The Best Zero-Ink Instant Cameras and Printers

If you don't need a camera, and just want to print the images you take with your phone (or even DSLR for that matter), the Sprocket Photo Printer offers the best results. It's roughly the size of a phone—a little larger than the cameras on this list, but not by much. The Sprocket connects with iPhone, iPad, or Android phones via Bluetooth, and its mobile app lets you edit and customize your photos before printing. There's also an option to tile your images onto multiple prints for a larger, pieced-together image.

The printed results are the best of all the devices we tested and have deeper blacks than other Zero Ink printers and cameras.

The Polaroid Mint Camera and Printer combo is a stylish, well-designed little package (just slightly bigger than a deck of cards) available in a variety of colors. The vertical orientation isn't always what you want, but it mirrors how most of us shoot with our phones.

Its 16-megapixel sensor is also notably better than our top pick, and the selfie mirror is helpful, but Mint has a huge limitation: Everything prints, even the duds. If you want to review your images, the Kodak above is the best choice. If you're OK with printing everything, the Mint produces great results.

The Canon Ivy Cliq (see our full review) is a pocket-friendly, super simple camera with no digital nonsense to get in the way of snapping images. You can add a MicroSD to save photos, but the Ivy Cliq is best when you keep it simple—point, shoot, print.

The plastic case feels a little cheap, though it did fine rattling around in my bag all day. The big downside to the Ivy Cliq is that, unlike the top pick, which allows you to review images before printing, it also always prints, whether you want to or not. The results aren't quite as nice as what the Polaroid Mint produces, but this is a close second.

The Polaroid Mint Mini Printer is nearly identical to the camera, it just lacks the camera features. Instead you get a highly portable printer that's very simple to use and produces nearly identical results to the camera. The HP Sprocket produces slightly better prints to my eye, but if you want to save a little money and still get 90 percent of what the Sprocket offers, the Mint Printer is a good choice. Polaroid's phone app is slightly more intuitive than HP's app, but it lacks the option to select multiple prints at a time.

If you don't need the camera, Kodak's Smile Printer offers a great way to get prints off your phone. It's virtually identical to our top pick, the Smile Classic dual camera and printer. It just doesn't have a camera. Instead, it connects via Bluetooth to your smartphone and prints images from your phone. The printed images are on par with what you'll get from the camera version. If you tend to edit and tweak colors on your phone, you can get better results from this than the camera, which has no editing features onboard.

The Canon Selphy isn't a Zink printer. It uses dye sublimation, which means you will eventually have to buy ink. It also produces 4 x 6 prints of a much higher caliber than Zink is capable of creating. In a way, it's completely unfair to compare this to Zink printers, but because it shares the roughly $100 price, we think it's an alternative worth exploring if you're willing to trade portability for larger, higher-quality prints.

The Selphy is portable, but it certainly won't fit in your pocket. It will, however, produce prints roughly on par with what you'd get from the machines at your local drugstore.

Zink technology is pretty uniform across devices, but that doesn't mean they're all good. We don't like Prynt's Classic or Pocket printers which only work with iPhones. They print just fine, but they cost more—and if you switch away from iPhone down the line, you'll need a printer too.

Similarly, there are numerous no-name brand zero-ink printers out there. Some of them may be fine, but they're generally more expensive than the name-brand options here. We suggest sticking with names you know and prices around the $100 mark for the best combination of value and quality.