The Primera Trio Is The World's Smallest And Lightest Printer

Printers have been taking up our precious space for too long

For what they do, printers are impractically large and frankly, for the amount of unnecessary space they take up in our homes, we should be able to charge them rent. If they had sentience, you could imagine them lounging around on your desk, groaning loudly every time you ask them to perform their basic function, crying “But I printed something last week! No!”, before obstinately chewing up and choking on the little paper you have.

It’s thanks to this bulk and unwillingness to cooperate that you find yourself unable to print anywhere but at home, in the office, in the library, or in one of those dreaded business centres in hotels, and you have to make sure you’re doing it with lots of time to spare. Traditional printers are just massively inconvenient.

Fortunately, Primera Technology have released the world’s smallest and lightest all-in-one portable printer to make printing a little less painful and a little more portable. We encountered it at the IFA tech trade show, and we were smitten.

The Primera Trio, weighing only 1.2 KG and coming in at around the size of a large hardcover book, is able to print, scan, and copy on the go. It’s virtually identical to a full-sized desktop inkjet printer, even taking full-sized ink cartridges thanks to the use of a handy twisty motion:

It prints in full colour or black at up to 4800 dpi onto A4 paper, 4” x 6” photo paper, labels, and postcards. Scanning resolution is 600 x 600 dpi, and to copy you simply have to feed your original copy into the rear paper slot and a copy is automatically printed.

Having a fully functional printer in such a portable size certainly seems useful for being able to print documents on business trips, or your return flight boarding passes on holiday. The Primera Trio’s small size is even useful not just in terms of portability, but also for when you lack space; in small flats, dorm rooms, or work spaces, having the standard Snorlax sized printer just isn’t possible, but with the Primera Trio you at least have the option to store it away in a bag when you’re not using it.

The printer is customisable, allowing you to purchase snap on covers for £26 in blue, pink, silver, or white to jazz up the boring, but admittedly professional, dark gray and black colour scheme it comes with. It comes with a Lithium-Ion battery, which should print around 350 pages before needing to be recharged, and a 3-foot micro-USB to USB cable for connecting to your laptop, both to print and to recharge (the Primera Trio is many things but wireless is not one of them). The printer will work with Windows 7, 8, Vista (lol), 10, and Mac OS X v 10.6 or higher, but not with smartphones or tablets.

Black ink cartridges should print around 185 pages and colour cartridges around 260 pages before needing to be replaced. Replacement ink cartridges come in at around £32 for black ink and £35 for colour ink, so fairly standard. The printer itself retails for £347 including delivery and can be ordered from the Primera Technology website.

It’s about time we were able to throw out that lazy, space-taking slob of a traditional printer we’ve been forced to house until now. It’s time for something a little more sleek that fits easily into your life, and your laptop bag.