Gadget Reviews: Photobox
A review of this online photo storage and gift service
From: Photobox.com
Reviewer: Siobhan Neill
Photobox.com is a photo sharing site that prints and gifts can be ordered from. Online registration is required, and the version I chose was the standard and not the pro version.
The website itself is easy to navigate and aesthetically pleasing. Uploading is fairly easy, allowing pictures to be dragged from other windows. This means that they can be picked from thumbnails and not filenames, consequently it is a good deal less painful. The upload speed necessarily depends on the computer being used and the amount of photos, but a whole album can be set to upload allowing you to go away and make a cup of tea without doing it in groups of five as is done elsewhere. Additionally a newsletter ‘Fresh out of the Box’, contains articles relevant to photography and, for example, release dates of appropriate books adds an enjoyable dimension to the mostly product orientated main section of the site.
The photo sharing, similar to others such as flickr.com and picasa.google.com, has many options allowing settings such as privacy to be determined. It doesn’t however have the ‘fun extras’ such as tagging people and allowing others (even members) to leave comments. Friends’ photos, indeed any photos, can be downloaded, but there is no option to be able to get the high quality larger versions.
Photo prints are the highlight of this site. Set up to provide real prints from digital, there are a lot of advice pages, such as quality advice and cropping of images. A photo retouching option is also available, meaning units of time can be bought to provide the best results. This is a service not normally offered by similar print sites. Photo enlargement sizes cover a wide range, including A2 posters. Standard 6”x4” prints are 10p for the first 150, then reducing as the quantity increases. Prepaid options start at 400 photos, each 9p each.
The range of gifts available from this site is the most extensive I’ve seen on the internet. The usual mugs, photobooks and cards are available but so too are pages of stickers, cushions and handbags. In particular a comparison with the Jessops online print site snapfish.co.uk was made. For an 11” by 8.5” hardcover photo book the main specifications were similar, with photobox.com being slightly more expensive to add pages to. Also, only four fairly plain styles were possible, whereas more variety was offered by competitors including kids versions. Canvas prints, another favourite also showed a good range of 6 different size options, ranging between £59.99 and £129.99. Generally similar prices to others were found, but it was the array of products that made it stand apart.
A number of prints, including enlargements were ordered, and all were received the next day (order was placed in the morning). This was remarkably quick, especially as it was to Northern Ireland which often incurs a delay of a few days. All were in good condition and the quality as good as from any high street shop.
Overall it is a very professional site and would be of interest to keen amateurs in particular. The print options and gifts are what set it apart, with photo sharing being the main factor in it not being used more.