It's a novelty as you say, and I can see the attraction of having the physical print right there. Plus there's the performance as it snaps out like a big ticket from an old-fashioned bus conductor's machine.

But for all that, the results don't compare with an old 110 camera. With a bit of care, it's possible to get decent pictures  that even stand enlargement (a bit), whereas all of the photos I've see from (all three!!!) of my son's cameras are terrible. I'm talking about picture quality here. The composition is usually quite good, but everything else isn't. He takes a huge amount of trouble over trying to get the lighting right, using flash to fill in etc. but it's like the God of Photos tosses a coin to determine whether the output is going to be OK, or a complete waste of film, or something in between. I would say that it's roughly a three way split, with a third being wildly out of focus or under/over exposed to the point where the bin is appropriate, a third being like mediocre versions of 110 film shots and a third being almost as good. And, by the way, even those shots I describe as OK appear poorly exposed in some way or other, with bland colour or foggy B&W.

Of course, none of this would be an issue if it was only a few pounds being wasted, but I reckon he's spent over a thousand quid in the last few weeks. His latest camera is this, which is £600 in the sale and cost him more. It looks the dog's danglers, and the write-up suggests you are investing in the ultimate in tech and quality. If only what squirts out of the camera was remotely as convincing.

Jesus christ, yeah that's ridiculous!
Much better things to waste my money on.

Waaay back in the '90s, Polaroid made large-format (18x24" ISTR) instant film that you could shoot in a purpose-built camera/studio for US$25 a pop, at (e.g.) the Boston Museum of Fine Art. The quality was really, really good. They also made b+w instant film that did a pretty decent negative from MF film backs. It's these dumb, modern plastic toys with shit lenses, and grossly inferior 'reverse-engineered' instant film that suck dogs balls.

There's something odd going on. Maybe I should start a conspiracy theory. Apart from the cameras with tiny fixed focus lenses (more or less) which are a throwback to various points in the C20th, most of these ridiculously expensive toys appear to have all the build features of cameras that actually work. So why don't they? That said, it has been commented that the auto-exposure system on the expensive Polaroid I linked to is really bad. One wonders about the quality of other stuff like shutter etc. Of course, this isn't Polaroid the company that launched instant film. It's Polaroid the recent start-up under the steady hand of the Petters Group. (Yes, the Ponzi scheme that ended with founder Tom Petters in prison for 50 years amidst bankruptcies, drugs, ramapant fraud etc etc). Polaroid (mark 2) simply bought up all the licenses and trademarks.

Auto exposure of film is a solved problem since several decades ago. It was built into the cheapest point-and-shoot cameras, and performed pretty well, at least in daylight. I think the issue here is the film, poor latitude, stability, and qc in general? I guess it's some kind of a miracle as it is.

True enough. I think the point I've seen made in a couple of places is that either the components are of the lowest quality under a slick outer shell, or they have been incredibly poorly set up for use with instant film. Or both.* 

Yes, everything you say about the film seems correct, although it's pretty piss-poor if a company at the forefront of film technology like Fuji cant get it right. And yet I've seen artefacts such as a starburst of white at the corner of some shots caused by poor chemical dispersal as the film is ejected, which is just crap.

*I take your point, in fact I think I said something similar at the start of this thread. That said, I am deeply suspicious of just how badly some of these things work. I mean, the basics of decent sounding medium priced music systems were known in the 30s and 40s, but that didn't stop Bose building speakers out of dollar shop speaker-units in budget chip-board boxes and snazzy vinyl wraps. A ton of pseudo-science and they convinced half the buying public that they were the bees'-knees of music reproduction.