Google introduced Nano Banana 2.1, an image model based on Gemini 3.6 Flash. The reported price for a 1K image is $0.0336, roughly half that of the previous model, with claimed improvements in reference-image use, consistency of people and text rendering. The official model card says limitations remain in rendering small text and long paragraphs, maintaining character consistency and understanding spatial directions. Quality improvements are the maker’s assessment, and actual editing work still requires reviewing the results.