Kodak Smile Instant

amazon Kodak Smile Instant reviews

Bridging the gap between Instagram and the real world, the Kodak Smile Instant Digital Printer lets you print photos from your phone. In contrast, the Smile Instant Digital Camera lets you capture, share and print photos, giving you both digital files and instant prints you can stick on your fridge. The Kodak Smile Instant Printer generates 2 x 3 inch Zink photos from a Bluetooth-connected phone. While portable instant printers are easy to find, Smile takes this concept further with augmented reality, allowing you to embed video in still images that will play on your phone when you scan a print like a QR code. Meanwhile, the Kodak Instant Smile digital camera is essentially the same printer but with a hidden 5-megapixel camera in it. However, the Instant Smile Camera cannot connect to a smart device – the AR video feature.

But any budget-friendly camera or printer like this begs the question: Is it an affordable value, or is it simply cheap?

Simple and sleek

The Kodak Smile Instant Printer features a sleek, boxy design with a textured grip and rounded corners. It’s shorter than a standard-sized smartphone but two to three times thicker, meaning it’s not exactly pocketable, but it should fit easily in a small camera bag or purse. Slide out the texture panel, turn on the printer and pop it open to reveal the paper exit slot. The printer has no other physical controls, except a flap on the opposite side that pops out to load Zink paper.

The light at the bottom of the printer blinks when Bluetooth is powered on, then goes solid when the printer’s Bluetooth is ready to connect. The light also flashes blue when the printer receives the image and prepares to print it.

For its part, the Instant Smile Camera looks extremely similar and isn’t much bigger. Drag towards the texture that opens the camera slide out to reveal the hidden lens underneath. The same sliding action simultaneously powers the top and rear cameras, revealing the camera controls, a set of five buttons. The camera also has a MicroSD card slot that was not found (nor needed) on the printer.

The plastic feels amazingly sturdy for a $100 camera, but the LCD on the back makes it a cheap option. The screen is less than an inch and a half wide, which, combined with the low resolution, makes it difficult to identify many details. The screen is also difficult to see from an angle and looks best when held upright. That isn’t great, but it’s pretty much, of course, when it comes to instant digital cameras. Smile Instant Printer has no screen as it relies solely on your phone.

The camera doesn’t make sense to people who already have other cameras, but its simple design makes it great for kids.

The camera doesn’t make sense to people who already have other cameras, but its simple design makes it great for kids. I had no problem handing it over to my 6-year-old, who quickly figured out how to turn it on, take a photo, edit it, and print it. You can leave the manual closed.

The only thing that’s not intuitive is loading the Zink paper, but there’s a diagram inside both the camera and the printer illustrating which side goes up.

The second is simplicity; the built-in rechargeable battery is also an advantage, allowing USB charging instead of constantly replacing disposable batteries. The camera also has some internal storage if you forget the MicroSD card.

where can you get a Kodak Smile Instant online

KODAK Smile Instant Print Digital Camera – Slide-Open 10MP Camera w/2×3 ZINK Printer (Green): Buy it now

KODAK Smile Instant Print Digital Camera (Red) Scrapbook Kit with Soft Case: Buy it now

KODAK Smile Instant Print Digital Camera (Black/White) Soft Case Kit: Buy it now

KODAK Smile Instant Digital Bluetooth Printer for iPhone & Android – Edit, Print & Share 2×3 Zink Photos w/ Smile App (Green): Buy it now

User interface

Despite the lack of camera functionality, the Smile Instant Printer feels more like a full-featured product. The Kodak Smile app guides you through the process of connecting the printer to your phone or tablet via Bluetooth, which is pretty straightforward and should get the printer up and running in no more than a minute or two. After the initial connection, the printer will automatically reconnect whenever it is turned on.

Once connected, you can choose to take photos directly in the app, access the camera roll to print photos you’ve taken, or log in to Instagram, Facebook, or Google Photos to print photos directly from your social media account. The app includes more than two dozen filters along with tools for cropping, rotating, adjusting exposure, and more. The styling tool integrates text, stickers, borders, and doodles. The share button also allows you to share similar edits to social media before printing. That goes beyond Smile Instant Camera’s simpler editing tools.

However, it’s not the best option for photo editing, and there are much better apps out there. For example, brightening an image also reduces contrast, while apps like VSCO do better here. Some other features may have limited use, such as a collage option to squeeze multiple images onto a 2 x 3-inch print.

When you tap the print button, the app will ask how many copies to make; then, the printer will go live. It takes about 30 seconds to produce a Zink print, which is certainly longer than competing printers that use Fujifilm Instax film, but the benefit is that you don’t have to wait for the Zink print to develop. However, if you’re trying to queue up many photos to print quickly, that can be a bit annoying; The app suggests waiting for the print to finish before sending a second photo. Once or twice, the printer didn’t respond to the first attempt either.

But the printer goes beyond typical still photos. An augmented reality feature lets you virtually embed video in print, as do face filters. AR-enabled prints take a few minutes to send to the printer – long enough for us to wonder if the print will work – and print with a video icon in the corner to indicate an associated file. Unfortunately, the icon doesn’t appear in the preview, so you have to remember not to put any important details in the bottom corner.

Watch on your phone screen, the video plays on the fridge, table, or anywhere there’s a printout in space.

Once printed, the same Kodak Smile app can scan the printout with your camera and playback the video in augmented reality. Watch on your phone screen, the video plays on the fridge, table, or anywhere there’s a printout in space. Whoever you give the physical print to will need to install the Kodak Smile app to view the hidden video. Still, as long as you provide those instructions, it can be a fun way to share more than just a photo in things like wedding invitations or family holiday cards.

Magic isn’t perfect, however. It takes a few tries for the image to align correctly, and different backgrounds may throw off the application, or the printed edges start to curve. Sometimes the scan succeeds immediately; other times, it takes a few minutes to get the print to align perfectly to scan finally.

Compared to a printer, the Instant Smile Camera offers a few precious editing options that are even more minimalist than the camera itself. There are only four filters: normal, monochrome, classic (or sepia), and aqua (which gives the photo a blue tint). The only other option is to print with or without borders.

A few other options are tucked away in the menu, including a photo booth mode that lets you take two pictures side-by-side and flash settings. The auto print option each photo automatically instead of asking for permission first, but being selective about what is printed is one of the benefits of digital instant cameras over instant film cameras.

Image and print quality

Again, if you already have a phone, get the printer through the camera. Images captured on camera are lackluster – and that’s good. While the camera advertises 10 megapixels, the fine print states that the sensor is only 5 megapixels and that the extra resolution is generated from interpolation. It’s a fancy term for increasing resolution by taking information from surrounding pixels and guessing what those new pixels should contain; it’s not the same as starting with a 10MP sensor. That isn’t a problem when making Zink prints because the paper is so small, but it means you won’t get much else out of the digital files.

Indoors, the images have quite a bit of noise that causes a significant loss of detail. Indoor shots can also have a blurry, fuzzy quality – possibly because the lens and sensor aren’t large enough to gather enough light to allow a fast shutter speed to freeze motion. Outdoors, the picture is slightly better, though not by much, with mid-range colors and less noise and blur. The edges of the frame are quite soft, and even the center is not sharp. The brightest areas of the image also tend to be overexposed.

While it’s easy to tear up images on a computer screen, the camera is meant to produce small 2 x 3 inch prints. Some grain and opacity make it into small prints, and the colors aren’t quite as good on paper as they are on screen. But, at smaller sizes, some image quality flaws are harder to notice.

Pairing nearly any smartphone with the Kodak Smile Instant Printer boosts image quality. Even an older iPhone 7 easily outperforms the Instant Smile Camera with higher resolution, better colors, and less noise in low light. Additionally, you can technically print from any camera to the Smile Printer by transferring photos to your phone first, so if you want to print instantly from a DSLR or mirrorless camera, you can do that.

Images from the Kodak Smile camera are lackluster – and that’s good.

Of course, no one ever claimed the Zink print was of exceptionally high quality. The Smile printer matches other Zink printers, so it’s not great, regardless of the digital file quality you started. When it comes to details, a photo from a 45-megapixel Nikon D850 DSLR doesn’t look any better than an iPhone photo. Still, from lens selection to depth-of-field control, some creative benefits can make the camera more appealing, such as a real photo. The image stands out even on small Zink prints. How much detail do you need in a 2 x 3-inch photo?

What’s a bit more noticeable is the color. Colors in prints tend to lean towards magenta and yellow, which is more noticeable in some prints than others. Shadows also tend to print darker in digital files, which mutes colors in the shadows even more. However, other Zink printers tend to have the same color deviation, so the fault lies not with this product but with the medium itself.

Zink paper – which can be used in any Zink printer, regardless of brand – is thick, glossy, and laminated. The glossy surface does quite well at resisting smudges and fingerprints, but the less you handle, the better.