Canon IVY Mini Photo Printer - Review 2022

Over the past few years, we've seen a surge of pocket photo printers that y'all operate solely from your smartphone or tablet. A few, notably the HP Sprocket Photo Printer and the Lifeprint 2x3 Hyperphoto Printer, take managed tiptop ratings in PCMag reviews. Now, along comes Canon's IVY Mini Photo Printer ($129.99), which, aside from a few ready-apart print features, is substantially a "me-as well" model. Information technology prints as well every bit well-nigh of its competitors, and it comes with an easy-to-use app for printing, likewise as for cropping and enhancing your photos. In our testing, though, piddling about the IVY stands out. It'southward as skilful a choice as about of its competitors, assuming what yous're after are tiny, on-the-wing prints from a mobile device.

A Quirky Color Scheme

The Canon IVY measures 0.seven by iii.2 by 4.7 inches (HWD) and weighs five.half dozen ounces. These measurements are shut enough to those of competing models that print the same size photos—such as the Lifeprint 2x3, the HP Sprocket, and the Polaroid Insta-Share—to exist negligible. The large exception in this lot is the Lifeprint 3x4.five, which prints significantly larger photos. It measures one by 4.5 past half-dozen.3 inches and weighs 12 ounces. That's nearly a tertiary once again as large equally the other printers mentioned here, which specialize in 2-by-3-inch (wallet-size) output.

Canon offers the IVY in iii color schemes, all two-tone, with white on top and a pastel shade effectually the edge and on the bottom. (The choices are Slate Grey, Rose Gold, or Mint Green.) All are pleasant only somewhat unusual-looking colors for a printer.

Because the IVY works with your smartphone or tablet interface, it has no control panel to speak of. On the back, you lot'll find a micro-USB connector for charging the device, every bit well as a recharge-status LED and a reset pinhole...

On the left border is the on/off toggle. A slot on the front edge, from which your printed photos emerge, spans the newspaper path.

This physical configuration, aside from the pastels, is well-nigh identical to that of the Lifeprint 2x3. Like the Lifeprint, the HP Sprocket, and a few other models, the Catechism IVY uses the Zink Zero Ink press technology, meaning that the printer itself requires no actual ink cartridge. Instead, it uses paper infused with color crystals, which melt and brandish colors on the paper when heated by the printer. (I'll talk more than nigh this newspaper, its toll, and how it works afterwards.)

The connectivity comprises just i pick, and information technology's wireless: Bluetooth, and that only via a handheld Android or iOS device. You tin't connect the IVY to a PC, or tap into the IVY with a Wi-Fi connection. Y'all can connect, however, to i of several cloud and social media sites, amid them OneDrive, Google Cloud Print, Facebook, and Instagram. Y'all pair the IVY printer to your mobile device just as you would any other Bluetooth device, through the device'due south Bluetooth command panel. (It took me just a few moments.)

The Canon Mini Impress App

Catechism Mini Print is the app that you'll use to operate this printer. Aside from some cosmetic variances, it works much the same equally the software provided past its competitors. Yous load and print images from your phone's storage or the internet. You lot can choose to impress the photos as-is, or you tin can edit and/or raise them using the app's various correction filters and special-effects options.

1 feature that Canon Mini Print offers that the others don't, though, is tiling, or joining multiple prints at their edges to create larger images or collages. To etch these larger images, the software simply cuts the image into four pieces that you stick back together after they impress.

One thing to note: Similar on many other Zink-based printers, the newspaper comes with a peel-to-stick agglutinative layer on the back that lets yous create stickers from your images. With the tiling feature, you can combine prints to create your bigger images or collages, and use the sticky stuff to brand the prints stay in identify relative to each other. Tiling is the ane feature that allows the IVY to stand out from its competitors.

Zink-ing Almost Impress Speed, Quality

These little Zink photograph printers all churn at similar speeds, within x to twenty seconds of one another. The print speed varies a smidge according to image resolution, the actual image size, the color depth, then on, but how quickly these variances go handled depends more on the processing ability of the phone or tablet from which you are printing.

That said, the Canon IVY churned out our test images in under a minute, with the actual speeds fluctuating between 38 and 52 seconds and averaging at 44 seconds. That'southward 2 seconds backside the HP Sprocket, fourteen seconds slower than the Lifeprint 2x3, and 56 seconds faster than the Lifeprint 3x4.five. Remember, though, that the latter Lifeprint's images are nigh half over again the size of these other models' output, and thus accept longer to emerge.

As for the output quality, equally with the other Zink devices discussed here, information technology's adequate for what these prints are. The lack of a black base of operations color causes a noticeable dearth of depth. (The colour crystals mentioned earlier return only as cyan, magenta, and xanthous.) Likewise, in about cases, I noted that the colors were ever-so-slightly off. Not past a lot, but enough that you'd detect if you looked closely.

In other words, don't expect the colorful, vibrant, and sometimes breathtaking images yous'd get from a v- or vi-ink consumer-grade photo printer, such as, say, the Editors' Choice-winning Canon Pixma TS9120 Wireless Inkjet All-in-One. What you practise get is more than passable for refrigerator stickies or pass-around photos at gatherings. And because the software is so easily integrated with social networking and photo-repository sites such as Facebook and Instagram, it's also a good choice for teens.

The IVY'due south Zink prints volition run y'all about fifty cents each, which, among 2-by-3-inch Zink printers, is near average. Canon offers ii quantities of paper pack, 20 sheets and 50 sheets, and they list for $9.99 and $24.99, respectively, so there is no savings for buying in bulk. (The IVY was fairly new when I wrote this review, and, at the time, I wasn't able to discover the paper discounted anywhere online.)

Bring on the Zink?

These little Zink-based printers have been popping up similar Whack-a-Moles of late, so one tin only assume that they have gained at least a modicum of popularity. Equally noted, the principal difference between the IVY and its competitors is its up-to-four-image tiling feature for larger images and collages. If that sounds attractive, the Canon IVY is your Zink. The two competing Lifeprint Zink printers, meanwhile, permit you, with their unique "hyperphoto" technology, to morph your images into digital video clips. Across the razzle-dazzle factor for your friends and family, the tech has a few absurd applications of its own.

As for speed, print quality, and cost of buying, those are all closely clustered for this form of Zink printer. Put Lifeprint'south unique functions in i hand and the IVY's tiling in the other, and balance out which feature is more attractive. If neither has a particular draw, the Canon IVY Mini Photograph Printer will serve you also equally the others.