Fujifilm Instax Mini Evo Cinema review – please don’t fall for the hype

The Fujifilm Instax Mini Evo Cinema is a curious camera that almost defies logical explanation. It’s essentially an Instax Mini instant-film printer, with a tiny camera module tacked on one edge and small screen on the other, and then decorated with an array of control dials. As its name implies, the idea is that you can record short video clips, which you then share by making Instax prints with embedded QR codes. If you’re wondering who on earth thought this might be a good idea, then don’t worry; you’re not alone.

Fujifilm Instax Mini Evo Cinema at a glance:

• $409 / £329
• Hybrid digital camera/instant printer
• Records stills and video
• Prints onto Instax Mini film
• 10 ‘decades’ filter effects
• Shares videos via QR codes on prints
• instax.com

I should, for completeness, point out that this isn’t all that the device can do. It can also shoot and print still images, and print any photo from your smartphone’s camera roll. And as always, those little Instax prints look fabulous. But if that’s what you’re after, you should buy either the excellent Instax Mini Link 3 printer for $135 / £115, or the Instax Mini Evo stills camera for $250 / £175. There’s no point in buying the Cinema if not to record video.

Features

Despite its complicated-looking control dials and switches, this is actually a pretty simple device.  Its built-in camera employs a minuscule 5MP, 1/5in-type sensor that measures just 2.6 x 2mm, with a 28mm equivalent f/2 lens in front. But while it can output 5MP image files, for video it’s restricted to just 800×600 pixels at 24fps in most cases. You can, however, get 1080 x 1440 output in the highest quality ‘2020’ setting.

A large ‘Eras’ dial on the side selects between various filter effects, which are inspired by the look of moving images from each decade from the 1930s to 2020s. Each era has 10 variants or strengths, selected by a ring around the lens.

A switch with what looks like a metering mode icon allows you apply a further frame or overlay, and you can also choose whether or not to add audio effects that mimic such things as whirring film reels. A small lever below the decades dial applies digital zoom up to about 2x, but it’s not smooth and continuous. Instead, there are discrete 20 steps, which you’ll see clearly if you zoom during recording.

You can set exposure compensation over a +/-2 EV range, and can manually turn on or off the small LED flash / video light. In stills mode, you can additionally set the white balance and a self-timer.

To make a print, you fold out and twist a large key on the side. This turns out to be a surprisingly pleasing tactile experience.

Fujifilm Instax Mini Evo Cinema key features:

• Retro Super-8 styling: The rather fabulous retro design is inspired by vintage Fuji Single 8 home-movie cameras
• Eras dial: Movie/TV filter effects from the 1930s to the 2020s are selected using a large dial
• Power: The camera has an internal rechargeable battery that recharges via USB-C, but doesn’t last long
• Storage: Files are recorded to either a small internal memory, or a micro-SD card.
• Add-on accessories: A screw-in grip extension and a clip-on viewfinder magnifier are included in the box

In use

Hold down the Mini Evo Cinema’s power button for a couple of seconds, and firstly an Instax logo will appear onscreen. But the camera will only be ready to start shooting three or four seconds later. This tardiness affects everything it does: switching between decades effects, or from playback to shooting, takes several seconds every single time. I found that constantly irritating – not helped by the fact that sometimes, the camera just shows a blank screen, as if it’s switched itself off. 

To record video clips, you hold the device upright on one hand, like an old cine camera. The chunky shape imposed by the built-in Instax printer makes it a little awkward to hold, and I found it worked best with the add-on grip extension. It will record clips for as long as you hold down the front shutter button, up to 15 seconds. Alternatively, you can set it so one press starts recording, and another ends it.

The screen on the back is tiny and low-resolution, with a viewing area of just 27 x 21mm. As a result, it gives only a vague hint of what you’re going to get. Things aren’t much better with the add-on magnifier: when using it, I can see not only the screen’s constituent pixels, but also their red, green and blue sub-pixels. It’s a pretty terrible viewing experience either way.

Battery life is, depending on how you look at it, either appalling or mercifully short. I managed to drain the battery by shooting just 35 photos and 38 video clips over the course of about an hour. Then it emptied all over again when transferring those files to my phone using the Instax Mini Evo app. Which you have to do, in order to share your videos.

Despite all this, the Mini Evo Cinema is undeniably fun to shoot with, especially when you first start using it. It’s just so easy to fall in love with it during those first few days. However, once the novelty value had worn off, I found myself getting increasingly annoyed by its foibles. Especially as, by then, I knew what the output looked like.

Video quality

Once your videos have copied across to your phone, you can admire them onscreen. And on one level, they look great; I love the filters Fujifilm has created, and how they capture the nostalgia of different decades. They’re really rather wonderful. You can see examples of each below, here shot as 5MP stills, at default strength and with frames applied.

Unfortunately, though, there’s no getting away from the fact that those tiny 800×600 videos are, objectively, extremely low quality. Everything looks terribly pixellated and lacking detail, and the audio quality is equally poor. Don’t, in any way, mistake this for a serious camera. (Note that the sample below has no sound).

To share a video, you can create a print either directly from the camera during playback, or by using the app. In either case, though, that video needs to be uploaded from your phone to Fujifilm’s servers. That’s supposed to happen automatically, but usually I had to intervene and push it across manually. It’s important to understand that you can’t upload a movie and send people a link – instead, you must make a print to share it.

By scanning the print’s embedded QR code with a smartphone, anyone can play the associated video. But unfortunately, the viewing experience is just a bit underwhelming, with the clip being displayed in a small Instax frame on a plain black background. It’s sort-of OK on a phone, but it looks pretty poor on an iPad. You can follow this link to see what it looks like. Fujifilm says it will delete movies after 2 years, though, which means this link will expire on 5th February 2028.

It’s worth noting that the app provides no means of sharing videos via normal social media such as YouTube, Tiktok, or Facebook etc. To do that, you’ll need to either download the videos from Fujifilm’s site, or copy the files off the memory card. You can’t share still images from the app in any way, as far I can tell (other than by physically printing them).

Fujifilm Instax Mini Evo Cinema: Our Verdict

The Fujifilm Instax Mini Evo Cinema is a camera of extremes. On the one hand, the retro movie-camera design is fabulous, the shooting experience is quite fun, and the Eras filters are fabulous. But on the other, it’s painfully slow, battery life is poor, and the output quality is objectively terrible. Some people will absolutely love it, despite those serious failings. But I’m afraid I don’t.

The thing is, there’s a germ of a brilliant idea here. If Fujifilm could rebuild this using a decent sensor, and without the unnecessary baggage of an Instax printer, it could be a fabulous retro video camera. But right now, it’s just an expensive toy. I fear that most buyers will use it for a couple of weeks and one or two packs of film, but then leave it to languish in a drawer once the novelty value has worn off.

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