Portable printer? Here's Huawei Pocket Photo Printer Review CV80; from an amateur perspective. (updated 2020)

DISCLAIMER : THIS REVIEW IS NOT SPONSORED

-edit : scroll to the bottom for latest updates- 

Most photos are digitalized now. Who still prints photos? I can even count them with my fingers. I remember those good old days where my father keeps the negatives to the photo; and if you want to print them, you gotta bring them to the shop to develop it. About 5 years back, my friend used to carry around polaroid camera to photograph memorable moments. Immediately I noticed some issues. 

The photos can't be previewed. You just gotta bear with whatever you had when u pressed the shutter button.

You can only print a copy. 

However I'm still intrigued by the idea of owning an polaroid camera so I proceeded to browse on Shopee. Oh my! It ain't cheap owning one! Plus the cost of the polaroid film itself! I tried to search for a cheaper alternative and that's where I saw Paperang. Paperang looks cool however it only prints in black and white. 

Andddddddddd. Fast forward 5 years later. 

I got a pocket printer as gift for upcoming birthday! 

The HUAWEI POCKET PHOTO PRINTER.  

I was given the tracking number and thus I tracked the order everyday in excitement. The shipping was pretty quick as I was given an ETA of approx 2-3 weeks and it arrived in just a week!. 

Tada!!! Fresh from the oven 

Huawei Pocket Photo Printer. Looking sleek

This Huawei Pocket Photo Printer prints with Zink (Zero-ink) technology, where the magic here is in the paper. There's no ink required! Impressive, right? 

In the package, USB port provided, with a pack of 10 pcs Zink paper. Manual is all in Chinese. Note the size in comparison to my Xiao Mi Powerbank 20000mAh.

Tech Specifications from Huawei (click to link to Huawei website)

Charging time : 2.5 hours
Battery life : 23 photos
Weight : 195 g
Battery : 500 mAh
Dimensions : 120 x 80 x 22.3mm
Resolution : 313 x 490 dpi
Printing technology : Zink
Print speed : 55 seconds
Tray capacity : 10 sheets of Zink paper plus one blue card
Connectivity : Bluetooth, Huawei Share
Supports both android 8.0, iOS 10.0.02 and later

How to use the Huawei Pocket Photo Printer

To begin, plug in the device to a power outlet/powerbank to charge the device. 

Next, open the back cover of the Huawei Pocket Printer by sliding it.

Open the Zink paper package (contains 10 sheets of Zink paper with a blue sheet).

Place the printed side of the blue paper facing down.

Close the lid by sliding it up again. 

Switch on the printer by long press. 

Now, switch on bluetooth; go to your Huawei Printer app and sync ur device with the printer. 

Select any photo which you liked and click print!

Now the printer will 'print' the blue paper first (for calibration).

Your photo will be printed next. It takes about 1 minute to print and you are good to go!

My user experience

It is quite simple to use. I managed without a manual. However, the first time when I used the Huawei Pocket Printer; I was shocked about the print quality. My worst nightmare came true. The photo came out with white lines T.T Before I got the Huawei Pocket Printer as a gift, I actually googled so many reviews regarding HP Sprocket with many users complaining that the Sprocket printed with white lines on it.

My First Photo! Frames and stickers were added from the Huawei Printer app itself. OH MY NIGHTMARE. Note the white lines. Photo size is 2 x 3 inches.

My second pic from hotsprings vacation. Note the lines at the bottom of the pic TT

There's only a handful of people who had written reviews on this Huawei device, what more troubleshoot. I'm really in troubleeeeee. I stayed calm and followed similar instructions to what the HP suggested. 

"Clean printer head. Reinsert blue sheet of paper to recalibrate. Make sure software is up to date." 

SHOOOOOT. I forgot to click software update for the printer app. I should have update it first before printing my first photo. Dang, I wasted 2 precious Zink paper. 

Thank goodness the third photo came out looking good!!!! I removed the back of Zink paper and paste it on my powerbank. Oops I forgot to mention that the Zink paper has a sticky back haha!

I got this pic from tumblr however I am unable to credit the owner because the autograph at the bottom is blur to me. If you do know the artist, pls contact me for proper crediting.

Looking good now! All iz well~ What about the colour and quality? You be the judge. Variation may occur due to my phone camera lighting etc  

You can also create a picture collage from the Huawei app and print it out. As easy as ABC! Sorry, I can't demo for this because I have yet to find out photos which I want to combine for collage :P

Photo quality

The photo quality is generally acceptable. If you are expecting a very high quality photo with larger size, I'm sorry; this device is not suitable for you. 

For this sort of quality, I think it is great for scrapbooking purpose. You can even print out photos to distribute it among friends and family as a token.

I do realize if you print a low quality image, a result with a low quality photo is what you get. Printing a high quality image does not necessarily result in high quality photo but it is definitely better. 

I understand that Zink paper has its own cons, as the ink itself is embeded in the paper and 'activated by heat'. Do not expect the photo colours will be very saturated for your liking, perhaps a printer with digital sublimation technique would be better. 

Issues with Zink paper stuck in printer

When I used this pocket printer for the third or fourth time, my Zink paper was stuck. I waited for more than a minute however the Zink paper did not came out. Even the whirring sound when the printer made while it was printing sounds different. And that's when the notification popped out. "PRINTER JAM." I was like ughhhhh why!!!! I wanna love this printer but this has to work!!! The bad thing about this Huawei Pocket Printer is the lack of technical support. This underrated product needs more reviews! The lack of user made me difficult to get help. Where can I troubleshoot this issue? T.T 

I restarted the printer a few times in hope that the printer itself can eject the Zink paper but to no avail. I then opened up the back cover and noticed about 1-2 mm of paper was stuck in the roller itself. My last resort was to yank out the Zink paper. My heart says "Ouch!" when I did that. NEVER EVER YANK IT OUT. It increases the chance of damaging the roller. Thank goodness only 1-2 mm of paper was stuck inside. After that I tried printing another image and yeap, my printer was fine.


I did my own troubleshoot and realize the reason the Zink paper was stuck is because the Zink paper curled. After printing the first few photos, I did opened up the back cover of the printer and I noticed there is curling of Zink paper. Why did the Zink paper curled? After clicking on various webpages, I found out that Zink paper curls due to excessive humidity or changes in temperature. It is hard to avoid this issue once we opened the Zink paper and place it into the printer. Besides, I believe that the printer gradually heats up once we print continuously. Probably the heat causes the Zink paper to curl while the Zink paper is in the printer itself. You can check the temperature of the printer from the app itself. A webpage even suggested to use the Zink paper as soon as possible once opened! Is this possible? I don't even print 10 photos at a go! At most, I think I will only print a photo once every few days. 


Solution? I'm afraid that after each time you print, you gotta keep the unused Zink paper back into the foil to prevent excessive moisture and curling. I then keep the Zink paper in the photo printer box while allowing the weight of the photo printer to flatten the Zink paper. Better safe than sorry. Do you have better solution? Comment down below! We would love to know!

Other functions of the Huawei Pocket Photo Printer

Huawei Pocket Printer also supports Augmented Reality (AR), where you can make your photos come to life! Inside the app itself, simply click on the video which you prefer and select a thumbnail to be printed from the video. I have not experiment with this yet :P 

You can even print name cards of course. As advertised, it is convenient to just print your name card and distribute it when needed. This is pointless to me anyways. I mean, you remember to pack your pocket printer and you forgot your name card? How heavy can that few pieces of name card be? Well, this can be useful for people like me who doesn't print hundreds of name cards, but Zink paper for this? Hmmmmmm. You decide. 

Pic taken from Huawei website. You have variations of default name card designs to pick from.

Limitations

I think the app itself has its own limitations. The frames and filters provided has its own limits, as such I can't zoom out the photo/move the photo around so that the frames wouldn't block the object in the photo. I have a limited option of frames and filter too. Maybe I'm just more drawn to the frames provided by HP or Canon. I've seen reviews on the Canon Ivy and HP Sprocket and they have many amazing frames and stickers, which I think is perfect for scrapbooking. 

Same thing goes with the filter, I am unable to adjust the % of filter which I want, sometimes I prefer the filter to be less intense. So I think that it is better to edit the photos beforehand instead of editing it on the app itself. 

My suggestion? Edit the frames and filters using other apps. 

I can't log into social media too and print photos from there, but I supposed it doesn't matter to me because I have a copy of those pictures in my phone anyway.

Some of you might ask, can I use HP or Canon Zink Paper with Huawei Pocket Printer?

Well, I'm not sure of this. According to Huawei, it is ideal to stick with the Huawei Zink paper itself for ideal printing. I supposed there's no harm in trying Zink paper from other brands, however you do need to the the piece of blue sheet from the Huawei Zink Paper itself for calibration purpose. I've seen reviews from Youtube where they used HP Zink paper on Canon printer and vice-versa. It works but different paper have different undertones. As such, the reviewer mentioned that Canon's Zink paper gives out warm undertones whereas HP Zink paper gives out cooler undertones. It is all up to personal preferences. Personally I have not tried it yet,  thus I am unable to compare of any sort of Zink paper. However I came across a review from Amazon where the user commented that he tried using Zink papers from other brands with Huawei, and the photos has a greenish hue to it. I wouldn't take the risk to try other brands as the Zink paper from Huawei itself is already affordable.

Pricing

The price of a pack of Huawei Zink Paper ranges from RM 30 - RM45 ( approx USD 7 - 11) for 20 pieces. On average, it only cost about RM 1.50 - RM 2.25 ($0.35 - 0.55) for a piece. Prices are obtained from third party sellers as the official Huawei online store is out of stock.  I supposed that prices of Zink papers are more or less the same among other brands. Obviously it is more economical to print in bulk at those photo studios with perhaps better print quality, but hey! we are talking about portability and convenience here. The official Huawei store in Lazada sells the Huawei Pocket Photo Printer for RM399 (approx USD 95); and i believe you can get it for a lower price from other third party sellers (price can go as low as USD 50!)

Conclusion

Overall, this Huawei Pocket Photo Printer is affordable, lightweight, portable with acceptable print quality. The app has a simple user interface which is easy to use! As for the app, I think it can be further improved.


Here, I hope that you enjoyed my overview on this Huawei Pocket Photo Printer! There's a handful of reviews on this however I hope that I managed to give a better glimpse on this product.


In the future, portable and light photo printers will be more advanced so I'm not surprised with how far this technology can go. On a side note, this post is not sponsored, opinions expressed are solely my own. As for now, I'm contented with my gift. Happy Birthday to me! 

Signing out, 

Amaryllisrue



2020 updates with additional pictures for comparison!
I have high expectations on this product and I really wanted this to work. I last use this product on March to print some photos from my trip and let's just say the results are pretty disappointing. Let me attach the latest photos I took with this printer and you decide for yourself.

The photo B is what I get after the first print. I opened a new pack of zink paper just to show you guys the results. Can it be the quality of Zink paper? I got this second pack from a reseller and I could not verify whether its original or not. 

For some reason, the ink quality isn't very good when I tried to print. The ink is very light and appears faded. I was like, come on!! I want this thing to work!! and the white fine lines are killing me ugh!!! Since those photos are already destroyed by those fine lines, I don't mind to experiment with it. What I did next was shocking. I put the same zink paper back into the printer and printed the exact same photo again. Which explains why the photo A is much darker plus the double image heh. For some reason the camera can't capture the fine lines! You might prefer photo B but trust me, after seeing photo B in real life, you will regret. 

After putting all of them back into the printer and reprint. It's not that I do not have stable hands, reprinting may cause double image if you do not position the paper and align the image properly. 

I rather you see a cute panda :D

I printed this photo from my graduation for safe keeping. As usual, the prints come with fine lines. Ink quality isn't as vibrant like a proper printer. If I wanted to make the colours more intense, I can just pop back the same Zink paper and print the same pic again. (but I decided not to for this pic :D)

TERRIBLE LINES, KILL ME PLEASE (p.s - I snipped off the head cos the Zink Paper got stuck in the printer and I yanked it out. So I reprinted another picture instead. What a waste of Zink Paper)

After putting the Zink paper into the printer 2x : getting more intense colours (p.s sorry my bedroom lighting is yellow )

Tbh, I'm pretty amused with how inconsistent the picture quality is. Here's a few more pics I printed and how the quality differ. 

The black colour appears brownish and the fonts in the pic above appears blurry 

Minimal fine lines but generally acceptable. If all the pic that I printed can maintain the same quality, it would be awesome

After so long, I still can't figure out what's wrong with the fluctuating print quality. Why do I get so many fine lines in a pic and some appears okay? Weird. Is it due to software? The first batch of pics I printed (before the software update) looks good!

Sigh. I don't think we will get another software update. Will we? *crosses fingers*