you want to use the pocket printer as a professional device, I think it is unnecessary. Because it is still far behind expectations. If you treat it as a toy and have time to play with it, I think it can still be purchased. If you have the habit of taking notes or writing, using a pocket printer to print a few related photos at any time is also a good choice, because these aspects do not require high photo quality. After all, the photo paper also has adhesive backing, which is easy to stick.

Where to buy？
Product link: Xiaomi TookFun Tech Store

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Hope this article helps you,
May your life get better and better.