These days, everything is instant photography, but no matter how many filters you smear onto that smartphone picture, it’s never going to have the wonderful feel of the photos a Polaroid used to spit out. But now you can approximate that level of satisfaction thanks to Fujifilm’s new Instax Share SP-1 printer.
The Instax Share SP-1 has a built-in Wi-Fi radio and can turn itself into an ad-hoc hotspot. If you take a photo you’d like to see in real life, fire up the Instax Share iOS or Android app and connect directly to the printer and send it over. The printer will spit out the photo on 2 x 3 Instax film — the very same stuff used in the Instax Mini 90.
In the event that you’ve taken a photo of a group and you’d like everybody to take a souvenir, the printer has a built-in print again button. It’ll also add the date and time to the photo for you if that’s something you want.
Sure, plenty of photo printers have existed before. Polaroid even tried to make a digital camera that prints photos. But, man, I love the idea that you can turn your photo into a memory to stick on the refrigerator. Better yet, the SP-1 is battery powered, so it’s easy enough to port it to a party or an event, when is precisely when you might want to be making mementos. [Fujifilm]
Out in April for about $200. Not super cheap, but almost definitely really fun.