At a Glance
Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Chunky, colourful design
- Super-simple
- Bright, vivid photos
Cons
- Can’t turn off flash
- Questionable build quality
- Poor value
Our Verdict
The Instax SQ1 is a simple, solid, square format Instax camera that would be an absolute winner at £99/$99 – but at this price you’re better off buying the older SQ6.
Best Prices Today: Instax Square SQ1
The Instax Square SQ1 is the company’s third take on a square-format camera, and its simplest yet. Echoing the design of the extraordinarily popular Mini 9 and new Mini 11 cameras, it boasts a colourful, chunky design and stripped-back controls that should immediately appeal to kids or anyone who wants a dead simple point-and-shoot instant camera.
There’s a catch though – the slightly older SQ6 is still available. It has all the same features – and then some – and is easy to find for cheaper than the SQ1. That means the new SQ1 is only the better buy if you can’t resist the pastel colours, or are willing to pay more to get simpler controls.
Design and build
Since it’s arguably the main differentiator between the two similarly prices square Instax models, let’s start with how the SQ1 looks.
Echoing after the Mini 9 and Mini 11, Instax has aimed firmly for a friendly aesthetic that makes the SQ1 feel more like a toy than a camera. It’s chunky and plasticky and comes in a pastel blue, a warm orange, or a simple white.
Everything about it feels over-sized and approachable, from the rounded, textured palm grip to the large flash module on the front.
In a smart bit of economical design, there’s only a single button on the whole camera: the shutter. Instead of a power button, you twist the lens out to turn the camera on, which is both super-simple and charmingly evocative of pulling focus on a regular camera.
On the back you’ll find the small viewfinder, battery compartment, a shot counter, and the hatch through which you load film packs – a quick and easy process.
I love the look of the SQ1, which is charming in its simplicity, but build quality leaves something to be desired. The battery compartment door is held on by the tiniest plastic latch known to man, so expect to be taping this shut before long. When carried in a bag the lens all too easily twists just enough to turn the camera on and drain its battery, and after a week or two of testing there’s already an odd sort of rattle inside the camera that I don’t entirely trust.
Photos and features
The Instax SQ1 shoots on Instax’s square format prints – as opposed to the mini and wide format paper used on other Instax cameras.
Knowingly designed to evoke the classic Polaroid format, Instax square prints are actually slightly smaller than real Polaroids – a welcome move which helps keeps the cameras themselves a little more portable.
Instax sells both colour and monochrome square film, both of which work in the SQ1, but beyond that you don’t get many options. There are no custom shooting modes, no complex options – you can’t even turn the flash off. You basically just point, and shoot.
I lie a little – there are two modes to pick between, as if you keep twisting the lens you’ll activate selfie mode. This is, well, for selfies, with a small mirror on the front to help you line yourself up in the shot. It’s also the mode you want to use for close-ups and macro photography, with a slightly shorter focal distance than the regular option.
Contrast this to the otherwise similar SQ6, which lets you toggle flash on or off, activate dedicated landscape and macro modes, adjust exposure, and even take double exposure shots.
In fairness, most people won’t want, or need, all those extra options, and there are clear benefits to the simple approach of the SQ1.
In any case, the simplicity of the design doesn’t get in the way of photo quality. As with any instant camera, you’ll need fairly bright light to get good results – don’t count on that flash to help too much – and there are no guarantees that you’ll be a fan of every print you get out of it.
Still, there’s a bright, vivid quality to Instax shots that you won’t find with many rival devices, which makes prints feel punchy and modern despite the format.
As for battery, the SQ1 isn’t rechargeable, but includes a pair of CR2 batteries, which Fujifilm estimates should last for 300 shots.
Value for money
And then there’s the price. At £120 / $120 , the SQ1 feels steep, and that’s before you factor in the cost of film, which averages at £1/$1 per shot .
Sure, the SQ1 looks the part, and it’s great to see Instax go back to basics with a simple, accessible square shooter. But when Instax’s own older camera offers more features for less money, it’s hard to see this new model as anything other than bad value – and that’s before you even compare it to the other best instant cameras out there.
Verdict
The Instax SQ1 is a simple, solid, square format Instax camera that would be an absolute winner at £99/$99.
As it is though, if you want to shoot square Instax film then you’re better off saving money with the SQ6 unless you’re either absolutely set on the SQ1’s pastel hues, or really don’t think you can handle more than one button at a time.
Best Prices Today: Instax Square SQ1
Author: Dominic Preston, Contributor, Tech Advisor
Previously Tech Advisor’s Deputy Editor, Dom covers everything that runs on electricity, from phones and laptops to wearables, audio, gaming, smart home, and streaming.
Recent stories by Dominic Preston:
- Instax Square SQ40 review
- Kodak Step Instant Camera review
- Kodak Step Instant Printer review
At a Glance
Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Portable design
- Affordable
- Easy to use
Cons
- A few bugs in the app
- Charges via Micro-USB
Our Verdict
The Kodak Step Printer is a reliable, affordable instant photo printer. It doesn’t do anything its rivals don’t, but it costs less and has few flaws to undermine its appeal.
Best Prices Today: Kodak Step Instant Printer
The Kodak Step Instant Printer – not to be confused with the similarly named Kodak Step Instant Camera – is a cheap and cheerful Zink printer that can connect to your phone to print your favourite shots on compact sticky-backed Zink prints.
There are plenty of other similar Zink printers out there, and the Kodak Step doesn’t do anything revolutionary that the rest don’t. But it’s cheap, compact, and gives you plenty of easy editing options – making this one of the better options in a crowded field.
Design and build
- Simple plastic design
- Range of cheery colours
- Compact
Kodak has kept things simple with the Step printer.
This is a compact plastic brick, small enough to slip into a pocket or handbag. Available in white, black, blue, or pink, there are few flourishes to the design outside of your choice of colour.
The only thing that really stands out is a small black-and-yellow stripe on either end. This is just a sticker though – which on the upside means you can peel it off if you’re not a fan, but unfortunately means it’s also likely to peel itself off with sufficient wear and tear.
There are two LEDs for power and charging, one button to turn the printer off and on, and that’s honestly about it. When you want to load paper to print, you simply slide the back of the body off and load in the prints – it’s simple, quick, and pretty difficult to get wrong.
App and features
- Easy to pair with free smartphone app
- Edit photos and create collages
- A little buggy
Almost everything you do with the Kodak Step is controlled through the free app, available on iOS or Android. You can set up an account with Kodak, but this is optional – everything works fine without one.
The first step is pairing the printer to the app, but this is easy enough. They connect over Bluetooth, and in less than a minute I had the app connected to the printer and ready to go.
Images can be selected from your device’s gallery, or you can connect the app to your Facebook, Instagram, or Google photo libraries for more options.
Once you pick an image, there’s a wealth of options. You can just print it as it, either in landscape or portrait format, with the option to either print the full image with a border or crop it in if it’s not in the exact aspect ratio of the Zink prints (most of your photos won’t be).
But you can also edit images. This can be as simple as applying an Instagram-style filter, or you can get more complex and tweak brightness, hue, or colour temperature, or add on colourful frames, stickers, text, or drawings. You can also create collages with multiple photos in one print – but bear in mind that due to the size of the paper, each image may end up pretty tiny.
I’ve mostly been impressed with the Kodak Step Prints app, which is well laid out – and far simpler to use than its strangely laborious step-by-step tutorial process would suggest.
That said, it’s not perfect. For one there are some odd choices, like the fact that the most detailed set of image hue sliders appear only on the ‘Print preview’ page of the app – and not, as you’d expect, in the ‘Edit photo’ section.
There are bugs to sort out too. The app has a tendency to freeze at times, especially when loading a photo to edit. The ‘Print preview’ brightness slider also seems to be entirely broken, raising brightness drastically if you so much as tap on the bar, with no option to lower it below the image’s starting point.
Print quality
- Small 2×3” Zink prints
- Sticky-backed
- Decent detail and colour
The Kodak Step prints onto ink-free Zink prints – a popular format for instant printers and cameras in recent years.
The key benefits to Zink are that the prints themselves are cheap and quick to process, the printer doesn’t need ink cartridges, and that each print is actually sticky-backed – so you can peel off the back layer and turn any photo print into a sticker.
There are two real downsides. One is size – at 2×3”, Zink prints are tiny. That’s part of why the printer itself is so portable of course, so it’s not all bad. But still, these are dinky, and too small to really display anywhere – they’re better suited to making collages or tucking into a wallet.
The bigger concern is quality. This isn’t bad by Zink standards, preserving a fair amount of detail from images and printing at a respectable colour range. Still, a little is lost from every photo, and there’s none of the charm or style you’ll find on an instant film printer like the Instax Mini Link .
Battery life
- Battery for up to 25 prints
- Charges via Micro-USB
On a full charge, the Kodak Step can apparently print up to 25 prints – I didn’t have that many to test with so can’t confirm, but it did happily make it through a full pack of Zink paper, with lots of standby time, without complaint.
The one small disappointment is that when it comes to charging, you have to use a Micro-USB cable. This is getting to be a pretty old charging standard now, and it’s plausible that you won’t really own or use any other Micro-USB products at this point.
Kodak does include a cable for you to plug into any existing USB charger, but still – it’s a bit annoying that this couldn’t use the more recent and universal USB-C standard.
Price and availability
Zink paper is relatively affordable too, though still costs around 50p/50c per sheet – less than Instax prints, but enough that you won’t want to burn through prints with abandon.
Make sure to check out our guide to the best instant printers to see how the competition stack up, or the best instant cameras if you want to take photos rather than just print them (many do both).
Verdict
The Kodak Step Printer is hardly a reinvention of the instant printer, but it’s a good example of the form.
It’s small, compact, and feels durable, with decent battery life and an easy print process. The associated app is simple too, with quick pairing and a range of options to alter your images – though I did encounter a couple of bugs and issues along the way.
Best of all, at the time of writing this runs a little cheaper than most of its rivals while doing fundamentally the same thing – enough to make it an easy option to recommend.
Best Prices Today: Kodak Step Instant Printer
Author: Dominic Preston, Contributor, Tech Advisor
Previously Tech Advisor’s Deputy Editor, Dom covers everything that runs on electricity, from phones and laptops to wearables, audio, gaming, smart home, and streaming.
Recent stories by Dominic Preston:
- Instax Square SQ40 review
- Kodak Step Instant Camera review
- Instax Square SQ1 review
