If you’ve been longing to view your Google Photos on something other than a tiny phone screen, there’s good news for the service — it’s expanding its photo and canvas print service outside the US for the first time.
in a blog post (opens in new tab)Google Photos announced that it is rolling out its photo prints and large canvas prints to 28 European countries, including Canada and the UK and Ireland. Until now, Google Photos users in those locations were only able to order photobooks containing their Snaps, so the move marked a massive increase in the physical printing options available within the service.
Google’s Photo Print pricing is also pretty reasonable when compared to some of the best online photo printing services. For a standard 4 x 6-inch photo, you’re looking at £0.13p per print in the UK (it costs $0.18 in the US). That’s a bit more than rivals like Snapfish and Printik, but less than some premium options like Sim Lab.
Other photo sizes available include 5 x 7-inch, 8 x 10-inch, 11 x 14-inch, 12 x 12-inch, 12 x 18-inch, 16 x 20-inch and 24 x 36-inch, and There’s always a canvas print option if you want to go big. These start at £23.99 in the UK ($24.99 in the US), and can be ordered in sizes that range from 8 x 8-inches to wall-friendly 30 x 40-inches (20 x 24-inches in Canada) There are.
The main advantage of using Google Photos’ print services over rivals is the convenience factor, and Photo Library’s impressive search functions, too. Thanks to increasingly powerful subject-detection, Google Photos now lets you rapidly search your bulging library with specific keywords, making it easy to fish that particular memory out of your sea of memories (and screenshots).
Analysis: Not the cheapest, but super-convenient
Google Photos is banking on its users, who prefer the convenience of ordering prints and canvases delivered to their doorstep from within its service, rather than the cheapest option directly.
As in the US, Google Photos’ printing options on a per-print basis are slightly more expensive than those of its established competitors. Traditional sites like Walmart ($0.12 for a 4 x 6-inch print in the US) and, in the UK, Snapfish (£0.10 per 4 x 6-inch print) and Photobox (£0.11 for a 4 x 6i-inch print) both let you Google Some of our services allow you to print photos for less.
There is a similar story with canvas prints. For example, with Photobox in the UK you can order an 8 x 8-inch canvas print for £17.99 (or just £8.99, with its current 50% discount), compared to £23.99 on Google Photos. Like many of its competitors, Photobox also lets you upload photos directly from Facebook, Instagram, and Dropbox, as well as Google Photos.
But the big unknown right now is how the quality compares between these services. And now that Google Photos has launched its photo printing and canvas options in most of Europe and Canada, we’re expecting a full comparison between them soon, to see how those digital memories materialize. Which is the best.
