Polaroid GL10 – failure & review

Prologue

Some weeks ago I was looking for a present for my wife’s present. At first I considered getting her a polaroid camera but after giving it some thought (the only source for polaroid films is through http://the-impossible-project.com/ and that’s quite pricey) I decided to go for a modern alternative – a zero ink printer …

(Note that this review doesn’t go into the technical details you may or may not be looking for. It’s written from a plain usage perspective)

Polaroid GL10: Unboxing

So instead of grabbing some used polaroid camera from ebay I decided to get the polaroid GL10. For 130EUR you get mobile printer which prints to 7.6 x 10.2 cm (3×4 inch) via USB or Bluetooth. If your camera supports PictBridge you can connect it directly to your camera. Unpacking the box you get …

• The printer itself
• power supply
• zero ink paper package (10pcs)
• battery
• instruction leaflet (i refuse to call it a manual)

The first thing I was looking for was a CD with software/drivers. Checking the leaflet it turns out that I am supposed to go to polaroid.com to download the software there. I have to admit I hate that. Its not like I don’t have a 16mbit internet flatrate but when I spend 130EUR i just expect to have at hand to get started. The same applies for a mini-usb cable required to hook up the printer to a Mac or PC – not included. After going through some boxes of gadgets, dongles and cables I found the right USB cable and it was time to hook up the printer to my macbook and check it out..

Polaroid GL10: Software

After visiting the polaroid website it dawned on me that there are no drivers which leaves you with no other choice but using the Polaroid GL10 App for everything..

Now this is were things really start to fall apart. I don’t even know where I should begin. Lets just assume I want to print a couple of pictures of my newborn son: For that I have to use the “Add Images” button. So I pick some cute smiling picture. When I try to “add” more pictures after that it turns out the app discards whatever I had selected previously. Annoying.

Now lets print some picture. I add some file to the app library and click it:

The app displays the picture in some white frame. It doesn’t quite fit. There is no way to auto-zoom the picture. There is no way to auto-center the picture. There is nothing like a sticky grid to position the picture on. It all feels like walking over a frozen sea without ice skates. So there is no way to get a proper format filling print of that picture unless I just use the zoom in/out button. Not sure in what steps it zooms in or out. It doesn’t tell..

So apparently Polaroid and Lady Gaga (oh yes, I forgot to mention.. the whole product line is made in cooperation with Lady Gaga…) didn’t spend much thought on that. What they did come up with though is a selection of ‘effects’ (really just overlays) that range from silly to hideous. Below you see one of my favorites, the mindbogglingly fantastic”Heart Burst” effect. I could come up with more suitable names but I digress.

So I decide to not use any effect and print a picture. It looks okay. I’m not overwhelmed and after printing some more I find that sometimes the colors aren’t quite correct but at 130EUR I don’t expect miracles.

Polaroid GL10: Add effect to printer

After being more than underwhelmed by the application so far I start playing around and stumble over the “Add effect to printer” text on the top right. I click it and get a notification that the template has now been set on the printer. Hm. I look for a help menu. But that pops up a window with the message: “Help is not available for GL10”. Nice. It turns out that the next time I print something it will be printed with the downloaded effect applied automatically. I look everywhere for a reset feature. Power-cycling the printer doesn’t help, its probably stored on flash. I check the available effects again to see if there is a ‘default’ or ’empty’ effect. Nope. I have to create an empty/transparent png and add it to the effect library and then send that to the printer – WHAT THE **** ?

Polaroid GL10: Android App

I install the polaroid app from the android market. It comes as no surprise that the app isn’t a master piece either. I can’t remember the times it got stuck and I had to kill the app. Furthermore it doesn’t provide the ‘Add effect to printer’ feature. Imagine setting an effect on your GL10 and then selling it to someone who only wants to use it with his Android mobile. That would be… fun.

Its is worth noting however that there is one thing the Android app actually even does better than the desktop version. I uses the build in picture gallery which means I can access/browse my photos from picasa. It is annoying though that whenever I select a picture to print it downloads the image and stores it in a local collection.

Another thing that the android app does is scaling images properly. So I can actually get format filling prints without ugly white borders. Fantastic! If I want to rotate a picture i’m out of luck though. No can do. I can only rotate text that I added using the app. But at this point I had already decided that there is no way I’m keeping the GL10 anyway so I plan to use up the zero ink paper I had ordered with it and return it.

Easier said than done. Either the app crashes or the printer crashes. When the printer crashes power cycling doesn’t help. I have to reset it (Hold the ‘print-again’ button for  a few seconds). Sometimes it works right away and I get vertical stripes. And then, finally it just stops working altogether. I can pair with it but it won’t print anything. Not when connected to the Mac via USB either. But i’ve reached a point where I couldn’t care less. So I pack up and start writing this blog entry.

Polaroid GL10: Conclusions

I don’t get it. Maybe the fact that Polaroid is promoting this device with Lady Gaga should have been a clear warning signal which I foolishly chose to ignore. Who is this device for ? teenage lady gaga fans ? They can’t seriously think that anyone who is only in the least bit serious about photography would be satisfied by what they are offering. What I was looking for was a way for my wife to easily and quickly print pictures of our son. She doesn’t need the ‘Heart Burst’ or the ‘SnowFlake’ effect but it should at the very least be possible to get format filling prints without too much hassle.

PS: In case you are flabbergasted by my point of view because the GL10 and its accompanying applications work like a charm for you – be sure to let me now. But I doubt it.