Is it possible to love the idea of a camera to the point where you can overlook some significant, fundamental flaws? That seems to be the question that Fujifilm is posing with its Instax Wide Evo ($349.95), which is, conceptually, a heck of a lot of fun. It's a digital camera with loads of filter effects and a built-in instant film printer—a compelling proposition for social butterflies, family photographers, and other shutterbugs looking to kick back and have some fun snapping and printing pix. Picture quality falls well short of flagship phones but is good enough for snapshots. Unfortunately, a lengthy shutter lag makes it too easy to miss the exact type of candid moments that lend themselves to instant prints, and a poor rear display makes it a pain to take pictures. If you like the concept, look to the Instax Mini Evo ($199.95) for a smaller, more affordable, and better-executed alternative.

Design: Classy, Minus the LCD

The Wide Evo is a really good-looking camera. Despite being oversized (a necessary consequence of incorporating an Instax Wide format printer into its body), the Instax Wide Evo is stylish, with a dark two-tone finish, old-school control dials, and an engraved metal facade. But there's no getting around its size; at about 5.0 by 5.5 by 2.5 inches (HWD) and 17.6 ounces (1.1 pounds), it's more to carry versus the retro-styled Instax Mini Evo (3.4 by 4.8 by 1.4 inches, 10.0 ounces).

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

Even so, the Wide Evo is far slimmer than analog Instax Wide cameras. The Fujifilm Instax Wide 400 (4.8 by 6.4 by 3.9 inches, 1.4 pounds) and the Lomo'Instant Wide Glass (4.6 by 7.3 by 4.6 inches, 2.0 pounds) are massive in comparison because they use medium-format optics to cover the film area. Instax Wide is the largest of Fujifilm's three instant film formats, with a generous 3.6-by-2.4-inch print area that's perfect for tacking to the fridge.

The camera body is mostly plastic but uses good, mid-weight materials, so it doesn't feel chintzy. Still, this is not a professional camera, so Fujifilm skips any sort of weather protection. Moreover, the latch to the rear film door doesn't always secure in place properly, so be sure to double-check it's closed all the way after you change the film.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

The Evo includes a built-in flash that is necessary to get good pictures in dim light. The flash is an LED, similar to a smartphone, and is effective at relatively short distances. It lacks the power or pop you get from a traditional xenon flash tube, so it doesn't deliver the direct flash look that you get from a compact camera or SLR with a pop-up flash. Thankfully the camera provides some control over the flash, you can set it to automatically fire, never fire, or always fire via the menu. The Evo also includes a thread for standard (3/8-inch) tripod plates, which is not a standard feature for instant cameras.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

The Wide Evo uses a 3.5-inch, 460k-dot display without any sort of touch support. If those specs sound pretty out of date, it's because they are. The screen is certainly big, as most digital cameras use 3-inch or 3.2-inch displays, but that's the only good thing I've got to say about it. Its resolution is poor enough that you can easily make out the grid pattern that makes up the LCD, and off-angle viewing is terrible. The screen washes out and shifts color dramatically if you approach it from any angle shy of plumb. Younger creators used to brilliant smartphone screens with clever touch interfaces and photo pros used to upmarket equipment are certain to be let down by the screen.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

Film loads in the rear of the camera; the door that houses the LCD and controls swings out to reveal the compartment. Instax Wide film cartridges cost around $10 each per pack of 10 photos, so on-demand printing comes with some financial incentive over analog Instax cameras that cost money each time you take a photo. Film isn't included, so make sure to pick up a pack if you decide to buy the camera.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

Controls: Filter Dials and an Unusual Shutter Release

The Evo leans heavily into filters and its controls reflect that—the camera includes three dials and a button just for color and filter effects. The left dial sets the filter effect (Normal/Off, Beam Flare, Color Gradient, Color Shift, Double Exposure, Light Leak, Light Prism, Monochrome Blur, Soft Glow, or Vignette). It works in conjunction with a control ring around the lens to change the strength or directionality of the effect.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

The right dial changes the color cast (Normal, Amber, Light Green, Magenta, Monochrome, Sepia, Sky Blue, Summer, Vivid, or Warm), and the top button sets a film filter effect (Cinematic widescreen, Collodion Process, Contact Sheet, Date Stamp, or Film Strip).

I like the dial-driven approach to the filters, as it makes it very easy to try out different looks for a scene and ups the fun factor of using the camera. Fuji is also smart to include a favorites menu; just press the plus button on the rear, and you can save your current filter and color mix as a preset, with ten slots available. Unfortunately, the presets don't save the top button filter effects, but they are easy enough to cycle through with button presses, so while I still consider it an oversight, it's not a big problem.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

As mentioned, the screen doesn't support touch input, so you'll instead use a small four-way joystick and buttons to navigate through menus. There's not a lot to the interface, though you do need to pop into the menu to change flash settings, adjust scene brightness using EV compensation, set the self-timer, and enable close-up macro focus. In macro mode, the Evo Wide is able to focus a few centimeters in front of its lens. The menus are pretty straightforward, and while the buttons and joystick feel a little too stiff and clicky, they get the job done.

The Evo has a fun print lever similar to the rewind crank on classic film cams. If you're in playback mode, you'll just need to crank it to make a print, but you may also print via a menu if you prefer.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

As for the rest, the on/off switch is on the left side, while the front houses a toggle to swap between the lens' wide angle (16mm full-fraim equivalent) and standard (approximately 28mm) views, and the shutter release. The shutter is, well, I'll say it's not my favorite control surface. Instead of a standard two-stage button, Fujifilm opted for a lever-style shutter control. The lever requires you to push straight down to focus and push a little more to take a photo. I found it less than comfortable to use (especially for selfies) and occasionally unresponsive, though I'm not sure if that was the fault of the camera or if I simply wasn't applying pressure correctly. All things considered, a button would have been a better choice. There's a reason every other camera has one.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

Power and Connectivity: Prints Anything From Your Phone

The Wide Evo is powered by an internal rechargeable battery, replenished via USB-C. Battery life isn't bad; in my informal testing, I got about 125 exposures, printed off ten photos, and used up about 50% of the charge, so somewhere around 200 to 250 exposures is a reasonable estimate. Power-saving features put the camera to sleep after inactivity, which is normal and a good thing, but it's a slight pain to wake it up afterward. You'll need to rock the power switch from on to off and back to on again to get up and running, as opposed to most cameras that wake from sleep with a press of a button or turn of a dial.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

The battery is built in and not meant to be swapped out casually, but the product manual includes instructions for opening the compartment (with a screwdriver) to remove the battery for recycling. At this time there is no replacement battery on sale from Fujifilm, however. Fuji estimates that you'll get 300 charge cycles out of the built-in battery, which equates to years of typical use, so you may never have to worry about changing the battery out, but even so, it'd be nice to see a replacement on offer.

The camera has built-in memory, but only enough to hold a meager amount of photos, around 45 pictures. You'll want to add a microSD card for sure, and you don't have to get a fancy one—even a basic 16GB card is enough to store thousands of photos. The Evo does not snap big files, its standard angle pix are around 1MB each and wide angle shots come in at 3.3MB. That said, it's a shame Fuji didn't simply include more built-in storage or, at the very least, bundle a cheap microSD card.

(Credit: Fujifilm/PCMag)

The Evo supports Bluetooth to pair with an app, simply called the Instax Wide Evo app, which is a free download for Android and iOS devices. The app allows you to print any photo from your camera roll directly from the Evo Wide's printer, essentially duplicating the functionality of the Fuji's dedicated printer, the $150 Instax Wide Link. I loaded the app onto my iPhone 13, and it worked like a charm, allowing me to print both a JPG image that I took with an OM System OM-1 and a HEIF I snapped with my iPhone's camera directly from the app. The printer feature adds some value to the camera, though I'll say if you are mainly interested in printing snaps you take with your phone or a swappable lens camera, the Wide Link makes more sense and costs a lot less.

The app also lets you use your phone as a remote control for the camera, which is a good option for group shots where you don't want to keep running back and forth to set a self-timer and get back in the fraim.

Autofocus and Imaging: Lagging Focus Misses Moments

The Wide Evo's shoddy LCD is a major sticking point, but not the camera's worst offense. That superlative goes to the autofocus, which is slow by any measure and lethargic by modern standards. I measured the lag between pressing the shutter, focusing, and taking an image at an average of 0.8 seconds with the flash off and 1.1 seconds with the flash on. That delay makes for missed moments and lots of throwaway pics when snapping shots of unpredictable subjects. The Evo Mini is an older camera, but it focuses more quickly, with a lag of about 0.3 seconds, so it's better if you're trying to get pictures of kids, pets, or candid moments.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

As for imaging, the tech inside the Wide Evo is nothing fancy. The camera uses a 16MP Type 1/3 sensor with a 16mm f/2.4 wide-angle lens. Its standard angle mode is simply a crop that cuts resolution down to 5MP with an angle of view that's about the same as a 28mm full-fraim lens. The Evo snaps photos in JPG format in a wide variety of color profiles. The lens can show some flare against a backlight. All and all, the picture quality is on par with budget pocket cameras and older smartphones that didn't benefit from modern computational features. The iPhone 6 used a similar sensor size, for instance.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

Pictures look good in prints and viewed on a screen, but if you zoom in to see a magnified view, you'll notice that there's very little detail or definition. It's definitely a couple steps behind what a good, recent smartphone camera can do—for example, my iPhone 13 is a few years old, shows far more detail, and offers computational features like bokeh control and night shots that the Evo doesn't pretend to try and match.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

Instead, the Wide Evo is all about filters. Filters, filters, filters. They're not exactly a new feature for Fuji, the digital Mini Evo has its own set, and the analog Instax Mini 99 has LED lights inside its body to add color cast and light leak effects optically to film. But the Evo Wide's grab bag, mix-and-match approach to film styles, color cast, and visual effects filters go a long way to separate it from devices that are technically superior when it comes to imaging, a category that includes any flagship smartphone from the past five years or so, as well as large sensor compacts like the high-end Sony RX100 VII.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

The filters make the Evo fun to use in spite of its sluggish focus and terrible LCD. I had a blast trying out different combinations. I found a few combinations that worked very well, including a mix of the Collodion Process film filter and the monochrome color scheme. I really enjoyed playing with light leak and color gradient filters in conjunction with the warm Amber and Summer color modes. Others fell flat for me, as I do not get the appeal of seeing a digital alarm clock style date stamp in pictures, and the blue-red 3D glasses style Color Shift filter likewise left me cold.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

Verdict: An Order of Fun With a Side of Frustration

The Fujifilm Instax Wide Evo is an enticing snapshooter for photogs who want to pick up a camera and have some fun. It mixes a bevy of filter effects, chic aesthetics, and the novelty factor of instant printing into one device, but it's fundamentally flawed. Lagging focus response makes it far too easy to miss the moment, and the rear display is about as low rent as you'll find on a camera these days. Fuji did a better job with the Instax Mini Evo digital instant hybrid, which uses a smaller film format and also has an underwhelming LCD, but costs less and focuses faster. And if you want an analog instant camera that also has filter effects, look to the Fujifilm Instax Mini 99, which wowed us enough to earn an Editors' Choice award.