One minute look back
The HP Sprocket Studio is a new version of the company’s line of portable photo printers. Instead of 2 x 3-inch wallet-sized prints, however, glossy 4 x 6-inch photos are spat out. That means you can get a frame-worthy photo just minutes after taking it on your mobile phone.
Sprocket Studio uses a method known as “dye sublimation” to transfer layers of color onto a medium. It’s a slower process than the technology used in standard inkjet printers, but the results are of better quality than what you would get from a regular printer.
To get started, you’ll need to download the HP Sprocket Companion App (available for both iOS and Android) on your smartphone. It has a number of editing functions that will make your printouts pop. During our testing, we found these editing features to be very useful, although some find them a bit cheesy.
Unlike the smaller sprockets, the studio must be plugged into a power source when used. Add the larger size to the equation, and it’s not as instantly portable as HP’s other instant printers – though you can use it on the go with an optional power bank (available in select regions) (although the power bank is available online was bad) at the time of writing this review.)
Price and availability
The HP Sprocket Studio is available now for $ 149.99 / AU $ 219 (approximately £ 115). An ink cartridge and 10 sheets of photo paper are also included in the box to get you started. Additional cartridges and print sheets sell together for $ 34.99 / £ 35.99 / AU $ 59, giving you an additional 80 sheets and two ink cartridges. That makes about 44c / 45p / 74c per print.
As with all printers, the running costs could certainly add up, and when compared to some other photo printers, the Sprocket Studio isn’t quite as good. For example, the Canon Selphy CP1300 is priced at $ 109.99 / £ 119.99 / AU $ 179. Canon’s extra ink and paper is $ 35.99 / £ 35.99 / AU $ 44.95 and includes 108 print sheets, which is a lower cost per print.
design
- Larger than previous sprockets
- Minimalistic design
- Requires power supply
The Sprocket Studio is much larger than the other printers in the Sprocket series. With a size of 169 x 273 x 68 mm, it has a larger footprint than the Sprocket Select with a size of 142 x 89 x 18 mm.
The printer is light gray and is referred to as “snow” by HP. It’s covered in dark green spots that remind you of a speckled egg and add a touch of character to it. Otherwise it looks very clean and polished.
There is a single power switch on the left side of the Sprocket Studio. On the back of the printer is a proprietary socket for the power cord that is about the size of a standard laptop charger and gives extra space to an already larger sprocket.
A glowing strip of light on the front indicates when the printer is on (you can choose your preferred color during setup) and turns red when problems arise, such as: B. Lack of paper or ink.
The only other standout feature is the paper tray sticking out of the printer body, giving the Sprocket Studio an odd, asymmetrical shape, although admittedly after a few uses it began to grow on us.
This simple physical design makes the Sprocket Studio incredibly easy to use, and there is a simplicity that continues in the app and when printing photos.
App control
- Easy to use app
- Multiple editing tools
- Creative filters and stickers
HP’s Sprocket Studio works through a Bluetooth connection to your phone. The Sprocket app controls the entire printing process. The app is very intuitive and easy to use and guides you step-by-step through the setup process – including installing the ink cartridge.
When connected, the app will show you any picture on your phone, including pictures from Instagram, Facebook, and Google Photos, when you connect to them through the HP Sprocket app. You can also group them according to the source folder of your images. If your phone supports RAW images, the app will show them too.
As mentioned earlier, there are a number of editing tools that you can use to tweak your image before you hit the proverbial print button. You can adjust the exposure to increase the brightness, tweak the color, add a preset filter or text and get so much creative license.
If you want to customize a little further, you can add frames, stickers, and even your own drawings. Adding your own personalized stickers is a unique idea, but it doesn’t always work that well in practice.
We found that the app often had trouble identifying a drawing, especially if the lines were thin. In fact, the app couldn’t pick up a drawing with a thicker marker either. We found it worked best with solid block colors. It would have been an excellent feature if it worked well, but there is a library of preset stickers to choose from to save you the hassle of drawing your own.
performance
- Uses dye sublimation process
- Slower than inkjet printers
- Good quality prints
In short, Sprocket Studio produces good quality photo prints. They are not perfect, but the details are well preserved and the colors are accurate. We say it’s not perfect because we noticed a faint vertical line on the right edge of our test prints.
On others, the dye appeared to have run a little horizontally, likely because it got caught in a speck of dust while printing – it’s definitely worth checking that your photo paper is free of small dust particles before you start printing. However, these are minor flaws that you will likely only notice with a critical eye.
When the smaller sprocket uses zero-ink (zinc) – a printing technology that eliminates ink and toner and instead uses colors embedded in the zinc paper – the studio prints with dye sublimation.
This is a relatively slow process as the paper goes through the machine layer by layer for each color – first yellow, then magenta, cyan and a clear top layer. According to HP, the print time is 61 seconds per print, but our tests have shown it to be slower, around 80 to 90 seconds from start to finish.
That doesn’t seem bad if you’re just printing a few snapshots at a time, but creating an album or collage can add a bit of time to that time frame.
The supplied photo paper comes with a perforated side on each short edge. The image is printed between the two, so you can see the end result immediately after printing without worrying about ink smudges. These blank edges can then be torn off, giving you a full 4×6 print with clean sides.
However, we found that this did not work perfectly. In all eight of our test prints, the sprocket started printing about 5mm above the perforations (although it ended right on the cue). This can prove to be a problem if important elements of your photo are around the edges of your composition.
judgment
Before the studio hit the market, the HP Sprocket family could only print smaller wallet-sized photos. The Studio allows you to print larger, better quality snapshots that are suitable for photo frames.
It’s a breeze to use, and the photo editing features available in the app add a personal touch to your smartphone camera roll. Creating custom stickers doesn’t work as well as we’d hoped, however, and the need for a slightly bulky power supply means this sprocket isn’t really an “go anywhere device” like the other HP instant printers. Still, getting high quality photo prints at home is fun.
Whether or not you think it’s affordable is a whole different matter. As with any printer, there are ongoing costs that you need to consider – more specifically, the cost of additional ink and paper. If the price of the printer itself (which only does one job – printing 4×6 photos) had been a little lower it would have been easier to recommend the Sprocket Studio.
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