Kid tech Kickstarter spotlight: myFirst Insta Wi – cam w/printer
Hard stop – saying do not get this at this point until the firmware or picture quality is addressed – see comments for details.
I’ve added a tag for the MyFirst Insta Wi issues/reviews. Click here to see all of ’em. See this for alllllll the problems…
About a year ago I started a review on the myFirst camera. This was a ruggedized kid-friendly instant camera that could print out photos in black and white using a built in thermal printer. It shipped with a gig of storage (expandable to 32,) and with a 12mp camera seemed to be a pretty cool little device.
A year in and my fridge is littered with black and white photos of me and Kim taken from approximately 2 feet under our noses, usually with a sticker applied or a filter that added bunny ears.
The next generation of the camera, the myFirst Insta Wi is in my hands now, and launching a kickstarter at 9am Eastern Standard Time between August 14th and October 14th 2021. The myFirst Insta Wi will be about $70 on Kickstarter.
The main differences between the original myFirst Camera and the Insta Wi appear to be WiFi connectivity, an app, a 16mp sensor, and the ability to print stickers it looks like. Based on the video below it appears there’s some special sticker paper included but I don’t see it on my info.
I’ll be testing the new version starting tonight should everything go as planned and will have a proper review up sometime during the Kickstarter.
I’d be remis as a reviewer if I didn’t cover what was wrong, and hopefully now fixed, with the previous generation’s offering – blocky image compression (fixable with a firmware update, but 12mp was effectively 3-5 due to jpeg compression settings,) SD cards that shipped were slow (which caused lockups,) no documentation on reset button (which I found,) but generally they’ve been pretty solid. Also hated that I had to pop the cards or locate a cable to transfer photos (which this may have fixed with the WiFi connectivity) – My kids also had quite a bit of trouble with the old one plugging in a micro USB to charge. Here’s to hoping for a better connection that’s less easy to break.
Check out their kickstarter starting tomorrow at 8am Eastern
