Portable Photo Booth — Snap & Print

Long story short from Michael Hsu's review in yesterday's Wall Street Journal: "The Polaroid Z2300 — a digital camera that prints 2x3-inch photographs — reminds you how instantly gratifying it can be to hold an actual snapshot in your hand."

Excerpts from the review below.

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The Z2300, which goes on sale Saturday, looks like a digital camera circa 1998. It's thicker (1.4 inches) and wider (4.6 inches) than most models these days, and it weighs a relatively hefty 10 ounces. But while the Z2300 may be chunky for a 10-megapixel camera, it's tiny for a portable printer. (The Z2300 can print photos that it's taken, of course, but also those that you load onto an SD memory card.)

Like earlier generation Polaroids, the Z2300 has no ink cartridges to replace, and it offers the option of printing with the iconic white Polaroid border that somehow makes everything more charming. It can render black-and-white or color-tinted photos for the vintage effect that's all the rage online these days. And it even records video, with sound to boot.

The digital side of the Z2300 also offers a few handy conveniences that older instant cameras lacked: You can review and crop a photo before printing it (helpful, since the paper for each print costs about 50 cents). It's possible to print multiple copies (one for everyone in a group shot, for example).

But the Z2300's neatest trick is how easy it makes letting memories, which might otherwise languish on a hard drive, see the light of day. A peel-off back turns each print into a photo-sticker.

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White or Black: $159.99.