Home > Consumer Reviews > Polaroid P-500IR Digital Photo Printer

What's not on the web site, and which I discovered only after buying it and opening it and some paper: while any size Compact Flash card will apparently work, this printer will accept only 32 meg Smart Media cards and smaller. Since I have (and need!) a 128 meg card for my Fuji 4700, the printer is useless to me--all I get is a card error message. It's a pity, because the price is right & it seems like a delightful toy.

This printer does not work with 64MB and 128MB Smart Media cards. I verified this on the Polaroid website (deeply buried, of course!)

After a day of taking digital photos, I always have to rush home and print them. Now that slight problem is being solved with instant printers! With Polaroid's brand name and cheap price on this printer, I had to get it and try it.

And wow, I'm impressed. This package comes with everything you need to get started! Even an extra adapter and film so you can print right out of the box. The setup is easy and the instructions are made so you can stick it on the printer if you forget. What's great is that the printer accepts BOTH CF and SM cards. Now you can give photos away to people and they will be surprised at how you printed them so fast and because the picture source is from a digital camera you can select what photos you wanted printed and how many times.

The quality of the photos are superb just like those instant Polaroids everyone used to have, this prints a smaller rectangular verison with the photo about the size of a credit card; great wallet prints! The coloring of the film however seems to be a bit more on the magenta side if you dont have long-distance flash. Other than that, the printer itself requires no batteries and has a convenient strap so you can carry it everywhere you go. The printer is shaped nicely you can hold in your hand and the weight is light enough to carry with your digital camera.

I would definitely recommend getting this product! You can't find a better deal with the rebate offer!

For the price, size and quality its more novelty than serious printer, but its a good sort of novelty.

Pictures are small, but are on par with any other polaroid style camera. Good for scrapbooking, or checking images off LCD for digicams etc.

I bought mine in the hope it'd work with my P800 cell phones infrared, it didn't. Works fine with my nikon coolpix though.

The manual in mine says shoulderstrap included, however on the box it says it isn't,and it wasn't, not really a big deal though.

Haven't had a chance to see how easy it is to pickup film yet, but given its compatible with the joycam it should be reasonable easy.

The interface is ok, its a little terse but once you see where they were going its perfectly acceptable.

Prints come out fast, take a little while to appear.

Counting the rebate, and the included 10-photo film pack, you can't beat the price!
Keep in mind:
- Actual picture size is approx. 2.8 x 2.1 inches (tiny)
- Printing cost is around 90 cents per little photo. Typical of Polaroid.
- The colors on mine are a little red-shifted
Other than that, it is a great little photo printer. Perfect for kids.
Didn't experience any paper jams (yet).