Tomy KiiPix

Andy Westlake tries a quirky printer that works with your smartphone

Tomy isn’t a name we’d normally expect to be featuring on these pages: the Japanese firm is best known as a maker of children’s toys. But recently it introduced an ingeniously simple device for printing photos from your smartphone, called KiiPix, which costs just £40. Essentially, it’s a simple camera that takes photographs of your phone’s screen onto Fujifilm Instax Mini instant film, with the print ejected after exposure using a hand-powered crank. As a result, it doesn’t need an app to be installed on your phone, or a Wi- Fi connection, or even a battery.

In principle KiiPix should work with any screen size, with the phone placed face- down onto a mask that defines the print area, using an 8.6x5.4cm opening. In practice, this is a good match to smartphones with 4.7in screens, but means some cropping of the image with the current crop of larger-screen flagship devices, while small-screen phones won’t quite fill the full print area. When not in use, KiiPix folds down to a 14.3x11.2x5.3cm package, with the print mask neatly stored inside.

Overall, KiiPix is extremely simple to use. First select an image on your phone, then place it screen- down onto the mask. There’s a minor art to mounting the combination correctly onto the device’s side-arms, but once you’ve worked it out, it’s easy enough. Then just press the shutter button, and eject the print. Tomy recommends setting your phone’s screen brightness to maximum, to make sure the print is correctly exposed. There’s no interlock between the shutter and the winder, which means you could play with multiple exposures if you wanted, using the screen brightness to balance the images.

Print quality is best described as ‘interesting’. In typical Instax fashion, colours are more muted than we’ve come to expect from modern digital images. Technically, I could identify all kinds of flaws, including colour casts in the highlights, horizontal streaking attributable to uneven development, and some additional corner darkening. The result is a kind of Lomo- esque unpredictability to how the prints turn out, but despite this, I really rather like them.

Verdict

Let’s be clear – the KiiPix is no competitor to Fujifilm’s Wi- Fi based Instax Share SP series of smartphone printers, and if you want technically accurate prints, you should buy one of those instead. But then again, it’s a fraction of the price, and the prints it produces have an undeniable low- fi charm. It’s far from perfect, but it’s still a whole lot of fun.

Sticky strips These hold your phone in place on the masking frame to ensure you get the desired composition. Mirror A tiny mirror beside the lens lets you check everything looks OK before producing a print.

Film compartment The film pack is inserted through a hinged door on the base. A counter beside it keeps track of how many prints are left. Shutter A large push-down plastic lever on the side of the device is used to make an exposure.