Pickwoo children’s camera with thermal printer

It so hap­pened that my fam­i­ly (my wife and I) is con­nect­ed with pho­tog­ra­phy and with the advent of a child, my daugh­ter began to take the ini­tia­tive in this mat­ter as well. At the moment, the child is 4.5 years old and the desire to shoot is grow­ing at a tremen­dous speed. She likes to take pic­tures with our mobile phones, but it’s still too ear­ly for a child to have her own phone, so it was log­i­cal to give her a gift in the form of her own cam­era.

First, the search stopped at a mod­el with ears and a hare face, and then they found a cam­era with instant print­ing. Of course, this is not Polaroid, because print­ing takes place in B / W on paper from the cash ter­mi­nal, but still.
So, the choice was from blue and pink options, since I have a daugh­ter, the col­or is nat­u­ral­ly pink. Arrived sur­pris­ing­ly quick­ly, about 2.5 weeks.

We open the pack­age and get acquaint­ed with the con­tents:

The kit comes with:

• cam­era
• strap
• charg­ing cable
• instruc­tion
• paper for print­ing (3pcs)

Paper 57mm wide, check rib­bons are suit­able for replace­ment. The cost per coil is about 30 rubles in a sta­tionery store.

Char­ac­ter­is­tics:

• Dimen­sions: 129*10*58mm
• Weight: 250 g
• Dis­play: 2.4″ 320*240
• Pho­to res­o­lu­tion: 4032 * 2880px (max­i­mum)
• Video res­o­lu­tion: 1920*1080 (max­i­mum)
• Max­i­mum Mem­o­ry: 4GB
• Bat­tery: 1200mAh
• Charg­ing time: 2–3 hours
• Speak­er: 8Ω 1W
• Roll Width: 57mm

The cam­era itself has a clas­sic appear­ance, but in chil­dren’s per­for­mance. The col­or scheme is two-tone. In the open spaces, Ali found a sim­i­lar cam­era, but with­out ears and a peep­hole, it looks ridicu­lous and far from child­ish.
The front has a speak­er grille and a paper com­part­ment. On the back is a 2.4″ dis­play and con­trols. The dis­play is not the bright­est and in the sun it forces you to cov­er it with your hand to see the frame being shot.

Since we have a typ­i­cal cam­era and an appro­pri­ate grip, rub­ber inserts are pro­vid­ed on the sides. Under the right insert is a microUSB con­nec­tor for charg­ing and a microSD slot for a mem­o­ry card. The cam­era comes with a 4GB card from Kingston.
On the bot­tom of the case there is a stick­er with the mod­el name and pow­er para­me­ters (5V2A).

A fea­ture of the cam­era is the viewfind­er swiv­el mech­a­nism, if desired, you can turn the cam­era towards your­self and take a por­trait.

The con­trols are a lit­tle over­loaded, but the child quick­ly fig­ured out what was what. So,

• OK — action selec­tion / “shut­ter release”
• arrows ↑↓ — move through the menu
• M — selec­tion of pre­set masks (20 pieces)
• gallery icon — view footage
• / — switch­ing pho­to / video
• ← — undo the last action
• ON/OFF — enable/disable ther­mal print­er oper­a­tion

There are about 20 pre­set masks, there are both full-fledged masks and indi­vid­ual ani­mals that are sim­ply super­im­posed on the frame.

The set­tings menu allows you to make basic set­tings, and go to the pre-installed game (snake). The max­i­mum pho­to res­o­lu­tion is 12MP, video is 1080p.
Trans­la­tion into Russ­ian is lame, but does not cause trou­ble.

When view­ing the footage, you can send any of the frames to print. To do this, just press the OK but­ton and select “print” (pro­vid­ed that the print­er oper­a­tion slid­er is in the ON posi­tion).

Con­sid­er the paper tray. It opens quite ele­men­tary, for this spe­cial grooves are pro­vid­ed. The flip cov­er has a rolling roller that press­es the paper. To tear off the paper, small knives are pro­vid­ed in the upper part of the case.

Before start­ing work, we install a paper spool, tuck­ing it under the roller so that part of the paper sticks out and you can pro­ceed to print­ing.

The print­ing process itself is quite fast (about 10 sec­onds per frame), at the end it is nec­es­sary to tear off the result­ing pho­to using the same knives in the upper part.

The image qual­i­ty (with­out print­ing) is quite good for such a device, and with the right com­po­si­tion and expo­sure of the frame, you can get a pleas­ing result. Frame res­o­lu­tion 4032*2880px. Focus fixed.
The process of pho­tograph­ing with instant print­ing makes the child incred­i­bly hap­py, and the way my daugh­ter sees and builds the frame makes me hap­py.

Look at the shots below, they are com­plete­ly tak­en by my daugh­ter at 4.5 years old.

Well, here’s my test shot:

The size of the received frame is 83*43mm. The length of the coil is 20 meters. In the­o­ry, one roll should be enough for 154 pho­tographs. In the first days, my daugh­ter print­ed 2/3 of the roll, and the per­cent­age of charge (bat­tery capac­i­ty 1200mAh) prob­a­bly dropped by half, but the cam­era has not yet been charged.

UPD. When the bat­tery lev­el is low, images are print­ed with streaks. After charg­ing the cam­era, this fea­ture is not observed.

Ver­dict. The Pick­woo chil­dren’s cam­era has a nice per­for­mance, a rotat­ing cam­era, good pic­ture qual­i­ty and an instant image print­ing func­tion. To say that the child was sat­is­fied is to say noth­ing.
Yes, the menu is a lit­tle con­fus­ing and you have to prompt for basic con­trols, but oth­er­wise it’s a pret­ty good device that works flaw­less­ly. Glitch­es dur­ing oper­a­tion (a lit­tle more than a week) are not observed, pho­tos are reg­u­lar­ly record­ed on a mem­o­ry card, and reels of paper run out at the speed of light.
So, if your child is inter­est­ed in the process of pho­tograph­ing, then a cam­era with an instant print func­tion will be a great gift!