Portable photo printer types & a review of Liene N200
Earlier today, u/Yami-WallE-134 asked about portable photo printers for journaling and I was about to post a reply that got too long so I'm making it a separate post.
I'll just talk about 2x3-ish size printers because that's my recommendation if it's for journaling in a TN. Smaller photos are just more versatile--you can stick one and still have enough space left for writing around it, or you have the option of sticking a couple of pictures that go together in one page.
You can also put the photo in a wallet's card slot. This means the 2x3 fits perfectly in the card slot of the official original size TN kraft paper folder insert (and I assume other card slot inserts). I store my printouts there until I get around to sticking them in a notebook.
As far as I know, all those portable photo printers can be categorized into one of three types:
- Zink
- Dye-sublimation
- Instax (the slow developing kind)
I ruled out Instax-types immediately because they're:
- expensive (both the printer and refills)
- photos develop slowly
- too thick to paste into notebooks, and there are no sticker sheets.
I've had a couple of Zink printers since 2010 and recently got a Liene N200 because I wanted to try a dye-sub printer.
- All Zink printers share the same problem of muddy photos that aren't color-accurate. That problem can be alleviated substantially once you learn the patterns of your printer and find the sweet spot of post-processing settings and make that your routine before printing.
That'll likely consist of substantially increasing brightness and contrast, increasing sharpness somewhat, and reducing magenta by a lot. Another commenter in that original post posted a couple of gorgeous, vibrant photos using zink. If you get your best settings down, such nice quality prints are achievable even with Zink.
It does suck that you need to go through this hassle of retouching every photo before printing (and the time and papers it takes to experiment initially). But imo, the time it takes to do this is eventually compensated by the fact that dye-sub printers (edit: at least the 4-pass printer like Liene N200) usually take longer to print anyway. And more importantly, I think the huge benefit of Zink is:
+ It is more or less a standardized format, so you can use your printer for years as long as it doesn't break. I've had a Zink printer that prints 2x3 sticker photos for 16 years. Even though that model has long been discontinued, I can still use it if I want because I only need to buy the Zink paper which is universal (some people say you need to keep the blue calibration sheet that comes with your printer, though in my experience, the brand-specific calibration sheet doesn't make that much of a difference.)
- Contrast that to dye-sub printers, which, to my knowledge, there's NO standardized/widely used format. Every printer uses its own proprietary ink cartridge, which disappears from the market a few years after the printer model gets discontinued. Afaik, even the same brand's ink cartridges and papers aren't interchangeable among their own products so if they release a new model and discontinue the old model's refills, you'll have to buy the new model (correct me if I'm wrong!) I suspect that newer, lesser-known brands will be more risky on this front, since those brands may or may not survive.
+ However, dye-sub printers do have better color out of the box, and are supposed to be a lot more fade-resistant. I won't go into this in detail because I don't want to dig up my old Zink prints and I can't make objective comparisons. But as far as I remember, Zink does shift colors, but none has faded yet to the point of disappearing. Two were kept in the transparent card slots in wallets for over a decade and I'm not sure how much they've shifted/faded in color but...they're still there. But the potential of fading does make me a bit nervous, which is another reason I wanted to try a dye-sub.
+ I've been very much enjoying my dye-sub Liene N200. To be clear, it's not magically more beautiful than a well-calibrated Zink printout. If I look very closely, Liene N200 prints are still iffy in some details and aren't amazingly more vibrant. 2x3 is too tiny to wow anyone with great details or depth in color anyway. But overall the prints are nice and accurate enough even when printed without retouching, which takes the burden of post-processing off my mind.
+ It's easy to separate the sticker from the backing because there's a little tab to hold onto (this is not a common feature I believe), and the sticker is thin and sticky enough to work well inside notebooks.
+ The printer itself, while inevitably larger than Zink printers, looks and feels very nice in hand, which makes printing photos a pleasant experience.
- The problem, as I wrote above, is that it uses proprietary ink cartridges so when Liene discontinues it, the printer will be trash. I justified to myself that if I buy 100 refills in advance (~50 USD), that's around $150 for 150 prints and the printer itself (the printer was $100 and comes with 50 sheets), which makes it $1 per print INCLUDING the price of the printer. That's not too bad already and I'll eventually stock up on refills a bit more so that even if they get discontinued at some point, I'd feel like I got my money's worth from the printer.
- Another little con of Liene N200 is that the app is a bit limited. It doesn't have too many options for resizing, collaging, retouching, and stickers and frames if that's your thing. It has the basics though and I haven't HAD to install another photo-editing app though I occasionally wanted to.
Btw, the reasons I chose Liene N200 over other dye-sub printers such as Canon Selphy and a Polaroid were that the Liene was cheaper and newer (and I think smaller?) I initially tried to get a Polaroid model that had great reviews but it seemed to be on the verge of being discontinued, and because of the refills issue, I preferred to get the most recently released device.
But if you go the dye-sub route, better do some research comparing models if you're picky about photo quality.
As for Zink, I think they're all pretty much the same at the core. All reviews comparing the photo qualities of Ivy2 vs Sprocket etc. claim contradictory results with no consensus. Just compare battery life, app usability, and make sure it uses USB-C charging (not the outdated microUSB!)