The Fujifilm Link Wide Smartphone Printer is aimed at creators who want to bring their smartphone (or traditional camera) snaps to life. I’ve had our hands on a pre-production model and the Instax Link Wide app for a few weeks. Here are my initial thoughts.

The Fujifilm Link Wide Smartphone printer lets you easily print images taken with your phone, or images that have been transferred to your phone from your camera or computer. The prints are then instantly ready to be placed into a scrapbook, hung on a wall or shared with friends. The best part is that it’s affordable! Let’s take a quick look at it.

Editor’s note: We just want to state that this is not a final review of the Fujifilm Link Wide Smartphone Printer. This article contains an initial collection of thoughts on a pre-production model printer and application. Overall designs, issues, and specifications could be changed or fixed before final production units go on sale.

What you see here is likely what you’ll get should you buy the Link Wide printer. The printer is pretty compact. I would estimate that it weighs less than 1lb. It has a square design that measures roughly 5.5-by-5.5 inches and that’s 1.5-inches thick.

The body is made entirely from textured plastic. The printer has an off-white finish with some silver-painted accents. The power button, which sits on the top plate, is the only button on the printer. The power button lights up with multicolored LEDs. You’ll find the film exit slot on the front edge and a Micro USB power port on the back edge. The back panel has a single lever that’s used to open the door for the Instax wide film cartridge.

The overall design is nice and the build quality is good. I like the look and feel of the rippled texture that covers the body. The Fujifilm Link Wide Smartphone printer should easily hold up well to use around the home or office.

Using the Fujifilm Link Wide Printer and print quality

The Fujifilm Link Wide Smartphone printer is easy to use. To connect the printer to your phone you simply turn the printer on, open the Fujifilm Link Wide app (iOS and Android), and then hit connect a device. You can control some basic printer settings in the Link Wide app like print mode options (rich or natural), and auto power-off settings, for example. Still, there’s nothing to the printer itself.

Loading a film cartridge is easy. Simply pop open the back door, line up two yellow markers (one on the cartridge, one on the printer), and then close the door. You’re ready to print. You can either leave the printer laying flat, or you can stand it upright with the included stand.

The images that the printer delivers are of good quality. They contain lots of detail. The coloring does seem to be a little off, though. The images had magenta cast. In regards to battery life, I printed 50 images with the printer. When the last print finished the battery had depleted from 100% down to 50%. So, battery life is decent. Overall, the printer is easy to use and the image quality is what you’d expect.

The Fujiflm Link Wide app

The Fujifilm Link Wide app is intuitive. When you fire it up on your phone you’ll be given some quick instructions. You can use the app to print pictures you’ve taken with your phone, or images you have transferred to your phone from your camera or computer.

There are four modes within the app. Simple print, which offers a straightforward print. Editable Template Print, which offers templates you can put your images into and customize. The last two options are Collage, which lets you make Instax wide print collages with up to 16 pictures, and lastly Sketch, Edit and Print. The last option will let you use your phone’s camera to take a picture of an object or text that you want to overlay on one of your images.

There are plenty of ways you can customize and create fun images that you can then easily share. There’s no doubt that the levels of print customizations are where the value is located in this setup. The app can be used to apply some filters to your images. You can also apply Emoji stickers and custom text. You can even make small edits to your images as well (brightness, saturation, and contrast). When you’re ready to print, you hit the print icon. In about 30 seconds you’ll have your customized printed image.

First impressions

Link Wide Smartphone Printer
The Fujifilm Link Wide Smartphone Printer is upright in its stand.

My first impressions of the Fujifilm Link Wide Smartphone printer are good. The printer seems to be well made and should stand up to normal use just fine. The Link Wide app is intuitive and offers a lot of fun ways to customize images. I can imagine parents with young children will have a ton of fun with this printer. If you like to scrapbook or share memories with friends, you’ll likely enjoy it too. It costs just $149.95.

Overall, the Fujifilm Link Wide Smartphone printer seems to be a solid device that will get the masses printing their favorite memories with friends and loved ones again. So, keep your eyes peeled for our full review of a final production unit. However, if you want more information, you can head over to the official Fujifilm website.