Reading about Zink (not the chemical element, but the printing technology) made me wonder how well this can work. It seems to be incredible to get proper colors out of this method:

The yellow layer is the topmost one, sensitive to short heat pulses of high temperature. The magenta layer is in the middle, sensitive to longer pulses of moderate temperature. The cyan layer is at the bottom, sensitive to long pulses of lower temperature. The layers are separated by thin interlayers, acting as heat insulation, moderating the heat throughput.

This is radically different from normal printing technologies and thus it's worth checking out in more details.

So I got myself one of those Zink printers: a Canon iNSPIC (AKA Canon Ivy in US AKA Canon Zoemini in Europe). Canon seems to like to change product names depending on the region. Weird. Confusing. But once identified which one is which, I can get an English driver/manual for a Japanese product. And of course the opposite too.

Reason for the Canon as opposed to the many other Zink printers: the quality of the software, the availability, and the price of the Zink media: About 2000 Yen for 50 photos. For HP Sprocket I'd have to pay 2700 Yen for 50. For Polaroid Zip I'd pay 2800 Yen for 30.

A quick run-down: Charge printer for 30min, install the Canon app on my phone, connect via Bluetooth, pick a photo, adjust it (zoom, crop, add text), and print. I see why the Canon app is popular: it works and most buttons do what you think they do. So far some prints showed that the resolution and colors are ok. Black is solid black. Photos look ok. Of course colors are not calibrated, but neither is my phone nor my computer monitor.

I'll use this printer mainly as full color label printer. I got quite some boxes of unknown content. Well, unknown until I open them. Maybe with this thing I can create more expressive labels.