Christmas Gifts for Men with Photobox Review

Reviewed by Catherine Joyce

Towards the end of November I start planning my Christmas shopping and try to come up with gift ideas for my family. Both mine and my husband’s family are dominated by males and I always find it difficult coming up with new ideas. There are only so many times you can get away with socks and beer!

I like personalised presents and Photobox have some great ideas on their website for men. As well as a wide range of photo books they also offer an amazing selection of personalised gifts including calendars, mugs, cushions, phone and iPad cases as well as more Christmassy gifts like snow globes and Christmas baubles.

My husband is a keen photographer and we always take lots of photos when we are out and about. Unfortunately like most people, we rarely look back at the photos once they have been uploaded to the web, which is a real shame as I have fond memories of looking at mum’s photo albums with my sister and brother when we were younger. Mum has always been very good at creating photo albums and I used to help her put them together, my job was putting the photo corners on the photographs and she would stick them in the album. It was very time consuming and fiddly and I much preferred the self-adhesive albums that were very popular in the 80’s as they made the job much quicker! These days creating a photo album is so much easier, Photobox have a fantastic range of photo books in all shapes and sizes so there is something to suit every budget. I have used Photobox in the past and receive regular emails from them and I noticed that there have been plenty of online discount offers in the run up to Christmas so it is worth signing up to their emails to see what offers are currently available.

I was given a 160 page A4 personalised hardback photo book (prices start from £19.99 for a 26 page photo book) and a calendar (prices start from £6.99) to review. I really liked the look of the year book because it has the year cut out on the front which looks very effective but as I was creating an album that covered 2 years unfortunately this wasn’t suitable for me but I would certainly consider it next year.

Photobox have made creating your album very easy, once you have created an account it is easy to upload your photos to an album on the Photobox website. You can upload from your computer, Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Dropbox or Google photos. All our photos are stored on Google photos, so I chose this option and it was incredibly quick and easy to do. Photobox linked to my Google photos folders and all I needed to do was open the folders and select the photos I wanted to use by simply clicking the photo. Once I had selected all the photos, I just clicked the upload button and the photos were uploaded into my Photobox album. I was amazed how fast this process was, the last time I created a photo book I remember this stage taking ages so this was a definite improvement. When you are creating your book you can choose to add the photos yourself or have Photobox create a book for you. I chose to do it myself as I wanted to add text to say where and when the photo was taken but if you are short of time this would work well.

I found it very easy to add photos and design the book as there were templates available; first I chose how many photos I wanted on a page and the layout of the photos and then all I had to do was select the photos and add text. There are lots of different ways to personalise your book, I kept mine quite simple, but you can choose from a number of different coloured pages or even add illustrations and embellishments to your book.

It took me quite a long time to create my book as I had 160 pages to fill and almost 1000 photos to choose from but I did enjoy making it, so it was time well spent.

Once I had created my photo book I created a calendar, again this was very easy to do and much quicker than the photobook. There are plenty of styles to choose from and you can even choose the starting date. I think the calendars make lovely gifts for family members and there are discounts of up to £5 per calendar available if you purchase multiple copies of the same calendar, so even more reason to give them as gifts. You can even add special dates to your calendar for an additional £3, so there is no excuse for people forgetting birthdays in future!

Ordering the gifts was very easy and I received a confirmation email with estimated delivery dates. I also received a second email once my products had been despatched. The service was excellent and I actually received both products before the estimated delivery date which was fantastic.

I am thrilled with my gifts, they both look very professional and I know my husband will love them. I will certainly use Photobox again as after seeing the quality of the book and calendar I am really interested in trying some of the other photo products that they do. With such a wide choice I just need to decide which ones!!

Rating: 5/5

For more information or to buy that perfect Christmas gift visit www.photobox.co.uk.