HP Sprocket Select Review

Jul 21, 2023

The newest pocket printer in HP's Sprocket line, the Sprocket Select ($149.99) is a compact and convenient gadget for printing wallet-size photos from a smartphone or tablet. The Select can fit into your pocket, and it connects to an iOS or Android device via Bluetooth. The Select's prints are slightly larger than those of the Editors' Choice HP Sprocket 2nd Edition while maintaining that product's good print quality, and it supplants that model as our new top pick in its class. Just know that (like other, similar models) the per-print cost remains high, and the Sprocket still only supports printing from a mobile device via Bluetooth.

The Sprocket Select joins the Sprocket 2nd Edition and the newly released Sprocket Studio (which we're also in the process of reviewing) in HP's Sprocket portfolio, with each product geared to a slightly different use case.

According to HP, the Sprocket printers as a whole appeal to a younger crowd (60 percent of Sprocket users are under 25, says the company), and overwhelmingly women (87 percent). The original Sprocket (now in its second generation), with its tiny prints, is geared to the youngest group (Gen Z), while the Sprocket Select targets millennials interested in sharing and cataloguing experiences, with its larger print size and an assortment of journals, albums, memory books, frames, and stickers offered as accessories. The Sprocket Studio, with its relatively large (4-by-6-inch) print size, is geared to older millennials who are into preserving and gifting memories, whether framed photos, albums, or scrapbooks.

That's a lot of assumptions about the traits of age groups, if you ask me, but the Select should have appeal across most of them for other reasons. For starters, it's small: Rectangular with gently rounded corners, the body measures just 0.7 by 3.5 by 5.7 inches (HWD) and weighs about 6 ounces. It's slightly longer and wider than the HP Sprocket 2nd Edition but not as tall. It'll fit in almost any day bag or purse, no trouble.

Also appealing across generations? It's eco-friendly, made from more than 50 percent recycled plastic (by weight). The model I tested is silver-gray; a light-green version is also available. A built-in rechargable battery is good for printing about 30 photos per charge.

On the side of the Sprocket Select is the power on/off button, the printer's only physical control. Next to it is a micro-USB Type-B port for charging the device. (A cable is included.) A battery-status LED glows orange when the device is in need of charging, green when it's fully charged, and red when there is an error.

At one end of the Sprocket Select is a slot from which the photo prints emerge. Above that is an indicator light that glows steadily when the printer is on and ready to receive a job. It blinks occasionally when a print job is in progress, or orange when there's a paper-feed issue.

This is a resolutely wireless printer. The connectivity is limited to Bluetooth, like the other Sprocket printers we have looked at, as well as the Canon Ivy Mini Photo Printer. The Kodak Mini 2 HD Instant Photo Printer, in contrast, supports many more wireless protocols: Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct, and Near Field Communication (NFC). The Sprocket Select can connect to an iOS- or Android-based smartphone or tablet, and printing is controlled through the HP Sprocket app, downloadable from the iTunes App Store or Google Play.

When setting up, you first must pair your mobile device to the Sprocket via Bluetooth. Then you launch the HP Sprocket app. When connecting the printer for the first time, you'll be guided through the process of powering the printer, installing paper (which I'll get to in detail below), and connecting.

The Sprocket Select uses Zink, short for Zero Ink, a special kind of paper that incorporates its own "ink" (in the most generic sense) embedded in the paper as clear dye crystals. The printer creates an image by using heat to activate the crystals to minutely varying degrees, so they'll show color. Zink paper is available only in a limited range of sizes, and the Sprocket Select exclusively uses 2.3-by-3.4-inch sheets—the same size that's used with the HP Sprocket Plus—with a peel-off sticky back. HP sells the paper at $12.99 per pack of 20 sheets (containing two packets of 10), which works out to 65 cents a print.

To load paper, you hold the base of the printer in one hand and gently pull up on the lid, which is magnetically attached to the bottom, until it pops off. You open one of the 10-sheet packets of paper (each is topped by an orange calibration sheet) and place the pack—with the writing on the calibration sheet and the paper facing down—into the 10-sheet input tray built into the base. Make sure that the paper is properly seated, reattach the lid, and you're ready to print.

To print a photo with the Sprocket Select, you open the Sprocket app and choose one of your photo streams: Gallery (your device's photo stream), Instagram, Facebook, or Google Photos. (The first time you access one of the social accounts, you must enter your login information, and then it's saved automatically.) Whichever photo stream you're working from, you can toggle between displaying the images in an Instagram-like grid or one at a time in a column.

Tapping an image displays it, portrait-style, with a counter at the bottom. You use that to set the number of copies to print by tapping the plus or minus symbol there. You can also switch from this Copies mode to the app's Tiles mode. Tiling splits the image into either four or nine panels, each of which you can print separately; the components can later be assembled into a larger composite and mounted in a journal, or on a photo wall, with the aid of the sticky-back Zink paper.

The Sprocket Select app offers a few other extras. You can edit photos from within the app, and add "stickers" (prebaked, overlaid designs) and other flourishes. More intriguing, if gimmicky, is a feature called Reveal. When you scan a print that was made with Reveal enabled, then view the print through your phone's camera from the Sprocket app, it will reveal information such as a thumbnail grid of photos you took at around the same time. It's a spin on augmented reality (AR).

Another AR-type feature in the app works with video content. You can print out a frame from a video you record; when you (or someone else who has access to the video) scans the print with the Sprocket app, the video will play. It's not quite as sophisticated, however, as the AR functionality found in the similar Lifeprint Hyperphoto printers, in which the video is resident on Lifeprint's own cloud-based social network, making it much easier for third parties to access.

I timed the Sprocket Select at an average of 1 minute and 16 seconds per 2.3-by-3.4-inch print, which is on the slow side for a pocket photo printer. The HP Sprocket Plus, which uses the same size of paper as the Sprocket Select, averaged 58 seconds per print in our testing, while the HP Sprocket 2nd Edition took 39 seconds to print each 2-by-3-inch photo. Even the Kodak Mini 2 HD I mentioned earlier, which is a dye-sublimation printer that prints each photo in four passes, one color at a time, averaged a barely slower 1 minute and 20 seconds for each 2-by-3.4-inch print.

Compensating in part for the ponderous printing, though, the print quality for the Sprocket Select is good, the best I have seen in a Zink-based printer and a step above what I saw from the original HP Sprocket Photo Printer. HP has claimed improved photo quality for the Sprocket Select, and my colleague William Harrel noted substantial improvements in the print quality when he reviewed the HP Sprocket 2nd Edition in late 2018.

That said, based on my test prints with the Select, there is still some room for improvement. Colors could have been bolder in a few prints, while I noticed banding (a regular pattern of faint striations) in a couple more. But HP has upped the print quality of its Zink-based offerings over the past year or so, to be sure.

If you want to print small snapshots exclusively from your phone or tablet—whether from the device's photo albums or your own social media accounts—the HP Sprocket Select is a highly portable, convenient, and appealing choice. In addition to printing from your Android or iOS device's photo gallery, the Sprocket Select adds easy integration to Facebook, Google Photos, and Instagram to the mix.

Its print quality is among the best of the Zink-based printers that we've encountered, similar to the HP Sprocket 2nd Edition, and it makes 30 percent larger prints than that Editors' Choice model. It's our latest Editors' Choice pocket photo printer, though we'd still like to see cheaper paper or the option for non-sticky stock. Even so, for on-the-spot prints to hand to friends and family in the moment, it's tops.

HP's Sprocket Select, an ink-free pocket printer, produces appealing wallet-size prints on the go. It's a solid choice for making novelty prints from a smartphone or tablet.

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