The Fujifilm instax Wide Evo is a digital camera with a built-in printer designed for the largest instax format. Announced in January 2025 it’s the second Wide camera in the current lineup. But while the earlier Wide 400 was a fully analogue camera, the Wide Evo is a digital hybrid that’s essentially a larger version of the mini Evo launched three years earlier. 

Like that model you compose, apply effects and review images using a large screen on the back, with the option to then make physical copies of the ones you like using the built-in instant printer. Instax Wide cartridges contain ten prints each and are typically sold in twin packs for around $19 or £17, so that works out about 95 cents or 85 pence per print.

Photos are stored in internal memory, or on a Micro SD card, and unlike the fully analogue instax cameras, it’s up to you which, if any, images you subsequently print, and when you do it. So there’s no waste and no surprises. The Wide Evo can also be used as a wireless printer, letting you make instant prints of any image on your smartphone. It does this via Bluetooth using the Wide Evo app, available for iOS and Android phones, which can also act as a remote control for the camera. Find out everything in my video below, or if you prefer to read the written highlights, keep scrolling.

The literal big difference between the mini Evo and Wide Evo is of course their print format, with the old model making credit-card sized prints, while the new model uses the largest instax Wide format that’s double the width. But while the Wide Evo shares much the same selection of effects as the Mini Evo, it allows you to tweak them further as well as applying additional formatting. Meanwhile a new lens captures a much wider view than previous models and Fujifilm’s also had some fun with a new crank lever to activate the printer. Let’s take a look around the camera and see what it can do.

In terms of design, the Wide Evo is considerably smaller than the Wide 400, since it doesn’t need to accommodate the substantial lens housing of a fully analogue camera designed for this format. In fact measuring 139x125x35mm for the main body, it’s almost exactly the same size as the instax Link Wide printer, unsurprising since you can essentially think of the Evo as a printer with a lens and sensor on the front and a screen on the back. In fact as far as I know, the actual printer specs of the Link Wide and Evo are identical.

I really like the styling of the Wide Evo, resembling a large format plate camera and only available in a serious-looking black and grey finish. It may be mostly plastic in construction but looks and feels good in your hands. It weighs 490g excluding film cartridge.

The front is dominated by the lens in the middle, surrounded by a ring to make fine adjustments to effects. Meanwhile the usual instax selfie-mirror is to its upper right and beyond this a flash which you can force on or off or set to Auto. To the upper left is a push-lever for the shutter release, which feels unusual at first, but before long you’ll master the pressure difference between a half and full press. Meanwhile to the lower right is a switch that applies a digital crop to the view, effectively acting as a zoom.

Round the back is a large but fairly coarse 3.5in 460k dot colour screen which is the only means of composition – no viewfinder here – flanked by dials on either side to adjust the effects. Meanwhile running below are a series of buttons and a joystick for navigation. You’ll also notice a button above the screen on the rear which opens the camera to load a cartridge. It’s possible to to use the camera without a film loaded, or with an empty cartridge but obviously you won’t be making any prints.

On the left side as you use the camera are the power dial, one of the effects dials and a flap behind which you’ll find a Micro SD slot for optional storage, and a USB C port for charging the internal battery only. Fujifilm quotes around 100 prints per charge, but in mixed use I managed about 60 digital snaps and a handful of prints before the battery indicator turned red. On the opposite side are the second effects dial and a neat crank control to activate the printer, more about which in a moment.

Meanwhile on the top is the long slot through which prints emerge and a large button which cycles through some additional formatting options, and finally underneath the body is a tripod thread uncomfortably forced to one side by the internal printing mechanism. But at least there is one.

With the camera powered-up, the design naturally lends itself to two-handed operation, with your thumbs falling comfortably onto the two control dials. From the left dial you can cycle through the ten lens effects: Normal, Light Leak, Light Prism, Vignette, Soft Glow, Double Exposure, Colour Shift, Monochrome Blur, Colour Gradient and Beam Flare. Then with the right dial you have the ten Film Effects: Normal, Vivid, Warm, Sky Blue, Light Green, Magenta, Sepia, Monochrome, Amber and Summer.

It’s possible to stack effects from both banks, making 100 potential combinations, as well as being able to fine-tune their degree using the ring control around the lens. There’s a minor pause between each effect as you turn the dials which can make it feel a tad sluggish, but if you slow down it feels fine.

Meanwhile the large button alongside the print slot at the top lets you cycle between five additional formatting options. There’s a widescreen crop, an alternative vignette of sorts and the chance to overlay some nostalgic graphics including a time and date stamp or film strip. Beware though as all effects are baked into the JPEG images, so you may want to record several different versions of a scene to give you some options. Oh and notice the number of prints remaining indicated in the lower left of the screen – ten here as I’d just loaded a fresh cartridge.

Exposures are fully automatic, but push the menu button and you’re able to apply compensation to deliberately make them brighter or darker, as well as being able to force the flash on or off or set to Auto. You’ll also find a two or ten second self-timer, the chance to manually set the white balance or leave it at Auto, and set a macro mode which allows the lens to focus on subjects a bit closer. Within the further settings you’ll find the option to turn face detection on or off. The Wide Evo can detect multiple faces, and while you can’t manually select the desired one, it should automatically prioritise the closest.

As mentioned earlier the Wide Evo sports the widest lens in the instax series to date, equivalent to an ultra-wide 16mm in 35mm or full-frame systems. It’s ideal for capturing big views or when you can’t step back any further, but with a flick of a switch on the front, you can set the camera to a narrower field of view, roughly equivalent to 28mm which coincidentally matches the mini Evo and is great for portraits or small groups. This change in coverage is achieved with a simple crop of the sensor, essentially a 1.8x digital zoom. This may reduce the total number of pixels, at least when recording to a Micro SD card, but there’s still more than enough remaining for making an instax Wide print.

During playback you can use the joystick to cycle through images, but note it doesn’t have a push action so to confirm any setting you’ll need to press the OK button. Not that you’ll need either to activate the printer though. Once you’ve found a photo you’d like to print in playback, open-out the crank lever on the side and wind it round a couple of times until the screen graphics show the image being pushed upwards. This animation then mostly lines-up with the actual physical print emerging from the top.

The crank lever is undoubtedly a novelty, but an undeniably fun one which brought a smile to the face of anyone I showed it to. It mimics the film rewind levers on 35mm cameras, so ticks a nostalgia box, but it’s just fun to spin it around when you want a print, and I love that the designers force you to do it a couple of times to make sure. The earlier Mini Evo featured a different mechanism resembling a film advance lever which was also fun to use, but not in the same league as this new one.

Finally at the heart of the Wide Evo is a 1 /3in type sensor with 16 Megapixels, making it larger and more detailed than the 5 Megapixel sensor in the Mini Evo. But like that model, there’s various gotchas and caveats when it comes to accessing your images. For starters, if you’re using the internal memory, all images are actually recorded in 5 Megapixels. The Wide mode may start with the full 16 but resizes them to 5, while the zoom mode simply takes a 5 Megapixel crop and records that instead. But don’t worry as 5 Megapixels is still more detail than an instax Wide printer needs, and also maximises the limited storage. At about 1Mb each, you should squeeze about 45 of them into the internal memory.

If you want to access these images digitally, you can either insert a Micro SD card and use the menus to copy them across in their 5 Megapixel size, or use the phone app to download them, but with extra restrictions. First, like the mini Evo before it, the Wide Evo app will only let you download images you’ve already printed, which just seems mean to me. And even then, they’re shrunk even further down to about 1 Megapixel including a border graphic that mimics a print. Admittedly they’re fine for sharing or posting online, but you won’t be doing much else with them.

To avoid all these gotchas, just insert a Micro SD card from day-one and record on it instead. First, when you’re shooting in the wide-angle mode, you’ll get the full 16 Megapixel images, and second you’ll have easy access to the files by just ejecting and reading the card.

That said, don’t expect to unlock amazing image quality, as even the full 16 Megapixel images from the Wide Evo will be beaten by any modern phone. Even in bright daylight photos you’ll see substantial noise, not dissimilar to a vintage digital camera, and not in a good way either.

Which is a very long way of saying don’t think of the Wide Evo as a camera for capturing high quality digital images. It doesn’t. Instead the sensor, storage and access are all geared towards either printing the photos on instax Wide film or simply sharing them on a social platform – and for that it works just fine.

The app isn’t just about accessing the images either. You can also use it to remote control the camera, with a live preview on your phone screen which is very handy for composing and triggering more distant selfies or group shots. The app also lets you use the Wide Evo as a wireless printer, allowing you to print out any image you happen to have stored on there. 

Fujifilm instax Wide Evo verdict

The instax Wide Evo becomes one of the most compelling cameras in Fujifilm’s instant series to date, and finally gives some enthusiast-class attention to their largest format. Last year’s Wide 400 may have broken Fujifilm’s ten year drought on wide-format cameras, but as a very basic model it disappointed many enthusiasts who wanted more control. The Wide Evo is Fujifilm’s answer, and while it still lacks manual exposure control, there’s a great deal to like.

Like the Mini Evo, it essentially takes a wireless instax printer and adds a basic digital camera. The screen lets you compose, preview effects and review images, while the built-in printer can make physical copies of the ones you like best. Meanwhile a phone app lets you access images with caveats mentioned in the main review, remote control the camera, or use it as a wireless printer to output any image on there.

The camera sports a new and useful ultra-wide lens and some nice-looking effects, but don’t expect miracles from the core image quality. It may be more than good enough for sharing online or making instax prints with heavy effects applied, but in sheer quality terms a modern phone will easily outperform it.

What makes the Wide Evo different and more enjoyable than using your phone though is the design and operation. Looking like a large format plate camera, it ticks all the style boxes, while a pair of dials on either side let you mix and match 100 combinations of interesting effects. Then when you see an image you’d like to print, just pop-out the crank lever, wind it round a couple of times, and the photo emerges from the body. The crank is the genius part of the whole experience. Styled to look like a film rewind-lever on a 35mm camera, it’s not physically pushing the print out, it’s simply there as a nostalgic alternative to a push-button and I’m here for it. When showing the camera to other people, it’s this feature that really brings a smile to their faces and I love that Fujifilm makes you twist it round at least twice to send the signal to print. There’s no avoiding the fun.

You’re paying for the fun of course, with the Wide Evo costing about two and a half times the Link Wide printer, with identical quality when printing images from your phone. Plus the mini Evo delivers a similar experience at almost half the price. In fact you could buy a mini Evo and a Link Wide printer for roughly the same as the Wide Evo. But neither will give you the complete Evo experience with the wide print format, nor of course that crank lever. The Wide Evo delivers a unique overall look and fun experience that I really enjoyed using.

PS – Comparing the substantial heft of the Wide 400 against the more portable Wide Evo also made me realise that perhaps I don’t actually want an analogue Wide camera with more control or features, as it would be as unwieldy as the 400. Perhaps the Evo is the answer to having a practical instax Wide camera with greater features. So my future request would be to flesh out the Square series instead with 99 and Evo versions please.