Polaroid's fun instant camera gives you a more intimate way of making memories

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AmazonThe smartphone has all but killed the point-and-shoot camera. At a time where most photos exist to be shared over the web, it makes sense to remove any extra steps between taking a photo and posting it online. It especially makes sense when the pictures you can take with today’s smartphones are, at the least, comparable in quality to those you’d get paying for a basic, separate shooter.

However, no matter how convenient that may be, there’s a sort of intimacy that’s lost when all of your photos live on a screen. At least, that’s the argument presented by the Polaroid Snap, a modern reboot of the Polaroid instant cameras that immediately printed shots and permeated pop culture along the way. But while its appeal is very clearly rooted in nostalgia, the Snap does enough to be a fun and legitimately distinct alternative to capturing moments with a smartphone.

Like those Polaroids of years ago, the Snap’s big hook is that it prints physical copies of your photos soon after they’re taken. It’s not “instant,” as its name suggests, but it usually takes less than a half minute for each one to churn out. The pics are all 2x3”, which isn’t huge, but well-sized for a wallet or scrapbook.

The photos themselves are composed of Zink paper, an ink-free material that comes out dry and stays smudge-proof as a result. It comes with adhesive on its back, too, so if you’ve ever wanted to adorn your desk (or just annoy your friends) with little photo booth style stickers, here’s your chance. A 20-pack of Zink paper goes for $10, while a 50-pack goes for $25 — not super expensive in the grand scheme of things.

Being able to physically hold your memories is the selling point here, but it doesn’t hurt that the Snap also supports up to 32GB microSD cards. That means any shots you take without Zink loaded aren’t lost in time, and are still shareable in the new old-fashioned way. Just know that the camera does all this automatically, so if you don’t want a physical copy printed, you can’t equip the paper in the first place.

AmazonAs you might expect from a cheap shooter like this, the Snap’s photo quality isn’t fantastic. Colors can look a bit off, and the 10-megapixel sensor doesn’t pick up tons of detail. The built-in viewfinder can be finicky, too.

It’s far from unusable, however, and if the lo-fi look is ever going to work, it’ll be on something this fueled by the past. All three of its shooting modes — standard, black and white, and a washed-out “vintage” mode — give it, perhaps inadvertently, something akin to the 80s-style feel its predecessors used to put out. That works here.

The Snap is definitely a niche product. Enthusiasts should still look to a DSLR or mirrorless cam, and casual Instagram users will still be fine with their phones. But there’s room for cameras that exist to be fun, and that’s what the Snap is. Keep in mind that a new model is coming at the end of the year, but if you’d like to make the act of photo taking a little more personal, the Snap is a relatively affordable way to do so.

Polaroid Snap Instant Digital Camera, $99.99, available at Amazon.