The first instax Pal was hard to love. It was a rounded, palm-sized digital camera that carried the Instax name but didn’t shoot instant film, and it looked like nothing else in Fujifilm’s line-up. With the instax Pal 2, Fujifilm has essentially started over. The concept is the same: a pocketable digital camera that feeds photos to Instax printers. Almost everything else has changed.
The Pal 2 was announced on September 15, 2026, and it now looks like a scaled-down, squat analog film camera. The biggest practical change is a built-in optical viewfinder, which the original Pal lacked. There’s also a prominent shutter release and a 1.0-inch LCD on the top plate for reviewing shots and changing settings. It’s a neat nod to waist-level shooting on a camera that weighs about 41g.
Fujifilm North America’s Bing Liem was candid about how the first model landed, admitting that some buyers “weren’t sure what to make of it.” Fujifilm says it gathered extensive customer feedback before designing the Pal 2, and the retro shell is the most visible result.
What’s inside
- 1/3.06-inch CMOS sensor; top-quality images measure 3776 × 2832 pixels (10.7MP)
- 28mm-equivalent lens at f/2.2, focusing from 8cm to infinity
- Optical viewfinder plus 1.0-inch LCD
- Internal memory for about 100 photos, plus a microSD slot (card not included)
- Bluetooth 5.1 and USB Type-C; built-in lithium-ion battery that charges in 2–3 hours
- 37.0mm × 42.0mm × 42.3mm, approximately 41g
On the creative side, the Pal 2 has five filter themes with six effects each, and a new instax Animation mode. It captures 10 frames and turns them into a flipbook-style clip, which suits a camera built for casual, social shooting.
Film formats without film
Like its predecessor, the Pal 2 can’t print on its own. Instead, it works with the free instax Pal app, which connects over Bluetooth. The app can fire the shutter remotely, pull images off the camera and send them to an Instax smartphone printer or one of Fujifilm’s Evo hybrid cameras. Before printing, you can frame shots for instax mini, SQUARE or WIDE film, or choose a frameless format. The app also lets you add filters, text and stickers. That flexibility is unusual for Instax, since most of the company’s cameras are locked to a single film size.
In the box you get a USB Type-C cable, a hand strap and a camera angle adjustment accessory, along with a 1-year limited warranty.
Price and availability
Fujifilm lists the instax Pal 2 at $169.95 in the United States and €169.99 in Europe, in Black or White. Availability is expected in late September 2026. The price puts it squarely against the wave of cheap retro compacts, but the Pal 2 has two things most of them don’t: a real viewfinder and a direct path to physical Instax prints.
