The best thing about the Wasabi PZ310 mobile printer is clearly the design. As you first look at it, you may be somewhat puzzled and ask yourself what this device is. It might be an MP3 player, or perhaps an external hard drive. After some serious thought you’ll finally discover that the transparent plastic rectangle with faux-chrome accents is in fact a printer. It comes in black, blue or pink.

The Wasabi PZ310 is one of the few printers on the market that use no ink. This is because they use the ZINK tehnology (aka Zero Ink) to produce photographs. Another such printer is the PoGo, offered by Polaroid. The deal with these printers is that, compared to other portable photo printers, they are much smaller (which means that you could potentially carry one in your pocked the whole time) and they’ll require about 60 seconds for the user to take a picture and print it out on paper.

That’s pretty amazing, especially in these times when people want everything done asap, even if their life clearly does not depend on it. As the Pogo, this small photo printer also offers printing through PictBridge or Bluetooth and needs to be connected to a compatible digital camera or mobile phone. What the PoGo doesn’t offer though (at least to our knowledge so far) is the ability of cooperating properly with a computer. Since Dell is a company who manufactures laptops – even though the Wasabi didn’t work brilliantly upon release – they are seriously working on providing good drivers for every available operating system. It’s true that it only works connected through Bluetooth, but if you must use it with a computer, you’ll be pleased to know that it at least works that way.

Something users may not like is that the Wasabi PZ310 limits you to 2 by 3 inch prints, as if 4 by 6 wasn’t already too small for some people. But then again, this is the only way manufacturers can keep a printer measuring 0.9 by 4.8 by 2.9 inches and weighing 8 ounces. Zink technology (no ink used at all) works in a rather bizarre way.

The technology embeds dye crystals in the actual photo paper and with the help of heat produced by the printhead in the Wasabi, it activates the color in those crystals. Because there’s no need for ink cartridges, making the printer work is extremely simple. You just open the input tray cover, insert the paper and start the printer. And the most important thing is, this is new technology and the design of the printer is great, hence it’s a must buy for most gadget enthusiasts.