Nano Banana 2 Explained: Features, Price, Best Prompts

Nano Banana 2 is Google's current image generation and editing model — the one now behind the "Create image" button in the Gemini app, in Google Search's AI Mode, and in Google's Flow video editor. It replaced the original Nano Banana and sits alongside Nano Banana Pro, and it's built to give near-Pro image quality at Flash speed and Flash pricing. Here's what it actually does, how to prompt it, and exactly how to run it in Plurel.

What Nano Banana 2 actually is

Under the hood, Nano Banana 2 is Google's nickname for Gemini 3.1 Flash Image. The new model, which is technically Gemini 3.1 Flash Image, can create more realistic images than its predecessor. It's the third generation in this family: the company first released Nano Banana in August 2025, prompting people to generate millions of images in the Gemini app, especially in countries like India, and in November released Nano Banana Pro, which allows users to create more detailed and high-quality images.

Nano Banana 2 doesn't replace Pro so much as sit next to it with a different trade-off. Nano Banana 2 leverages the Gemini model's broad world knowledge to create enhanced visuals using images via web search, which is why it can render a specific building, product, or public figure more accurately than a model working from training data alone. Google has been explicit that the two models now serve different jobs: Nano Banana Pro for high-fidelity tasks requiring maximum factual accuracy, or Nano Banana 2 for rapid generation, precise instruction following and integrated image-search grounding.

On the developer side, there's also a control most people never touch but should know exists: configurable thinking levels — you can adjust thinking levels (Minimal, the default, vs. High/Dynamic) to let the model reason through complex prompts before rendering, which significantly improves output quality and prompt adherence. Minimal is fine for quick iteration; switch it up when a prompt has several conditions that all need to be satisfied at once (a specific pose, a specific product, a specific piece of text, all in one frame).

What it's actually good at

Photorealism and instruction-following. Users can create media with more vibrant lighting, richer textures, and sharper detail compared with the original Nano Banana, and the model adheres much more strictly to complex, multi-layered prompts, helping to ensure the image you ask for is what's generated.

Text inside images. This is one of the model's clearer wins. Its text rendering features allow for the production of accurate, legible, and translatable image text, addressing the needs of marketing and international communication. That covers signage, packaging mockups, greeting cards, and multilingual graphics — jobs where most image models still mangle letters.

Character and object consistency. Nano Banana 2 can maintain character consistency for up to five characters and fidelity of up to 14 objects in one workflow for better storytelling. That's the feature that matters most for comics, storyboards, or a recurring mascot across a campaign — you describe the same person or product in prompt after prompt and it stays recognizable.

Diagrams and data. Less obvious but genuinely useful: Nano Banana 2 can create infographics, turn notes into diagrams, and generate data visualizations, which makes it usable for slide decks and explainer graphics, not just art.

Resolution and format. You can create images with a resolution ranging from 512px to 4K, in different aspect ratios, so the same model covers a quick square thumbnail and a print-ready 4K banner.

Nano Banana 2 vs Nano Banana Pro, at a glance