Polaroid PoGo

I love gadgets and trying out new things so when I read about a little pocket sized printer availabe on the market I just had to know more. The Polaroid PoGo is a very tiny printer that works without ink by printing on to special photo paper, a perfect way to print out photos from your mobile phone and, because it works with Bluetooth, you don't even need to worry about cables.

Finding out about the PoGo

I saw this printer advertised in a national paper at a special price of £24.99 plus postage and as I read through the advert I became keen to know more about the product. A bit of quick internet research told me that when it was launched it was offered for around £100 but the price has now reduced significantly and you can find it on numerous sites for around £25 or less. It also sounded like a lovely little gadget so, having decided that the best deal I could find was on Play.com for just £24.99 with free postage, I placed an order and waited eagerly for it to arrive.

Out of the box

As always I could hardly wait to look into the packaging to find out exactly what I had bought. The printer itself measures less than 5" x 3" (125 x 75mm) and is about 1" (25 mm) thick. Easily small enough to fit into a pocket and it certainly slips into my handbag with no trouble at all. The images it prints are around 3" x 2" (75 x 50mm) so they are quite twee but the quality is reasonable and if you wish you can peel off the backing sheet and use the pictures as stickers.

Within the box I also got the mains adapter and a battery plus 10 sheets of the special paper which allows this printer to print without using any ink. It took me minutes to get the printer out and I was keen to plug it into the mains and get it charged ready for use. In fact I was so quick doing that I was quite surprised that when I plugged it into the mains nothing happened. No lights came on to indicate it was charging in fact the whole thing seemed dead. I was puzzled until I looked back into the box and realised that I first needed to install the battery so that it actually had something in there to charge! Maybe I should have read the instructions FIRST?

I left it on charge overnight and was keen to test out the print facility as soon as I could. First I had to load the paper. To do that you open the little pack of 10 sheets and put it into the printer with the blue 'carrier sheet' at the bottom. As soon as you close the paper compartment the printer ejects the blue sheet and the printer is ready for use. All I needed to do was find a photo on my phone, click 'options' and 'send to' and then choose Bluetooth. The phone quickly found the Polaroid device, I had to enter a code of 6000 (I think it is the same for all PoGos) and then it transmitted the photo and printing started automatically. Simple, I really do believe anyone can work this and if you are at all concerned there is a lovely little video clip on YouTube showing you exactly how to do it.

To be slightly critical I did think that the instructions provided were fairly basic. They are in the form of a series of pictures rather than words and I couldn't really deduce from them exactly how long the initial charge would take. I had thought the charging light would go off at some point which it didn't but I felt that over 12 hours of charging should be quite sufficient.

My opinion

This is quite a cute little gadget at a reasonable price that would make a lovely gift for someone who likes to use their mobile to take pictures and would want to print them off from time to time. Yes, you can connect it to a camera or a PC using a USB cable as it does have a USB port as well as Bluetooth. I think it is a natural progression for Polaroid now that digital cameras have eliminated the need for Polaroid instant cameras.

You are limited to the one size of print and the paper isn't cheap - £10.99 for 70 sheets so it is never going to replace a normal printer for regular use. I imagine it would be fun to use at parties, useful if you take pictures at work to record detail for a file and handy to identify candidates on training courses etc.

I think it is well worth the £25 I paid for it but I wouldn't have looked twice at it for £100 as I don't think it is worth it. If you are stuck for present ideas at Christmas this probably won't break the bank but remember you won't be able to use it during the Christmas dinner unless you have charged it up first!