The back is quite different and nicely improved. Instead of a row of buttons, they've been moved off to the side to make room for a slightly larger rear LCD. The screen is bright enough when reviewing images indoors, but it's difficult to use in bright sunlight. I also found it annoying that the only film count indicator is on the screen. I much prefer the row of 10 lights found on other Instax printers, where each light turns off to show remaining prints. There's still the four-way click wheel in the center, which handles selecting all the various options and makes scrolling through menus pretty simple. There are now four smaller buttons: a dedicated back button, as well as buttons for printing, reviewing photos, and recording audio.
One thing that's completely unchanged from the LiPlay is the lens and sensor. The LiPlay+ main camera uses the same small 1/5-inch, 5-megapixel sensor, which sits behind an f/2 28-mm equivalent lens. That combo captures images that are plenty good enough for printing Instax Mini prints. Shooting scenes alongside my Pixel 7 phone, the printed results from both devices were close enough in image quality that I couldn't tell the difference (aside from the wider lens on the phone).
As with the plain LiPlay, you can save to a microSD card or the built-in memory, which can store about 45 images. I strongly recommend using a microSD card for expanded storage capacity—a 1-GB microSD card holds about 850 images, according to Fujifilm—but reviewing that many photos on the LiPlay+ can be slow and tedious; a 128-GB card should suffice. Even if you use the internal memory, you can back up those photos onto a microSD card (although you have to do it image by image). Once the internal memory is full, you'll need to delete or transfer images to the memory card. It is nice not to need a microSD card, but if you want to easily make backups or have more storage, it's the way to go.