Customer Reviews
Won't work with large-capacity Smart Media Cards 
2002-05-17
What's not on the web site, and which I discovered only after buying it and opening it and some paper: while any size Compact Flash card will apparently work, this printer will accept only 32 meg Smart Media cards and smaller. Since I have (and need!) a 128 meg card for my Fuji 4700, the printer is useless to me--all I get is a card error message. It's a pity, because the price is right & it seems like a delightful toy.
Instant portable photo fun! 
2002-05-14
After a day of taking digital photos, I always have to rush home and print them. Now that slight problem is being solved with instant printers! With Polaroid's brand name and cheap price on this printer, I had to get it and try it.
And wow, I'm impressed. This package comes with everything you need to get started! Even an extra adapter and film so you can print right out of the box. The setup is easy and the instructions are made so you can stick it on the printer if you forget. What's great is that the printer accepts BOTH CF and SM cards. Now you can give photos away to people and they will be surprised at how you printed them so fast and because the picture source is from a digital camera you can select what photos you wanted printed and how many times.
The quality of the photos are superb just like those instant Polaroids everyone used to have, this prints a smaller rectangular verison with the photo about the size of a credit card; great wallet prints! The coloring of the film however seems to be a bit more on the magenta side if you dont have long-distance flash. Other than that, the printer itself requires no batteries and has a convenient strap so you can carry it everywhere you go. The printer is shaped nicely you can hold in your hand and the weight is light enough to carry with your digital camera.
I would definitely recommend getting this product! You can't find a better deal with the rebate offer!
Great Printer 2002-05-13
This printer is GREAT for printing instant photos! Easy to set up, prints fast, only drawback is the size of photos, print quality however is excellent.
Polaroid "INSTANTLY" won me over! 2002-05-01
Picture this: you are at a birthday party taking shots with your digital camera. You begin thinking about which prints you will print out at home for your photo album. Suddenly people start asking for a copy. "Can you email the one of me and Fred?" They ask. "How about if you print one and mail it to me?"
Now, you can pull out your Polaroid P-500 printer and instantly share the photos people want. Choose the photo, the number of copies and press the button. In about 20 seconds the prints start coming. After a couple minutes of development time, Voila! Great prints with brilliant Polaroid color.
This will NOT be your primary printer for family photos, but for the price,... it is a great idea for family gatherings when people just want a shot or two to remember the event.
Quality is Good. The images still look a little jagged if the light is not perfect. I take shots at 1800x1200 dpi and get a pretty good result.
Print without the computer 2002-04-23
This printer is exactly as advertised. This device will print 2x3 inch prints on polaroid film. The quality is typical polaroid instant prints that we've all seen. It's easy to load the film and the nice thing is that the film pack provides the power, so you don't need any external power. If your digital camera has a print option, this printer will read that and allow you to print just those pictures marked for printing--quick and easy. If not, it's still easy to use. You just need to know what picture number you want to print. It's easy to quickly scroll through all the prints on the memory card. Pressing and holding the scroll button on this printer quickly advances through the prints on the memory card. The price per print is a bit high...I wouldn't pay the original price for this, which was over[$]... Without the rebate, it's ok if you want to print pictures away from your computer.
Neat little unit 2003-06-01
For the price, size and quality its more novelty than serious printer, but its a good sort of novelty.
Pictures are small, but are on par with any other polaroid style camera. Good for scrapbooking, or checking images off LCD for digicams etc.
I bought mine in the hope it'd work with my P800 cell phones infrared, it didn't. Works fine with my nikon coolpix though.
The manual in mine says shoulderstrap included, however on the box it says it isn't,and it wasn't, not really a big deal though.
Haven't had a chance to see how easy it is to pickup film yet, but given its compatible with the joycam it should be reasonable easy.
The interface is ok, its a little terse but once you see where they were going its perfectly acceptable.
Prints come out fast, take a little while to appear.
Compatibility 
2003-03-16
I want to know if this product id compatible with the Fujifilm FinePix A303 3MP Digital Camera w/ 3x Optical Zoom
Please let me know.
Ripped off by Amazon 2002-10-15
I bought this when they promised a $25 rebate... the rebate never came and the company promising the rebate will not respond.. amazon denies any responsibility, so they effectively baited with a non-existent rebate... don't buy from amazon if you're figuring rebates as part of the price....
It's true: large-capacity SM Cards don't work 2002-09-21
This printer does not work with 64MB and 128MB Smart Media cards. I verified this on the Polaroid website (deeply buried, of course!)
What a gadget! 2002-06-05
The P-500IR is a stand-alone printer that outputs digital images onto P-500 Joycam instant film. It's "stand-alone" in that it doesn't have any direct connectivity to a computer, and it takes images from CompactFlash or SmartMedia cards (the latter requiring an included adapter). Since there is no preview screen on the unit (the thing runs on the embedded P500 film pack battery, so you only need to feed the thing film), you have to kinda guess which photo you're about to print. I've been taking the somewhat roundabout route of dumping the files from my digital camera onto the hard drive, tweaking and cropping with Photoshop, and then copying select files onto a CF card, which then is inserted into the P-500IR to be printed.
Output quality is pretty good, considering that it's instant film. The image size is pretty small, but it does create some unique "hard" artefacts of digital images. I think this printer would have been a questionable investment at its original price; however, with the discount, I suspect the folks at Polaroid are going to get their money back (and then some) on the film! The five stars are given specifically for the discounted price. This printer is a "must have" gadget at that price!
