Matthew DeCarlo
Label makers have come a long way since the old school handheld DYMO devices that spit out custom writing on rolls of tape. The Selpic S1+ is a palm-sized smart printer that you can swipe over surfaces such as glass, metal, leather, fabric, and more to print custom text and images.
We have the smaller S1 in-house for review right now, and although we’ll hold off on sharing a full takeaway until we finish testing the thing, it came to our attention today that the Kickstarter campaign for the S1+ is coming to a close for the S1+ (the S1+ basically the S1 with a wider print area). There are four days left to buy in if you’re interested in receiving an S1+ during its first production run.
What are you buying? Consider it something of a 21st century label maker. The S1+ is a handheld smart printer that pairs up with an app on iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac OS, where you can create your own images, text messages, QR codes, bar codes, and so on. Then you can glide the printer against nearly any surface to print your creation.
Selpic
The company touts a print resolution of 600 DPI and a print speed of 30~300 mm/s, which lets you slide and print something in just a second or so. After printing, the water-based ink is quick to dry and the S1+ has an ink capacity of 40ml that should last for about 900 A4 papers with 5% ink coverage. When the ink eventually runs out, the cartridge couldn’t be easier to swap out with a replacement.
Other specs include a 1200mAh battery that lasts about six hours when being used, about 72 hours when in standby, and takes about 2.5 hours to recharge via Micro-USB. The max print area for both text and images is 1 x 19.69 inches (25.4 x 500 millimeters).
We’ll reserve final judgments for our full review on the non-plus S1 but early impressions suggest that there might be some shortcomings to consider. For instance, it may not be immediately evident from the Kickstarter page, but you can only print in one color at a time since the different colors are in different ink cartridges. And if you want to print black on a color background, that requires two passes and it might not be so easy to line things up.
Selpic
We’re also not sure how well the device will compensate for the different movement speeds and uneven application that people are bound to use. It might take some practice before you can reliably print text and images that look right and aren’t condensed or stretched. Again, this is something to delve deeper on in our review.
As of writing, the S1+ has raised $66,637 from 333 backers on its Kickstarter with four days to go. Putting up $149 or more gets you in on the “Super Early Bird” special which is 49% off and includes a black ink cartridge. If you want more colors, there’s a $79 add-on option that includes six additional cartridges. The company also says it will contact you before shipping to see if you want anything extra.
There seems to be some confusion around when the S1+ will arrive. The Kickstarter page currently says both that it will come in time for Christmas and that it will be shipped worldwide in May 2020. The campaign’s comment section has folks wondering if the previously promised delivery date of Christmas 2019 will be met. Six days ago, the Selpic team responded by saying that it would still ship before Christmas, and yet the Kickstarter page suggests otherwise with May 2020 listed. “Coming soon” is perhaps the most accurate thing we can say here. In the meantime, we’ve reached out to Selpic for confirmation and will update when we hear something official.
Source: Kickstarter
