The best iPhone printer in 2024: take photos and print them out on the move

I love to carry one of the best iPhone printers around with me – especially to a party or a wedding. These little devices enable you to print images straight from your phone, wherever you are. They can be shots you've taken with your phone, or shots you've downloaded from your mirrorless camera, or even pics and memes you've saved from the internet! 

Having one of these printers effectively transforms my iPhone into an instant camera, so I can give people a physical memento of the occasion (rather than just WhatsApping them a photo that disappears into a phone folder, never to be seen again). 

There are plenty of great portable printers on the market, but not all of them are iOS-friendly. So, these are the best iPhone printers you can get your hands on right now.

James Artaius

Having fallen in love with conventional photo printing while apprenticing as a photographer a decade ago, I was excited to be able to print photos on my iPhone as well. I regularly print single prints and entire photo albums from my iPhone, and I have a whole shelf of these printers in my camera room!

The quick list

Best quality

The Canon Selphy QX10 was my favorite iPhone printer and the one I recommended to most users. Its successor, the Canon Selphy QX20, is a dye-sub pocket printer that retains everything that was great about the previous version, while also adding more options and flexibility.

Whereas the Selphy QX10 could only print square photos with white borders, the QX20 has been upgraded to offer borderless printing in two formats – square and 3:2. Another welcome addition is the upgrade of the USB connection to USB-C, rather than the micro USB on the previous version.

Once again, you get those punchy and vibrant colours from the dye-sublimation technology, in prints that take less than a minute to produce and are smudge-proof and water-protected. Treat your prints from the Selphy QX20 right and they’ll last much longer than your iPhone will! This lightweight printer is great for parties, trips, days out and more.

Best mini prints

Like the idea of printing tiny pics? The Fujifilm Instax Mini Link produces prints that are just 1.8 in × 2.4 in (62 x 46mm). It connects to your iPhone wirelessly via Bluetooth, and you can print photos stored on your device, taken within your app, or directly from your Facebook and Instagram accounts. You can also print from compatible Fujifilm cameras and from your Nintendo Switch. 

The Instax Mini Link prints high-res 320dpi pictures in just 12 seconds flat. The app lets you add borders, overlays, text, and other elements to your shots. And you can even combine multiple images to make cool collages. In short, the emphasis here is on fun, and this would be a great choice for tweens and teens, or indeed anyone who's young at heart. 

Read our full Instax Mini Link review

Best big prints

Like the Mini Link 2 above, the Link Wide prints onto real Instax film – in this case, Instax Wide, which I call the "large format of instant film"! These jumbo-sized photographs are great for when you've got an image that deserves to be seen big, with its wide format being particularly suited to landscapes and group shots.

Again, because it's printing images onto Instax film, you're not getting conventional "print quality" here – every picture will have that unique (and, in my opinion, wonderful) analog look to them, as if they were shot on an instant camera. And you'll either really love that, or you really won't; if you're in the latter camp, and want "better" print quality, go for something like the Canon Selphy. 

The Link Wide works in tandem with its phone app to offer cool and clever functions, such as QR code integration, as well as integrated image editing, and an indication of how many prints you have left. Shots develop quickly, though sometimes unwanted crops are enforced by the app – and the printer needs to be charged via micro USB, rather than USB-C. 

Read our full Instax Link Wide review

Best hybrid printer

Why limit yourself to just a printer, when you can have a printer that's also an instant camera – and a very good one, at that! The Mini Evo gives you the best of both worlds, functioning as an iPhone printer (which, again, prints onto real Instax Mini film instead of paper) and a great Instax camera. 

This has knocked off my previous favorite hybrid printer, the Instax Mini LiPlay, thanks to its updated retro design complete with a funky little film lever that you use to print out your photos – making this a fantastically tactile bit of tech as well. With plenty of filters (ten digital lens modes and ten film modes), a built-in flash and the ability to edit your photos before you print them, this is formidable both as a printer and a camera.

However, many folks may not see the appeal of having a printer that doubles as a camera – after all, your iPhone has a far superior camera to the 4.9MP, 28mm f/2.0 module here. Especially since it only has storage for 45 images, requiring you to buy a microSD card to expand the storage. 

Still, if you want to print phone photos and you love instant photography, I can assure you that the Mini Evo is a heck of a lot of fun – and a big hit at parties!

Read our full Instax Mini Evo review

Best for travel

This super-small, super-lightweight print goes by different names depending on where you are in the world; it’s the Canon Ivy 2 in the USA, and the Canon Zoemini 2 in the UK and Europe. Either way, it’s an impressive little iPhone printer that produces decent Zink prints on 2 x 3-inch paper, just a little smaller than a credit card, connecting to your phone via Bluetooth. It’s a fairly simple proposition, but it’s easy to use and it works well.

In our review, we appreciated the stylish design of the Ivy 2, as well as its ease of use in terms of loading the paper and controlling your printing via the app. ZINK is definitely the worst option in terms of common printing methods, with both dye-sublimation and inkjet producing better quality, but the Ivy 2 does a decent enough job with the images you give it – good, if not great. A good choice for casual fun, and especially for travel, where you don’t want to be toting around an expensive, heavy, complex printer.

Read our full Canon Ivy 2 review.

Best for kids

If you want something easy to use, the Kodak Mini 2 is a good choice. Its accompanying iOS app makes it super simple to print out pictures from your iPhone, plus it's compatible with all iPhones running iOS 8.0 and above. The regular Mini 2 is available in five plain colors, or you can go for the the Mini 2 Retro that gives you a choice of stylized yellow, white or black designs

The simplest way of connecting your iPhone to this printer is via NFC (near-field communication). That might sound technical, but in practice, it means you just have to lie your iPhone on top of the printer and the free iOS app will launch automatically. 

Of course, in practice, we all know that these things don't always work perfectly, for all manner of reasons. So it's great that this printer also has three other ways to connect to your iPhone, via Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct, or Bluetooth. With this range of options, you're sure to get it working with the minimum of fuss.

Produced through a dye sublimation process, prints are vibrant, bright, and detailed, with strong colors, and you can even print straight from your social media accounts. Plus the printer uses all-in-one ink-and-paper cartridges, which makes it easier to operate than devices that require separate paper and ink.

Best budget

The Kodak Step Slim printer is the cheapest conventional iPhone printer on our list, but it still does a good job. So if you're looking to print images from your iPhone but are watching the pennies carefully, it's an excellent choice.

You can connect it to your iPhone via Bluetooth, and use the Kodak Step Prints app to edit your image if you choose. In our tests, prints were produced in around 40-50 seconds each. The Zink paper contains its own ink, so the overall running costs are pretty low. 

The prints aren't the highest quality of the printers on this list. But they're still decent enough if you are just printing for fun. We found prints tended to look a little gloomy, but you could boost the brightness and contrast in your images before printing to make the results look better., For the money you're spending, this represents decent value .

Best for Polaroids

This one is a bit of a wild card, but I've got a real soft spot for it. Just like the Instax Link printers use Instax film instead of paper, this wild bit of technology uses Polaroid film. However, the process by which it does this is very different. 

Unlike the Instax Links and other conventional printers, which print your image from a digital file, the Polaroid Lab uses a macro lens to "scan" your phone screen – then it uses the authentic photochemistry process to expose your shot, which develops over 15 minutes to give you a completely unique print. 

And there's the rub. Some images look absolutely fantastic. Mono images, or color shots with heavy blacks, look stunning. However, general color reproduction can be very inconsistent – and large areas of white have a habit of being polluted by color. Such is the magic of instant film! 

If you like the idea of your photos being on instant film instead of printer paper, the Instax products will deliver superior image quality. However, if you want what's essentially a digital darkroom, and you like the authentic Polaroid size and look, you can have a whole lot of fun with the Lab. 

Read my full Polaroid Lab review

How to choose

There are many considerations when looking for the best iPhone printer. For me personally, I think you need to think about two things. First of all: do you want a portable printer so you can produce images on the move, or do you want something that will pretty much live in your office or on a desk?

Smaller options, like the Instax Mini Link 2 and HP Sprocket Plus, are much more travel-friendly. Then there are bulkier models, like the Canon Selphy Square QX10 and Polaroid Lab, that are much happier living a more stationary life.

The second question to ask is how important image quality is to you. If you want the best prints possible, look for a dye-sublimation printer like the Canon Selphy or Kodak Mini 2. Otherwise, the Instax Links and Polaroid Lab "print" into instant film, which gives very unique results, while Zink (Zero Ink) printers like the Kodak Step offer image quality that's more like a color photocopy.

Other than that, things to consider include battery life, ease of recharging (such as which kind of USB plug is needed), stability of communication and ease of use.

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