I've seen manufacturers trying to sue for defamation in independent videos in the past, myself included, so I stopped. When they pay people to review they slap an NDA in there for the stuff you're NOT allowed to say/do to protect the company's business interests.
And that is why I watch the ads before after and during for creators like this. They’re not making money on the content, so they only get paid for the ads we watch (and patreon).
As soon as China stops producing hundreds of millions of tons of unusable plastic crap I'll start worrying about the way we treat plastic that people can actually use. As for now I refuse to feel guilty about any part of my plastic waste.
They do that to avoid all those dumbknuckles ripping the photo out of the printer after run#1 (Yellow) and then complaining via some social platform and leaving a 1-star review...
I was just going to say that to me the plastic left over isn't really "waste", I think it could be very useful for decoration! Make a frame with backlighting to light up the sheets and you could create pretty cool color effects with the images!
you would have to scan each one individually and use something like Photoshop to convert each layer in to monochrome to invert it before turning it back in to CYM layers to combine but yes.
You could make a nice art project with the transparencies: sandwich the films between plates of glass and frame them. They would make the most excellent sun catcher ever!
I ran a 1 hour photo lab in the late 90s - early 2000s. I remember getting our first digital equipment that included a pair of commercial grade dye sub printers. I was pretty skeptical at the beginning as I was definitely partial to prints made on photographic paper. But as camera technology improved and more people were using digital, I came around. Honestly a bit impressed that this technology still holds up as well as it does. I've still got photos printed nearly 20 years ago on dye sub that still look pretty good and also some that are really showing their age, depends a lot on how they're stored. I appreciate your dedication to thorough, honest reviews of products as well as showing us some very unique items.
Thanks, Techmoan. I decided to get the CP1300 SELPHY printer. I realized that my wife and I take so many pictures of our daughter that are just digitally lost in our phones. To print out at least one photo a week to put in an album will be a treasure. I also really appreciate your unbiased reviews - with the inclusion of the environmental impact. Cheers.
I like the Selphy printer. it may be bigger and pricier, but it makes cheaper, larger prints, that and it's probably gonna be easier to buy paper for in the future being from a well known printer company.
I believe Polaroid is a brand of the Eastman Kodak company. A prime example that just because a company is huge and owns the largest market share in several diverse industries doesn't mean they can't shit the bed overnight just as fast as a startup. It's why CEOs get paid ridiculous salaries. A bad one can literally end entire industries and ruin 10s of thousands of lives.
@@gasfiltered Polaroid has nothing whatsoever to do with any remaining entity of Eastman Kodak. Polaroid is owned primariy by a Polish investor who, along with his son, are trying to revive the instant film. Canon is still more likely to be in in business in five years as opposed to Polaroid.
@@gasfiltered Polaroid was NEVER part of Kodak, but it did have a Kodak-like life in early 2010s (I have seen a "Polaroid" Android tablet which I'm sure is just a very cheap tablet). Now however, the brand is owned by a European company previously known as The Impossible Project (which is from the start tried to revive Polaroid films).
Very good point on the overall cost to the environment. If I was in two minds as to whether I "needed" one of these, that important point would most definitely side me with NO.
turns out not cost effective. raw materials to make from scratch are way cheaper than recycling. even now recycling is not a money maker it’s a money loser. it would have to be made into law like some countries do. i forget which country but one has rules about tech equipment and things like computers must by law be recycled. some day hopefully this will be done everywhere.
This, however, would also result in Polaroid getting all your photos due to the remains on the used color strips. From the recycling standpoint, good idea. On the other hand, it's a privacy problem. If you have printed pictures with other people than yourself on them, it would even be a violation of the EU-.GDPR. GDPR Overview: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation (applies to all cases where personal data of a citizen of the European Union is involved)
@@omsi-fanmark not really, if you send it back for recycling that could be deemed as consent for them to 'process' your data, you could always recycle it a different way. I.e. remove the film and use for smthg else and put the rest of the plastic cart into standard plastic recycling.
OMSI-Fan Mark ... rubbish, the situation is the same as it recycling companies who take obsolete pc equipment and use practices and processes to ensure that any information is destroyed. Dropping your used packs into the bin sounds like a more vulnerable way to proceed. One day manufacturers will become truly responsible for the after-use phase of their product lifecycle, and it can’t come soon enough if you ask me.
Canon and Polaroid, take note; Hewlett Packard have a recycling program for their laser printer toner cartridges and they even pay for the return shipping via UPS.
i believe most laser printer manufacturers do, because it's mostly businesses who buy those - ensuring goodwill and return customers is a bigger priority for these companies when it comes to businesses, who tend to have many of the same machine and upgrade all at once, than it is for us regular folks, who they view as un-loyal turncoats.
Thank you for covering the waste aspect of this type of printing. Few people know the end to end cost of the products they use and balanced coverage is very much needed.
It wouldn't be perfect because the process is designed and optimised for making prints, not transparencies but it would probably be recognisable, though rather dark.
I have an old Sony Selphy printer that still works, but needs a colour TV set to display, plus you can either get images as screen grabs off of standard PAL tv, or via a serial port ( kind of dates it doesn't it) or by using a sub 256M Memory Stick, of which I do have some, a whole 8M on one, perfect for use here, as I also have a Sony mouse that has a built in MS adaptor. got a whole lot of dye cartridges and the photo paper as well, but barely use it. Price i paid was free, it was being thrown away. Yes I have used it to print postcards, which it does really nicely, and they are all from my own photography as well, so unique each time. Resolution is around 1024 by 768, definitely not the best you can get these days, but for a system from the late 1990's really good, and still has vibrant colour. Competition to film, and no drive to get it in a one hour lab, or buy the then brand new inkjet technology. Quirks are being fussy about image size, and it is really slow both to respond to keypresses and to print, taking minutes per pass. Plus you need to connect up something that will handle composite video to actually use it, I use a small JVC portable TV set, which is around the same age, but with a 5 inch colour CRT as display.
I have an old Sony dye sub printer that recently had a "blocked nozzle", so to speak. One of the tiny elements in the thermal print head had died, resulting in a white line across all of my prints. So dye sub printers aren't exactly fool-proof, per se; but for what it's worth, that Sony printer is about 15 years old at this point.
@@TangoAndToys I've tried running multiple prints with no luck; it's still printing with that white streak. I'll probably shell out for a new Selphy, seeing as it's basically the same technology (earlier versions used the same Sony cartridges - Canon might have bought the tech from Sony), or I might upgrade to an inkjet system.
This is an EXCELLENT review and reviewer! My husband and I are sold on both the Polaroid and the Selphy and now understand so much about what we can do with them. The “only” drawback, which we appreciate was noted, is that there is waste going into the environment. Thank you for such a great post!
Mat I don't know your professional training background, but you have the mind of a true journalist. You anticipated and answered every question a typical viewer might have about this product.
Thank you so much for this Matt. On the strength of this video I've bought a Canon Selphy cp1300 and its the first printer I've bought in years that I haven't been disappointed with!
Sounds like those manufacturers should offer a program where you send all that waste material back for refurbishment to make new ones... To cut down on all that waste..
@@Alpha8713 albeit less than drilling for oil, refining into raw materials, producing virgin plastic, creating the plastic tape, laying the dye over.... etc. that's just for the actual dye part!
I'm thinking of take a UBS stick to ASDA and printing some photos there. That will work out cheaper. I've no idea on the quality but for a couple of £ I'm willing to find out :D
It seems like there’s a lot of room for innovation in the dye sublimation space. That does seem to be like a lot of extra cost for the manufacturer when they create the cartridges. I’m surprised in the consumer space no one has created a printer that uses JUST the sublimation rolls like in the professional space.
4:30 it looks like the print has stripes. That wouldn't make the quality of the print so good. Maybe is an artefact from the original image or just a reflection of the lights?
This would be great for when I go mountain biking up at Whistler BC. ANd the fact you can handle it immediately, anyone else reminded of the old school Poloroid instant photos? I love this. And it's resonably Priced too. This is really great.
This actually makes nice good looking prints on the go. I'll have me one of these. Edit: i see canon makes small versions of the selphy as well. Not sure which would be beter now.
This is tech that's very meaningful to me. I like to take pictures of people when I travel, and I'm a relatively skilled photographer. Many of those people have never had a picture of themselves taken by a decent photographer with good gear. And I'd really love to be able to give them a print (ideally with an instagram handle so they can also direct their friends and family to the picture online rather than having to photograph the print with their phones). So I obviously therefor want a fully portable, battery-powered device. But the zinc printers are a complete disservice to the idea of leaving someone with a quality photograph. I'm pleased to see the breakdown of these dye-sub printers because that wastefulness is unacceptable to me given what I want to use it for. So the only alternative are the Fuji Instax printers at the moment. They use a photographic process which has its own environmental issues but doesn't leave as much plastic waste at least. Unfortunately, in all cases I think these manufacturers are taking the piss price-wise. They've done the calculation on - especially young people - being ok to spend under a dollar or a pound for an item that should cost 20c or 20p - given the cost of materials and manufacturing and still including a profit. Printing has long been one of the greatest market scams in the world, and it doesn't look set to change.
I like the fact you can use them as stickers. Pricey but pretty cool if you wanted to make custom stickers on the fly I guess. I love the noise it make while printing too.
Does everything on your channel go up in value? Please let me know what you are reviewing next so I can invest! Another brilliant video! I will be buying one of these.
The Hi-Print is on Amazon US right now. I think I’ll pick one up.... but I’ll also wait a bit to see if an affiliate link shows up in the description so I can get it that way :)
I'd be interested in making art out of the spool of used dye sub plastic, making a mini popart of a photo. Stick the duplicate colour images in a shadow box and have a low power LED at the back of the shadow box to highlight the negative space, perhaps have the original photo in the middle. I think it would look pretty cool.
I find it fascinating that such a small device is capable of printing a picture, once upon a time it would take a whole room and dark lights and many chemicals etc , amazing !
Thanks for including the environmental costs as well. The consumer really needs to be aware of the additional waste, and the manufacturers should be more proactive about creating responsible products with systems in place to collect / re-use / recycle their "waste."
At the print size, this seems more like a glorified high-cost label/decal maker than a photograph printer. I wonder as to the quality of the self-adhesive.
New Subscriber.....This is the best product review I have ever seen. It answered all my questions and some I didn't have. Now I have to make a decision which one to purchase. Thank you!
1: Stand infront of the shop and found this printer 2: search videos for the printer review 3: watched 5 minutes 4: deal! on my hand now! thanks for the review, as a cp1300 owner always prints 2R, I want some portability.
Here's something interesting for you - Most ID cards are printed using the same technique, also called Thermal Re-transfer. Of course, the ribbons are substantially larger(about a thousand full-colour prints) and also substantially more expensive($300-$600 AUD, from cheapest price to average price), and there are a number of other features you can get with them(like holographic film, signature panel ribbons, so on), but the underlying technology is essentially identical.
I just assumed that there must be some sort of recycling program, so I went to their website, but no. From their FAQ: "We can’t reuse or recycle empty film cartridges on your behalf - sorry!"
with the headline and the intro to the cost section I’d guessed about £200. £80 for the printer seems pretty reasonable and if you’re in the market for one of these things, its inexpensive enough to at least disregard the Zink printers I think
I bought one of those selphie printers about ten years ago and had a lot of fun with it in some remote villages of northern Vietnam, The quality was excellent but the reality is that beyond those remote villages it never go much use and hopelessly jammed up after about only five or six cartridges,
The Polaroid printer is a revamp of the PicKit M1 which was release in 2015 and uses the same cartridges. It is still available on Amazon UK for £105 and has NFC as well as Wi-fi connection.
@@Nolroa I'm still using a 12 year old Canon wifi printer... I refuse to upgrade it because this one can't tell when you've used third party ink cartridges :D and there's no dang app or updates needed - so it's super quick at scanning right onto a USB stick too. the colour quality on these third party inks is kinda meh, the black especially is more of a dark grey, but it's more than good enough for cheaply printing out bank statements and the like. (I never even touched the 5-pack of photo paper it came with.) plus it's never made banding, which I certainly can't say for the Epsons my dad always used to use (a '96 parallel port one, and an '02 USB one. so, sample size of two. neither scanned or anything of course)
As an avid crocheter, I saw that plastic ribbon and immediately thought "that would make some beautiful plarn" 😆 (Plarn is yarn made out of recycled plastic ribbons and bags)
OMG all that Plastic and metal that's left over for 10 pictures! I was considering one of these until you showed that. Polaroid should ask that those be returned so they can reuse them. They could offer a discount on your next roll for the returned caddy. Reusing them would save them a lot of money. They can't be cheap to produce. That whole caddy to the land fill every time. Nope. I cannot support this.
I'll start by saying I owned several Polaroid's beginning in the the early to mid 1980's. They were never my only camera, but they were fun to use. While I give big props to the current Polaroid group for coming up with what looks like a decent product, I doubt this will have legs. I can sen prints to a Walgreens or CVS and have 4x6 prints ready in an hour or less for about 25% of what one of these prints costs. So for those who want this as a novelty to play with for a few packs of film, this could be lots of fun. But I"ll be shocked if the refills are available 3 years from now. ETA: While the apparent *volume* of waste look big all fluffed up, it it virtually nothing. If you are that concerned about "waste", don't print your pictures and certainly don't buy a printer just to print your pictures.
Been looking at these type of printers a bit recently. Not seen this one before but you actually convinced me to buy the canon selphy! I’m a wedding photographer and while the party is sat down for dinner, I usually edit a few photos and put them on social media for the couple to share. With this, I could also print some images off some images to show evening guests what’s happened through the day. The Selphy looks a little more robust and holds more paper so better suited to what I want but might still pick up a little one to take out and about with me.
Thank you Techmoan for noting the hidden costs of the printers at the end of the video. I have a similar beef with regular printers. Everytime I go to the thrift stores, I see dozens of printers languishing on shelves. I also wonder how many landfills are full of old printers.
Yes, the previous company is gone. The new company was founded by Polaroid enthusiasts though (unlike other brands e.g. Kodak which at one point promoted a cryptocurrency and also sold batteries (which are not really Kodak's expertise)). en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaroid_B.V.
@@jamesslick4790 Well I haven't tried myself (here the price per Kodak battery flips, better to buy some actual AA lithium batteries instead). Still not what would you expect from Kodak though, which is cameras (if I remember correctly, unlike Polaroid's case, Kodak still exists but only as a brand licensor - in other words Kodak batteries are not at least designed by Kodak - it's another company).
@@gacelperfinian I agree. Lots of old "brands" are like that. I've seen "Polaroid" branded radios! now. One can still.buy Kodak branded cameras too, but they are not made by Kodak either. PS there are are also "Kodak" branded rechargeable batteries. LOL.
Way more reasonable then my grandfather's first fax/printer, which used this same tech for a black and white print. They looked great but... dear _gods_ the price per page was absolutely nuts and the _waste_ is just enough to make me cry now.
It's probably a minor issue, but it seems that you have access to the whole photo infos in negative from the leftover films. You have to be careful with the way you discard it if you use it for sensible applications (small kids in a pool, naked picture and so on).
As others have commented, assembling the spent coloured film back onto itself as a picture with a difffused light source behind would potentially look cool. With a transparent layer between each might even look a bit 3d?!
Good review. Yeah the waste is always my concern too. I have a Samsung sp-2020 which is a good dye sub printer. But they don't make any paper or ribbons anymore. Waste of a good product. Still works fine. Big companies need to take more responsibility for the products they make. Keep up the good work TM.
I have a Selphie printer for some years now and use it to print my photos and send them to my grandma as postcards. :) I print only very few photos in a year, so I can still live with the waste factor... since ink based printers would probably need new ink cartridges every time I wanted to print a photo. xD
@@richardcastro-parker3704 No one said you have to be a hipster to care about the environment. My point is that hipsters only do it, because it makes them look better, meanwhile they generate a lot of waste using quirky, cute, lo-fi photography.
I was prepared to be underwhelmed because so many things made today with once proud brand names (Polaroid,Kodak,RCA,Westinghouse...) are often crapola made my companies who just bought the rights to the brand name. This thing actually seems to be a legit useful device. As a side note. Dye sub printing would still seem to be cheaper than the way most of us did 35mm color (colour) prints: Shoot a 35 exposure roll, Send it in, pay for all 36 prints - Decide that only 8 -10 are actually "keepers". That was pretty wasteful too. I did my own B&W developing and printing in "the" day, but that was not cheap either and is a "time suck" (unless, like for me the time spent was enjoyable as a hobby).
Ribbon based printers are among the least efficient. Some machines meant for commercial photo kiosks have replacement spools that are easy to unsnap, take out, replace. DNS 40 for instance prints quickly but at one color at a time. It also has only CMY to product composite "black". Its print resolution tops at 300 DPI. When Alps MD (microdry) printers were still being made they had CMYKW ribbons, plus metallic gold, silver, cyan, magenta ribbons. There was also the clear overcoat ribbon which many hobbyists found useful in making decals for models. There was a 4-color ribbon that operated in the same manner that the two printers here work. The nice thing about the Alps is all the ribbons were barcoded, the printer's loading mechanism had a barcode reader, which meant it didn't matter what order you loaded their inks. Later models allowed seven or more different ribbons to be loaded in a dual stacked fashion. When a ribbon on the lower position was needed the one above it was removed from that spindle, moved over to a parking spindle, and then the one that was needed could be loaded for use. If you haven't reviewed them these really would be a cool retrospective review. Oh and you didn't need specialty paper to get the best results. Plain copy paper and maybe the use of the clear overcoat gave it that photo paper look and a nice looking print. I submerged an American flag print in water long enough that the only thing left was the ribbon itself. Never an issue with the prints getting ruined by water exposure like with dye based inkjet prints.
If you are looking for obscure stuff, years ago Polaroid made a printer that used Polaroid film. I had one but was never able to get it to work because the driver was for an old Mac is version 6 or 7.
i have a zink printer that I bought on sale and I've always wanted a selphy or something like this - but I didn't know about the plastic waste. don't like this
Years ago I won a Kodak Z650 and printer/charging dock. It did 4x6 inch (10.1x15.2cm) dye-sub prints with a waterproof clear top layer. So it was 4 pass. Wasn't fast but man did it produce sharp professional quality prints. As a bonus it was a blast to watch it print! Paper became hard to come by at a decent price. It was fun for the couple of years I used it. Was 20 years ago (seriously?¿ Wow!) I still have a couple pictures I ran off with the dock and they look the same as they did coming off the printer.
I use a PhotoBee .. uses the same tech, it costs almost exactly the same but it lasts longer battery wise and it uses wifi instead of bluetooth.. I love it.. I've had it for 2-3 years and I can definitely say that none of the photos have faded in any way at all :) and yes, water proof.. I used one to affix to my car's bumper and it looks fantastic to this day. Mine even sounds exactly the same.. makes me wonder if they all come from the same manufacturer in China or something like so many other devices these days.. where they are bought in bulk without branding added and then the seller adds their own. UPDATE: Just checked, I got my PhotoBee in Jan 2017 so most of my prints are 3 years old.. I've not used it hardly at all since then.. just not had any need for the smaller print.
I'd forgotten dye-sub was still even a thing. We used to have one over 25 years ago in our marketing department that we used to make brochures. It worked in exactly the same way, and had all the same issues of cost and wastage - but my word, the picture quality was amazing. I find it fascinating that the technology barely seems to have moved on, albeit this is doing tiny little pictures rather than A4
Back in the days of Computer City (before the turn of the century) I saw a dye sublimation printer in action. It was interesting, watching the layers laid down on special A4-size paper. I considered it for a minute or so, then passed on this technology. I remembered a Sunday afternoon at another computer store, where a client asked if they had NEC Silent Writer toner cartridges for sale. (They didn't) He needed it for a Monday presentation, so he was out of luck. Looking around, H-P and other, lesser tech, but major brand toners and Inkjet cartridges were quite available, nearly everywhere. Long story short, I stayed with H-P, since I could get supplies when I needed it at nearly anytime. I've since moved on to an Epson Inkjet printer, which hasn't been used in a while. On top of all that, I don't have a "SmartPhone," either. I also remember "computer printer Unobtainium," tricolor Laser/LED printers that were (briefly) available for mere mortals to buy.
@@tonysg13qa Oh, that old piece of redundant technology, that no kid born after 2005 or so would recognise! Heck, I was born in the late 1990s, and I still have never used or seen one.
I like the end a lot! I think facts like those should become the new standard of review videos as beyond enjoyment and comfort the waste is ultimately the legacy of the physical product. The earth dont like it.
I like that you brought up the environmental cost. It's not something I had thought about with these devices. Really nice printer overall. Great review as always! Wonder if there are less wasteful printing processes.
That looks pretty impressive! I've had a Polaroid Pogo many years ago, brilliant concept but flawed execution. The one thing that feels like a step back is that you have to use an app to print. And indeed, the amount of waste it produces. But apart from that, this seems like exactly the product I would have wanted 10 years ago....
have you used an MD5000 made by Alps ? it had dyesub capability just needed to get the "ink" cartridges for dyesub, but it also had two things no other printer available at the time had, white ink (yes you could print solid opaque white on clear or say add it to some color of paper other than white, and the other thing was metallic and mirror metal material (on a smooth enough surface the mirror gold and silver was capable of being used like a mirror, though you had to print onto some of the other color inks and uses a 2400DPI sized heated pins for pressing into the cartridge ribbons :)
