Just like their portable photo printer, you can also choose from a number of fun stickers to add on. You can manually adjust the color balances, hue, saturation, highlights, shadows, and levels. If the neutral look isn’t for you, Kodak has a ton of editing featured built into their app.
Kodak claims that they won’t fade for up to 10 years, making these the perfect archive images. Not only do these prints look great now, but they’re rated to last for a very long time. Looking at the prints made from this printer versus ones we’d made on a cheaper model felt like we just moved to a retina display from a standard model. You don’t get that ugly banding you see with inexpensive inkjet printers, and lines stayed sharp and clear. This means that what you see on your screen is almost identical to what you get.įor us, the most impressive thing about the print quality was how well the colors blend together.
The colors are very neutral feeling, and well calibrated to a standard phone display. Thanks to the impressive dye sublimation technology used in Kodak’s latest printers, the images you get look just as good as professionally printed models. We found that the bandwidth was more than suitable to transfer even high file size images, so we’d expect that most users have a pretty good experience here. There is a slightly longer file transfer time associated with using wireless connectivity, but it’s still a matter of seconds. This allows you to launch in a chair while your printer sits on a desk, making for a simple and easy printing experience. This gives you the same ability to crop and edit photos as the standard connection method, essentially using your phone as an interface for the printer.įor convenience reasons, another easy way to connect to the printer is through Wi-Fi direct. You do have to have a phone in the dock to use this feature (there is no display on the dock.) When USB storage is inserted, the Kodak app includes all of the photos in a gallery style browser. This printer is able to print directly from external storage or USB thumb drives. But even if you’re not running low, we can all use a little extra battery life, can’t we? This will be especially useful if you’re running low on battery and want to print. One of the pleasant surprises we ran into with this printer is that it charges your phone when physically connected. When connected this way, the app functions the same as if you had inserted your device into the dock. If you have a tablet, you’ll need to connect to the USB port via your charging cable. When your phone is inserted into the dock, the Printer Dock app automatically opens, which makes using it very easy.
This is a typical Micro-USB dock (although there is an included adapter for lightening needed by apple phones.) The dock is sized appropriately for virtually all phones on the market, including the iPhone 7 Plus and Galaxy Note series phones that have a larger than usual display. There are several ways you can connect to this printer. With the image on the display, you simply press the print button (if the phone is in the dock) or tap the screen (when connected via Wi-Fi) to print the image. You can slide and pinch to zoom the images, and everything within the border is what you will see when you print. 4 x 6 inch prints have roughly the same aspect ratio as your phone screen, although you can see a tiny border inside the display. You browse through the folders and camera roll on your phone, selecting the photo you want to see. The Kodak Printer Dock app feels a lot like Androids native photo gallery.
From this moment on it will be paired automatically. After 15 seconds or so, the printer was found. With WiFi enabled on your phone, the app will then scan for the printer. Upon opening, you hit settings then “add printer”.
The first thing we did was plug the printer into AC power using the included adapter, then download the Kodak Printer Dock app from the store.
If you know how to use the app store, you’ll have no problem setting up this printer. There is a heavy mobile focus with this dock, and the setup procedure is best done from your phone. Using your fingernail, you pull this door open to change the cartridge and paper. The dock portion is slightly angled, which makes it easy to see your phone when it’s sitting there.Īlthough it’s easy to miss, there is a small door on the side of the printer. Below that is the single red print button. The power button, when on, has a bright yellow LED ring around it that makes it obvious that the printer is ready to go. It feels much more modern than a standard photo printer, with sleek lines and sharp contrast between the black and gray portions. This is an attractively designed printer.