Instant photo brand Polaroid is back with imaging in South Africa. A range of instant cameras and printers are now available, distributed by Premium Brand Distributors, currently responsible for Nikon locally.  

One of the first instant cameras available to consumers is the Polaroid Snap Touch, a quite intriguing prospect seeing that it includes both a 13 MP sensor and what Polaroid calls a zero ink printer for physical photos. If there is one market that smartphone cameras completely destroyed, it’s the compact camera market. But the Snap Touch, with its 10x optical zoom, 3.5" touchscreen, image filters, selfie mirror and pop-up flash, could just find a way into people’s pockets because of its ability to also print.

The Snap Touch produces 5 x 7.6 cm photos without any on-board ink, rather by heating dye crystals on the photopaper. Bluetooth allows it to connect to iOS and Android devices to share pics, or print images from those.

Another Polaroid product is a mobile printer, the Zip, which comes in at only 186 g. Printing 5 x 7.6 cm photos in less than 60 seconds, it connects to your phone via Bluetooth and NFC. Much like the Snap Touch there is also no printer cartridges involved. With its 500 mAh battery, you can print approximately 25 photos per charge.

The retail price in South Africa for the Snap Touch is in the region of R3 400, and for the Zip about R2 500. For both you also need Polaroid photo paper, which comes in at R250 for 20 sheets.