Mother's Day is looming in the UK – it's due on 15 March, so we're rapidly running low on shopping days. But finding your mum a special gift she'll cherish isn't always easy. After all, you want something heartfelt that's going to last longer than some ephemeral supermarket flowers. That's why I'd always recommend a photo book for anyone looking for a unique gift.
Not only do the best photo books make for a high-quality present, but they also last a lifetime. On top of this, they allow you to collect together all of your favorite family memories and remind your loved one of all the great moments you've shared – that's not something a box of chocolates can claim to offer.
There are a huge number of services out there, though, and they vary significantly in terms of the design tools, print quality, and pricing they offer. Fortunately, I've personally overseen every photo book review that TechRadar has done, comparing and contrasting the results, meaning I'm in the perfect place to offer my advice on the best options available to you.
So, in reverse order, here are the three photo book services I’m most tempted to use this Mother’s Day.
3. VistaPrint
Anyone who’s looking for a real bargain this Mother’s Day should really check out VistaPrint. Its list price for a 12 x 12 inch photo book is £49.99 for 24 pages – which is already a super competitive price – but it also offers some great sale prices leading up to key holidays. Case in point, it’s currently offering 40% off photo books up until 24th March, reducing the above example to just £29.99. That’s one of the best prices I’ve ever seen on a photo book of this size.
And yet despite this cracking price, the tools it offers are still super effective. It doesn’t quite offer the precision of some services – you can’t input precise dimensions or color values, for example – but it provides 119 fantastic layout options. On top of this, its printed books are generally accurate and show off bright images, even if they’re not quite as bold and colorful as those from Cewe below.
2. Cewe
For those of you who just want the highest possible quality present for your mum this Mother’s Day, Cewe would be my recommendation. When I first opened our review sample, I was a little stunned by the gloriously rich images that awaited me. Whether it's glowing auroras or gorgeous flowers, every color looks wonderfully vibrant without losing accuracy, while every photo we’d selected remained as sharp as Japanese steel.
On top of this, its design tools are easy to use and offer a great number of features, including a wide variety of masks, frames, and fonts, making it easy to unlock your creativity. And while it’s not the cheapest photo book here, it’s still pretty competitively priced – our 28-page 12 x 12-inch sample cost us just £47.98, which is great value for such a high-quality gift.
1. Blurb
But if you’d like to know what my number one choice of photo book would be this Mother’s Day, well, I’ve gotta go Blurb. All of the design options on offer are amazingly flexible – newbies have access to 188 fully adaptable templates in Blurb’s BookWright app, while experienced designers have the option of whipping their book up in professional tools like InDesign.
When I received my printed book, I was also seriously impressed with the print quality – every image was crisp and artefact-free, while the colors of sunsets and clothing positively glowed. And yet, despite this, it’s surprisingly affordable. The 28-page sample I produced for our testing process cost just £50.76 plus £8.99 delivery, putting it among the more affordable services I’ve used.
It’s also the service my own mum uses for her own photo books, which is about the best endorsement you could get for a Mother’s Day gift: kid tested, mother approved.
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