This review of Polaroid Lab brought to you in partnership with Polaroid and Best Buy. All opinions are my own, as always.
Two fast facts about me as a traveler:
- I travel so often, I almost never buy souvenirs anymore. The only trip mementos I end up with are usually coins and train tickets!
- There are 38,601 photos in my iPhone.
What is The Polaroid Lab?
Now that you know these two facts, you’ll know why I was so excited to work with Best Buy to test The Polaroid Lab. It’s not a printer or a scanner per se, instead it’s a way to take your modern, digital images and turn them into handheld mementos. I can’t tell you how defeated I feel when my gorgeous photos, taken on an expensive camera, never leave the digital roll, so this is a solution I couldn’t wait to test!
I have always loved the nostalgic look of Polaroids, but have to prioritize space when packing and planning the photos I need to get for travel and lifestyle content campaigns. The Polaroid Lab is the missing link for me as a traveler who has way too many photos to print them all.
We just took a zillion photos on our 2-week trip to Europe and normally, the sheer number of photos on a long trip like that would stress me out. Knowing I’d never do anything with most of them makes me feel like a failure – ha!
But I had the Polaroid Lab waiting for me this time, so pretty Polaroids of our European adventure were just a couple of clicks away. It was no sweat to make mementos of my own on a whim — and I never had to worry about carting a suitcase full of souvenirs back home.
The Polaroid Lab takes the digital and makes it analog – a reversal I didn’t know I needed so much until now. But I’m here for it!
Features of The Polaroid Lab
- To use, you download the Polaroid Originals app, available for iOS and Android.
- The 3-lens system acts as a desktop darkroom, processing digital photos into instant Polaroid pictures. Setup is really easy. Within about 10 minutes of downloading the app, I had my first Polaroid photo in my hand!
- There’s no printing or scanning. You just choose a photo on your smartphone, place it over the lens and push the red button for an instant memento.
- The Polaroid Lab uses standard i-Type, 600 film (Color, Black & White and Special Editions).
3 Souvenirs You can Make with the Polaroid Lab
Print & Hang
The quickest way to go from digital photos to handheld souvenirs is to print a few favorites out as soon as you get home and clip them onto a string of lights or a frame on the fridge. It’s so easy, and it makes the euphoria of a brilliant trip last longer if you can look at the photos every day. At least until your next adventure takes it’s place!
Make a Framed Collage
With the Polaroid Lab, you can take one photo and create a collage of up to nine frames. We took our favorite photo from a trip to Capri and turned it into a souvenir for the office. How cute is this?
Custom Wedding Thank Yous
You can create the cutest wedding thank-you mementos using digital photos from your big day by taking the digital photos from your professional photographer and turning them into individual prints. Your cousins and grandparents will wonder how you got so many great Polaroids of them! Write a sweet thank you note on the white space on the bottom and boom! Instant, personalized thank you notes.
Get the Polaroid Lab at Best Buy or here.