When Dell gave the Wasabi PZ310 Mobile Printer its distinctive name, it clearly wanted to convey the none-too-subtle message that it's hot. The name virtually begged for bad puns from reviewers who debated whether the printer was hot or not. Personally, I wish the folks at Dell had named it the Salsa, which would give me the choice of branding it mild, medium, or hot, in which case I'd call it medium.
The PZ310 is the second printer available in the U.S. to use ZINK technology. The first was the Polaroid Pogo Instant Mobile Printer. These two are the first examples of a really new category of printer, clearly separate from traditional small-format dedicated photo printers.
Small-format photo printers—like the Editors' Choice Epson Picture Mate Dash for example—are typically designed to print on a maximum of either 4-by-6 or 5-by-7 paper, and they are aimed at people who want to print photos at home that at least match drugstore-level photo quality. The Dell and Polaroid printers are limited to 2-by-3-inch photos and are aimed at anyone who wants the freedom to print pictures from their cameras and camera phones anywhere and anytime. Some suggest that the category will be particularly popular with teenagers, but I'd argue that these printers will appeal to gadget freaks of any age.
For both small-format printers and the new category of instant digital printers, the paper size determines how small the printer can be. The Picture Mate Dash, for example, is about the size of a lunch box and weighs about 5 pounds. Some printers in the category are a little smaller and lighter, but all weigh at least 2 or 3 pounds. In general, these small-format printers are small and light enough to be reasonably portable so that you can occasionally carry them to print pictures at special events. But you definitely wouldn't want to carry them with you all the time.
The instant digital printers, by difference, are much smaller and weigh only a few ounces each, so you can carry them with you virtually all the time—much like a cell phone. In fact, they are very pretty much designed as companions to camera phones and digital cameras. Polaroid, the inventor of the classic instant camera, also draws the parallel to its roots, pointing out that its ZINK-based printer offers the same functionality for digital photos as its film-based instant camera did for analog photos.
The same is true of the Dell printer. You can take a picture, print it, and have it to look at, all in about 60 seconds. In short, if you miss your old Polaroid film-based instant-photo camera, you can recapture much the same experience with either the Dell or Polaroid ZINK-based printer.
When you are second to market with a new technology, as is Dell in this case, it helps to bring something new to the table so that you can stand out from the original. The Wasabi doesn't really do this—in fact, it's nearly identical in almost every way. Though not quite twins, the two are certainly close cousins.
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