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Jun 26, 2023

Get creative with temporary tattoos thanks to this quick and painless portable device

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The Prinker M is a handheld temporary tattoo device that allows you to print your very own designs on your body without any need for needles.

It's hardly uncommon to want a design that is special to you to be marked on your body. But if you’re not quite ready for a permanent tattoo, or just want to try one out for fun or even as part of a costume, then a new handheld device offers an ingenious solution on how to get your own designs printed onto your skin.

The Prinker is a tool that rapidly prints your chosen design on your skin with ease, and it has to been seen to be believed. In the below video, you’ll see the flagship Prinker S at work; but at CES 2022, a brand new lightweight and portable version named the Prinker M was shown off.

Self-described as the "world's first digital temporary tattoo device", it works by first selecting, downloading, or drawing the design you’d like to have on your body through the official app. Then, you send this design to the device via a Bluetooth connection, and once this step is completed, you roll it along your body (after first applying the primer) so that the ink is applied within seconds and your temporary tattoo is complete.

After a quite literal hands-on demonstration of the Prinker M, one of our colleagues was left with a temporary tribute on his arm to the tech website that he’ll always hold in his heart. Chris Walsh could only say "I couldn't believe how quick it was!" after the rapid procedure had taken place. (Un)fortunately for him, it will take approximately three days to fade away.

The Prinker M weighs just 169g (almost half the weight of the Prinker S), and its prints can measure up to 18x1000mm. Usable on either paper or skin, you’ll get approximately 1000 prints from each cartridge of cosmetic ink that you use.

One of the key selling points of these innovative machines is the lively online community that accompanies it; the subscription-based app and website boasts 20,000 active users, who have generated 40,000 pieces of user-created content to complement the 11,000 ready-to-use designs that are available. This content platform is apparently already used daily in more than 80 countries worldwide, and these impressive numbers are likely to rise further now that a portable version is expected to become available shortly.

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Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.

Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.

Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.

We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.