Polaroid Pogo review

Polaroid's Pogo is the smallest photo printer we've ever reviewed, and its prints measure just 3x2in.

More remarkably, this is also the first printer we've seen that doesn't require ink. Instead, it uses Zero-Ink photo printing technology, developed by ZINK Imaging, a company that was once part of Polaroid's R&D department.

ZINK's ink-free printing system uses heat to activate crystals of cyan, magenta and yellow dye embedded in the special paper. The crystals are colourless until activated. Different shades are created by exposing them to heat at different temperatures and for varying durations. A polymer overcoat layer protects the photos, making them water and scratch resistant, and the backing can be peeled away to turn them into stickers.

The printer is tiny, measuring just 24x72x120mm, slightly smaller than a folded Nintendo DS games console. It's powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, so you can just stick it in your pocket and print photos wherever you are.

In the same spirit, it has built-in Bluetooth, so you can send photos to it from your mobile phone. It also supports PictBridge, which allows you to print photos directly from almost any digital camera. Unfortunately, the printer's standard USB port is intended to connect only cameras. There are no PC drivers of any sort, although you can print photos stored on your Bluetooth-equipped laptop or PC.

The total time between sending an image and holding the finished print in our hands varied with the different USB dongles and mobile phones we tried, but it was generally around a minute. All images took about 40 seconds to print after they had been sent across to the Pogo.

ZINK paper comes in packs of 10 or 30 sheets, which we've seen on sale for around £4 and £8 respectively. If you buy the larger packs, a single photo costs around 27p. This is similar to the price of 6x4in prints from most inkjet or dye-sub photo printers, making the Pogo's tiny prints seem expensive.

Photo quality isn't outstanding, either. This doesn't really matter if you're printing low-resolution mobile phone pictures, but was more visible on high-resolution images from our PC. Photos didn't suffer from the grainy quality sometimes seen on low-quality inkjet prints, but some fine details were distorted and contrast in dark areas was poor. Shadows sometimes had a rather granular appearance, but black tones were deep and convincing.

The Pogo is great fun, and brilliant if you want to take and print photos quickly wherever you are. Kids and guerilla artists will love the adhesive backs that allow you to stick your pictures to things. However, the £100 price places it beyond most people's toy budget. We hope future models will bring larger print sizes and improved image quality.