Best instant camera 2026: which of nine to buy, and what each photo costs in the UK with instax and Polaroid film

An instant camera is one of the few tech purchases where the device is the small part of the spending. Five photos a month for two years is 120 photos: six twin packs, £101.94 of instax mini film at Fujifilm's UK price on 23 September 2026, and that sum appears on no spec sheet. It is a division, the price of a pack over the photos in it, and the second number is published: Fujifilm declares ten photos per pack on the mini 12 and mini 41 spec sheets, and Polaroid eight per pack on its i-Type film sheet. The rest of the difference between the two brands is the price of the pack: at the makers' UK stores, £16.99 buys eight Polaroid photos or twenty instax mini shots.

Film is the purchase that repeats, so its price per shot matters more than any difference between cameras. At Fujifilm's UK eShop on 23 September 2026, the instax mini twin pack of 20 shots cost £16.99, 85p a shot. The store sold 10-shot mini packs only in its frame designs, such as Macaron or Black Frame, at £9.99, about a pound a shot. The SQUARE and WIDE twin packs cost £16.99 and £18.99, 85p and 95p a shot. At Polaroid's UK store, colour i-Type film was £16.99 for eight photos, £2.12 each, 600 film £18.99 for eight, £2.37 each, and Go film £18.99 for sixteen, £1.19 each.

Three things stand out. The instax twin pack saves about 15p a shot against the 10-shot packs, and at Fujifilm's UK prices SQUARE costs exactly what mini costs per shot while giving a third more image. If you shoot more than a pack a month, we recommend the plain twin pack: at Fujifilm's UK store it is the cheapest way to buy mini film per shot. And Polaroid lists the Now among the cameras that take 600 film as well as i-Type, so a Now owner pays less per photo with i-Type. Fujifilm's UK store did not sell a 100-shot mini bundle that day, so the calculator leaves that row without a price.

The difference between instax and Polaroid comes down to three things, and none of them is quality. One: the size and shape of the photo. Two: how many photos come in each pack, ten with instax and eight with Polaroid. Three: the time until you see the image, about 90 seconds with instax and ten to fifteen minutes with Polaroid, according to their makers. The feel of using them comes from those three, and the price per photo from the second one and the price of each pack.

And there is a crossover the category's comparisons leave out. Fujifilm's biggest photo, the instax WIDE, measures 99 × 62 mm, or 61.4 cm² of image. The classic Polaroid photo measures 79 × 77 mm, or 60.8 cm². They are the same size of memory, less than one per cent apart, at 95p and £2.12 a photo at the makers' UK stores on 23 September 2026. If you want the big photo and the shape does not matter to you, the decision is made.

The Kodak instant cameras in this category are not film cameras. The Mini Shot 3 Retro prints by dye sublimation in four passes onto 7.6 × 7.6 cm sheets from its own cartridge, and the Printomatic, Smile and Step models print onto 2 × 3 inch ZINK paper, sheets that colour with heat. Neither develops anything: the print comes out finished and dry.

So the per-print sum changes. ZINK paper cost 35p a sheet at the Kodak Photo Plus UK store on 23 September 2026, in a pack of 150 on offer at £52.99 (50p at its regular £74.99), against 85p for an instax mini shot. What you give up is the photo itself: a developed instant photo on one side, and on the other a print from a digital file, which can be chosen on a screen before it is printed.

Argos's instant cameras range listed 46 products on 23 September 2026. Thirty-four use instant film: 18 instax mini cameras (three of them EVO hybrids with a screen), three WIDE, one SQUARE, seven Polaroid Go, four Polaroid i-Type and an instax Link printer. The other twelve use none: five are digital cameras with a printer inside, four of them sold for children, whose names mention no film, and seven are not instant cameras at all, from 35 mm and single-use film cameras to a Fujifilm mirrorless camera.

For a child, the choice is therefore between two different devices. A film camera gives the white-frame photo they have seen, and each shot costs 85p with instax mini film at Fujifilm's UK price on 23 September 2026; a camera with a paper roll lets them shoot without counting, because the consumable is paper, and what comes out is a print on roll paper. If the camera is for one birthday, the first; if it is for playing with all year, the second. For other gifts that get used, the practical tech gifts guide has seven that solve a real problem.

Development time is published, and it is a big difference: Fujifilm declares about 90 seconds for all its film, and Polaroid ten to fifteen minutes for its own. If the photo is for giving to someone on the spot, the instax hands it over and the Polaroid is still developing in your pocket.

How long the photo lasts afterwards is another matter, and here it is worth saying what is known and what is not: neither maker publishes a number of years. What they publish are conditions. Polaroid asks for photos not to be pressed or put in an album for the first 30 days, to be kept somewhere dry and dark meanwhile, and to go in UV-protective frames if they will hang on a wall. Fujifilm asks for prints to be kept out of direct sunlight, somewhere cool and dry.

And both makers agree on unused film: Polaroid recommends storing it flat in the fridge, between 4 and 18 degrees, and never freezing it because the chemistry is ruined; Fujifilm asks for it not to be left somewhere with extreme temperatures, such as a closed car in the sun, and to be back at room temperature before use. It is the part of the upkeep that decides whether a pack you paid for comes out right or with shifted colours.