Most users are very familiar with two types of color photo printers, ones that print through inkjet technology and the other category, dye-sublimation printers. Even if these two technologies are the most encountered on the market, a third one is slowly trying to fit and serve as good competition as well

The zink technology was announced in Decambet 2007 and actually raised a few eyebrows from interested users. What makes zink printers different and interesting is that they use no ink. Zink actually stands for zero ink. This is because these inkless printers support special paper that includes numerous tiny crystals of different colors (the main colors you find as ink in other types of printers, cyan, magenta and yellow).

Because the print head heats up, it manages to melt the crystals on the paper and transform them into the desired image. One pass of the print head over the paper, compared to several passes from other technologies means that this type of printer is among the fastest on the market. On top of that prints produced by zink printers are pretty durable. The images printer on the special paper are highly resistant to both light and heat.


Even though this technology was introduced, as mentioned before, in 2007 there are quite few printers being sold that make use of it. At the beginning printing with zero ink was limited to a 2 by 3 inch paper format. The printers were small and highly portable but the photographs produced were too small for the needs of some people. The second generation of zink printers however stepped it up a notch and now offer 4 by 6 inch prints. One of these printers is the Pandigital Portable Photo Printer (retailing for about $130).

At a size of 1.5 by 6.2 by 6.7 inches and weighing 1.75 the Pandigital color photo printers are highly portable, this being their main advantage. Speed is more than satisfying too. It takes about 1minute and a small bit for a 4 by 6 sheet of paper to be printer which is about as fast as what both inkjet and dye-sublimation printers supporting the same size of media.

Where this printer falls short is photographic quality. Colors aren't very realistic and a lower level of detail happen pretty often. While the quality is acceptable for a regular user, a more pretentious user will feel the difference between this printer and a higher quality inkjet for sure.


Finally, no ink should mean lower maintenance cost, since you're only paying for the paper, right? Wrong. With paper costing about $40 for 100 sheets, the average cost for printing manages to be higher than in the case of competitors that use inkjet or dye-sublimation technologies. In fact, you might be better off with a Canon Selphy CP780 that's cheaper to buy, run and offers better photo quality.

The Pandigital Portable Photo printer is great to take along on trips and proof that the zink technology still needs a lot of work before blending properly on the photo printer market. When they do manage to perfect it however, it will probably prove to be a great way to print photographs.