Now: £679 (£120 off) If you’re looking for a high-quality photo-printer that will primarily be used for printing selfies and other postcard-size photos from your mobile devices on a regular basis then the Tango is an absolute bargain. However, the Tango throws in an extra option that might make it a good choice for people who like to print a lot of photos – see below. It won’t be long, therefore, before you find yourself forking out for replacement cartridges.

Now: £649 (£150 off) The Polaroid Hi-Print has a great design and produces high quality instant prints – but the running costs are pricey. To print a photo, you link your phone up with the Hi-Print using the accompanying app via Bluetooth. Now: £1,499.97 (£400 off) HP quotes speeds of up to 11 pages per minute for plain black text, 8ppm for colour documents, and 37 seconds for a 10x15cm postcard print.

HP Tango review

<

p> The images use nearly the entirety of the paper, bar a strip of white at the bottom. Now: $99.99 ($50 off) The compact design does have its drawbacks, though. You can place the Hi-Print both vertically and horizontally – though the former is slightly wobblier than the latter. HP’s new Tango printer is a curious beast – not least because HP claims that it’s the ‘world’s first smart home printer’, thanks to its ability to work with both Amazon’s Alexa and the Google Assistant. The Hi-Print rivals the likes of the Instax Mini Link – but strips back a lot of the fluffy features to just produce a simple but effective instant printer.

Read on for my full review. It’s good looking though so you won’t want to hide it away and the Instant Ink scheme that offers free printing makes it even more tempting. Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide View more prices To be honest, that seems more of a gimmick than a really useful innovation for a printer, but the Tango has more attractive features as well.

The XL colour cartridge is much better, though, working out at a competitive 7.6p per page, so it’s clear that the Tango is very much designed for printing photos and colour graphics, rather than boring old office documents. By Hannah Cowton, Senior Staff Writer | 06 Nov 2020 In the past, we’ve criticized the Instant Ink schemes as they’re good value for printing colour graphics and photos, but less attractive for simple text documents. Printing speed is slower than that of other instant printers at around 50 seconds – but this is due to being a dye-sublimation device, which means that the print ejects in and out of the printer at least four times to add each layer of colour, plus a protective film.

Whenever the printer starts to run low on ink the HP Smart app will automatically order new inks to be sent in the post, with the cost of the inks included in your monthly subscription. Check out best printers chart to see a full range. It’s admirably compact, though, measuring just 389mm wide, 246mm deep and 91mm high, so it’ll fit even onto a small desk or a shelf if you’re a bit tight for space at home. Despite the slower speeds, the wait is certainly worth it, as the print quality is overall extremely high and much more detailed, vivid and striking than you would get from a quicker digital instant printer – which is the most important part of this product. Now: $59.95 ($40 off) The Tango doesn’t include a scanner, and although it supports dual-band Wi-Fi it doesn’t even have a USB port for quickly connecting it to a PC or Mac.

That’s a little misleading, though, as it only took us a couple of minutes on HP’s web site to locate driver software for Windows and Macs, so you can still use it with a computer if you need to. The other subscription options cost £3.49 per month for 100 pages (3.49p per page) and £7.99 per month for 300 pages (2.7p per page – but watch out for the extra costs that start running up if you go over your monthly page limit). Now: $499.99 ($50 off) The Tango weighs 3.4kg, and its compact design means that you could easily slip it into a backpack and carry it to a friend’s house if you want to spend an evening experimenting with Instagram filters.

You’ll get around 20 prints on one charge, which is lower than rivals but to be expected considering the more complex printing process. Now: From £21 per month This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Now: $69.99 ($29.99 off) The HP Tango might not be the fastest or cheapest printer around, and it doesn’t have the usual things you’d expect like a screen, card reader and USB port. Learn more.

Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide View more prices Now: £37 Clubcard Price (£13 off) Print quality isn’t disappointing https://jiji.ug/53-pendant-lights/wooden though, with smooth, sharp text that can give a laser printer a run for its money, and bright, colourful graphics and photos. Was: £596.33 upfront or £49.94 p/m Now: $599 ($360 off) So, if you have a shopping list on your smartphone then you can use an Amazon Echo speaker or the Alexa app on your smartphone to say “Alexa, tell my HP printer to print my shopping list” and similar things. However, the Tango throws in an extra bonus, as photo prints up to 13x18cm that are printed from the HP Smart app on an Android or iOS device are free, and don’t count towards your monthly allocation of pages. It’ll do the job, then, as long as you’re not in too much of a rush.

As designs go, the Polaroid Hi-Print is refined and clean. However, the target market is unlikely to care because this smart printer is aimed at those wanting to print from mobile phones or even using their voice via smart assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant. Only the best deals on the best products handpicked by our expert editors Now: $24.98 ($24 off off) When bought direct from HP, the standard-size black cartridges cost £13.49 and last for 200 pages, while the standard-size colour cartridge costs £17.09 and lasts for 165 pages. So it can even look pretty stylish and trendy sitting on a shelf.

The cartridges can be loaded on the left-hand side of the pack which you can prise open with your fingernail. There are three subscription prices, starting at £1.99 per month, which allows you to print 50 pages per month with a flat-rate cost of just under 4p per page, regardless of whether those pages are mono or colour. From: Laptops Direct The HP app doesn’t give you much help setting up the Alexa or Google voice controls either, so you’ll probably need to head off to HP’s web site to track down the FAQ pages if you want to show off the Tango’s voice controls to your friends. Now: Up to $550 off (With free Galaxy Buds 2) In other respects, though, it’s actually pretty limited, and its starting price of £129/$149 is relatively high for a home printer, so you’ll need to think carefully about whether the Tango meets your personal needs before buying.

The top cover folds out to act as the input tray, and holds 50 sheets of A4 paper, or 20 sheets of photo paper, and the basic version of the Tango also includes a small output tray that you can attach to the front of the printer. It’s stylish too, so not one that needs hiding away. Now: £362.21 upfront or £30.34 p/m (Up to £234.12 off) The Tango isn’t particularly fast for a printer in this price range. HP also sells high-yield XL-size cartridges, although the black XL cartridge still works out relatively expensive at 4.5p per page.

The Smart app can also use your smartphone camera to provide limited scanning and copying features. However, there’s a second model called the Tango X, which costs £180/$199, and replaces the output tray with a wrap-around protective linen cover. The Tango isn’t much to look at, consisting of little more than a rectangular slab of white and grey plastic. From: Virgin Media However, our tests produced more modest results, at around 7ppm for text documents, 5ppm for colour, and a rather leisurely 70 seconds for postcards.

It’s not, however, a good option if you just need a general-purpose printer for use with a Mac or PC. Those costs work out at around 6.5p per page for mono printing – which is well above average for an inkjet printer – and a just-about-acceptable 10.4p for colour printing. It’s compact in size and light enough to be held one handed. The top features a rainbow strip – a nod to the printing process – with the printing slot on the top of the device. There you can select and customise the image you want and print directly from here.

Only the best deals on the best products handpicked by our expert editors In the past, we’ve not been too impressed by the Instant Ink scheme, as its flat-rate printing costs were good for colour and photo output, but actually quite expensive for simple text documents. There are two ‘setup cartridges’ provided with the Tango – a black cartridge that lasts for a mere 125 pages, and a ‘tri-colour’ cartridge that contains cyan, magenta and yellow inks, and lasts for just 110 pages. Looking to get into Polaroid prints but prefer taking photos on your smartphone? You can get the best of best worlds with the Polaroid Hi-Print, the latest instant printer from Polaroid that connects to your phone over Bluetooth and prints high resolution photos in under a minute.

Even so, the lack of a USB port, memory card slot, or even a simple control screen are disappointing in a printer costing well over £100, and this does mean that the Tango’s focus is very much on mobile devices, with only the occasional letter or other document printed from a computer. The power button is located on the right-hand side, along with two LED status lights. Only the best deals on the best products handpicked by our expert editors In fact, HP’s web site states that the Tango “is designed exclusively for mobile devices”, as it requires the Smart app to handle the initial set-up and installation.

The other option for buying replacement inks for the Tango is to sign up for HP’s Instant Ink subscriptions. The printer uses 2×3 Hi-Print paper cartridge, which comes with 20 sheets in a pack. Again, rivals sometimes have borders round the photo, which makes the image smaller, so this is a big plus for Polaroid. In effect, this means that you can print unlimited postcards (10x15cm) and other small-format photos from your mobile devices – but not Macs and PCs – completely free of charge (although the small print on HP’s web site does state that it can withdraw that offer with 30 days notice).

Now: £899.90 (£100 off) This is where things get a bit complicated, as you can either buy replacement ink cartridges whenever you need them, or sign up for HP’s Instant Ink subscription scheme. It’s neatly designed and well suited for use at home, and HP even dangles the tempting possibility of free photo prints for Instagram junkies if you’re not using an instant camera. There’s no LCD control screen at all, as you’re expected to control the printer from HP’s Smart app on your Android or iOS mobile devices most of the time. For this, the Tango is brilliant and provides high quality results.

On the bottom of the device, you get a Micro-USB port for charging (a cable comes included in the box), another status light and a reset port. Note: We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site, at no extra cost to you.