Instax Wide Evo review

What is the Instax Wide Evo?

The Instax Wide Evo is what Instax calls a ‘hybrid’ camera – that is, a digital camera with an integrated film printer. This concept was debuted with the Instax Mini Evo, and the Wide Evo takes the idea to Instax’s largest film format – Instax Wide.

Featuring a litany of creative effects, a wide-angle lens and an undeniably sharp design, the Instax Wide Evo aims to replicate the analogue experience while handing users the mod cons of a digital camera. In theory, that means all the fun of an instant camera, but with the valuable advantage of only using your precious Instax film on the photos that you feel are really worth printing.

A crucial part of the offering is the Instax Wide Evo App, which allows you to remotely control the camera and print photos from your phone – and much more besides!

I took the Instax Wide Evo out with me on a slightly grey weekend in order to see how it measures up.

Instax Wide Evo build quality

The first thing to stand out is that this is a surprisingly large camera. It measures 138.7x125x82.8mm and weighs 490g, and that’s not including the film cartridge and lens cap. What this means in real terms is that it’s gratifyingly chunky in the hand and has a nice heft to it – such that it doesn’t feel in any way flimsy.

If you’re looking for something inconspicuous, keep looking – the Instax Wide Evo certainly makes a statement when slung over a shoulder. But the head-turning aesthetics are backed by rock-solid build quality. It’s made of plastic, but the dials and levers feel perfectly robust, and the included lens cap is a nice addition that gives extra peace of mind when out and about.

In true analogue style, the Instax Wide Evo is largely controlled by a series of dials and levers. Two dials on the rear switch between different lens and film effects, while the lens itself features a dial that adjusts the degree of certain lens effects. The shutter release is activated by a lever on the front, while a small switch toggles the wide-angle mode. To print a photo, you flip out a small lever and wind it, just like rewinding the film on a 35mm camera.

All of this amounts to a camera that is – for the most part – satisfyingly tactile to operate. I found the shutter lever to be nicely ergonomic in its positioning, and my only niggle was with the on/off switch being slightly irritating to reach and use.

Photography with the Instax Wide Evo

The Instax Wide Evo features the widest lens Instax have put on a camera. With a full-frame equivalent focal length of 16mm, this F2.4 optic is designed to make the most of the expansive Instax Wide film format. A switch on the front toggles ‘wide-angle’ mode, which, when on, uses the full sensor readout, while switching it off makes the camera crop in on the sensor.

The sensor in question is a 16MP 1/3-inch CMOS image sensor. With an SD card inserted and ‘wide-angle’ mode activated, the camera will record images in full 4608×3456 resolution. With no SD card, the quality takes a dip to 5MP, at 2560×1920 – which is also the crop used when ‘wide-angle’ mode is off.

This is enough detail for the size of the prints, though the tiny sensor struggles with dynamic range and creates fairly flat images. Because of this, the Instax Wide Evo didn’t fare brilliantly in the gloomy conditions I was using it in. I expect you’d get nicer looking photos in sunnier weather, or when contrast is more apparent – which was evidenced by performance being much more dynamic when using the flash in darker settings.

The result is a bit of an old-school digital vibe. If you’re into it, you might describe it as a slightly crunchy, Y2K aesthetic. What sets the Instax Evo range apart though, is the depth of its effect options. There are ten different lens effects, ten film effects and five film styles. Certain lens effects can be adjusted using the lens dial, offering 100 different permutations of the same effect.

The film effects apply various colour casts to your images, from ‘warm’ to ‘magenta’ and ‘monochrome’. The lens effects include things like ‘colour shift’, ‘monochrome blur’ and ‘light leak’. When you factor in the degree control dial, it gives you lots of latitude for experimentation. Some of the effects felt like they had more limited utility, but having extra creative options can never be a bad thing.

Once you’ve got used to the kind of photography that this camera is built for, it’s a lot of fun to use. Switching between effects is quick and easy, and there’s a decent amount of in-camera editing you can do as well – from cropping and rotating to adjusting the brightness.

For me, the only fly in the ointment was the screen. Trying to get low- or high-angle shots proved impossible, as the screen was indecipherable when it wasn’t perfectly perpendicular to my eyeline.

The Instax Wide Evo App

A key part of the Instax Wide Evo experience is the companion app. Rarely have I seen an app like this work so well at launch – it’s got an impressive amount of polish, and all the features work flawlessly, with flashy animations linking up the different functions.

It offers remote shooting – you get a pretty pixelated view of what the camera sees, but there’s almost no delay and it’s good enough for framing things up. There’s the Discover Feed – where you can view user submitted effect combinations and download them to your camera to try out. There’s also the Usage History page, where you can see the number of times you’ve used the different film and lens effects.

As well as this, it’s effortless to print photos from your phone, with lots of useful options for editing in-app. This is probably the function you would use the most – it’s really seamless and a huge benefit that this camera can function perfectly as a mobile printer.

The one irritation is that the camera automatically switches off quite quickly. This can be irksome when you’re trying to find and edit a photo to print from your phone, as you have to power the Wide Evo back on and reconnect every time.

Instax Wide Evo Printing

The printing experience with the Wide Evo is typical Instax – by which I mean, excellent. The contrasty images and analogue degraded effects work well with the Instax film to achieve a fairly authentic film look – especially when getting the flash involved.

In my opinion though, the camera’s tiny sensor doesn’t make full use of the film’s very good colour fidelity, which you can see when you start to print out photos taken on other devices.

Reloading the film cartridge is simple enough – just open up the back and press the cartridge into the gap. When you close the mechanism, the printer ejects the protective black slide from the cartridge, and then you’re in business.

At one point, the printer developed a feed error. I managed to get it working again by just removing and reinserting the film cartridge, but that automatic ejection mechanism triggered again, wasting one print of film.

A couple of my prints also came out with quite noticeable banding. At £16.99 for 20 shots of Instax Wide film, you’d be within your rights to be somewhat disappointed at losing a few prints – but at least with the Wide Evo, you have the option to reprint any photo that doesn’t come out quite right.