If you've been yearning to see your Google Photos snaps on something other than a tiny phone screen, the service has good news – it's expanding its photo and canvas prints service outside the US for the first time.
In a blog post, Google Photos said announced that it's rolling out its photo prints and larger canvas prints to Canada and 28 European countries, including the UK and Ireland. Until now, Google Photos users in those locations have only been able to order photo books containing their snaps, so the move massively increases the physical printing options available within the service.
The pricing for Google's photo prints is also pretty reasonable 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 (this costs $0.18 in the US). That's slightly more than rivals like Snapfish and Printique, but lower than some of the 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 if you want to go larger there's always the canvas print option. 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-inch to a wall-friendly 30 x 40-inch (20 x 24-inch in Canada).
The main benefits of using Google Photos' print services over rivals are the convenience factor, and also the photo library's impressive search functions. Thanks to increasingly powerful subject-recognition, Google Photos now lets you search your bulging library with increasingly specific keywords, making it easy to fish out that particular memory from your sea of memories (and screenshots).
Analysis: Not the cheapest, but super-convenient
Google Photos is banking on its users preferring the sheer convenience of ordering prints and canvases to their door from within its service, rather than going for the outright cheapest option.
As in the US, the Google Photos' printing options are slightly pricier than its established rivals on a per-print basis. 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 print photos for slightly less than Google's service.
It's a similar story with canvas prints, too. 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 rivals, Photobox also lets you upload photos directly from Google Photos, along with Facebook, instagram and Dropbox.
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 looking forward to doing a full comparison between them soon to see which is the best for making those digital memories physical.
