ZUtA Pocket Printer – Mini Mobile Robotic Printer

Move over mini photograph printers, there’s a mobile pocket sized robotic printer in town and it can print graphics and text on any standard size of paper.

What started as a college project at the Jerusalem College of Technology’s Friedberg Entrepreneurship Challenge, is now the world’s first award-winning mini robotic printer. Ultra portable and printing on any standard size of paper, the ZUtA robotic printer weighs in at 350 grams and sports a 10.2cm diameter.

Creators Matan Caspi and Tuvia Elbaum conceived the idea while still students. They note in their Kickstarter campaign that: “…being students, we worked on our laptops in different places, libraries, classrooms, cafés, trains and out in the sunshine. We were able to do so because we had everything we needed with us on our phone or laptop. Yet, we always found ourselves struggling to find a place to print once the work was done.

When we looked into buying a portable or mobile printer, it was hard to believe that in 2014 (well, 2013 at the time) there was no real mobile printer out there – and that’s when we knew we were on to something.”

The two went on to create the idea and submit a business plan to receive funding from the aforementioned Friedberg Entrepreneurship Challenge. Knowing that printer machines essentially run a printhead left and right on a moving piece of paper, they thought “why not get rid of the entire device (and) just put the printhead on a set of small wheels and let it run across a piece of paper.”

After completing a proof of concept, assembling their team, creating a prototype and establishing ZUtA Labs, they launched a Kickstarter campaign asking for $400,000 but actually raised $511,662!  The ZUtA pocket printer received a Best of Innovation Award at the 2015 Consumer Electronic Show.

This mini printer is genius. Though print speed comes in at 1 page per minute, the convenience of this portable printer for black and white prints on the fly is worth the 60 second wait. It features a rechargeable battery that lasts 1 hour at full charge which connects via a micro USB. A full ink cartridge prints 100+ pages and the ZUtA Robotic Printer works with PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones connected to WiFi. Though it currently only prints in black, the leaps forward for the printing world are awesome and indicative of the move towards creating mobile print solutions.

For those that who require hard docs on the go, this innovative mini printer is a must have. The printer can be pre-ordered now and costs $299 with ink cartridges priced at $19.90. To learn more or pre-order your mini robot printer now, do check out ZUtaLabs.