Mimeo Photo Book: Two Minute Review
If you’re overwhelmed by the variety of designs and product options, you’ll likely enjoy the simplicity of Mimeo, one of the best photo books available in the US and UK.
The only options you can choose from on the main site itself are hard cover, soft cover, and the size of the book you want – meaning the design isn’t decided until you enter the website builder.
I clearly prefer this to other websites that often give you several different “points of entry” into the photo book builder (e.g. via the shape of the book, or via a specific design, etc.).
While Mimeo isn’t the cheapest option out there, I found the base price of $32.99 / £25.99 for a 20-page, 8″ x 8″ hardcover photo book to be very reasonable. After selecting the type of book I wanted, I opened the photo book builder.
Here I could choose from a relatively small selection of designs. While there were some nice contemporary designs, there were significantly fewer than other sites – and many of the designs were a little bland and dated.
One of the few frustrations I’ve had with Mimeo is that you can only upload images from your desktop or Google Photos. That means if you want to take photos from Dropbox, Facebook, or Instagram, you’ll need to download the images separately before you can upload them to Mimeo. Luckily, this annoyance has been offset by one of my favorite photo book-making features—the ability to start creating a book while your photos are still uploading. Not only is this a huge time saver, I also found that the upload process was significantly faster than other services I’ve tested.
Mimeo’s process of putting the photo book together was much smoother than other services. While it has the standard drag-and-drop functionality, you could also choose a frame and then the photo for it. I also loved how easy it was to resize a photo so it spreads to full page or spread – and reverts back to the normal frame.
Although I couldn’t reproduce this event in my other reviews, my computer unexpectedly restarted Google Chrome while I was working on my Mimeo photo book. Although I didn’t click the save button myself, Mimeo had saved my progress so far and I didn’t have to redo anything.
When I finished creating the book, I initially had trouble finding the “Preview” button as it is very small. However, once I finally found the button, I found the preview feature useful. When I bought the book, Mimeo gave me a helpful warning to double-check the spelling and grammar of all text, as well as the image quality of my photos. My minor gripe at this point was that I found the postage was a whopping £8.99 which was higher than the other services I had used.
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The Mimeo Photo Book came in secure cardboard packaging and even had a plain dust jacket to protect the correct dust jacket. However, despite this apparent care, there was a small scratchy roughness on the book’s dust jacket near the spine – I would suspect this was from the printing process. Otherwise I was very satisfied with the quality of the book. The print was true to color and the binding looked great. Overall, I felt that Mimeo offered a good product at a good price.
Should you buy the Mimeo Photo Book?
Buy it if…
Don’t buy it if…
Also consider…
This is how I tested the Mimeo photo book
- I created a photo book with my own photos on the Mimeo website
- I standardized the tests across different websites by selecting similarly priced products with similar designs and features
I tested a number of different websites including Mimeo, Mixbook and more. To standardize this process as much as possible, I chose books that were offered at a similar price because I wanted to test the value for money for the user. I have also chosen similar designs, shapes and sizes where I could. I used my own photos for each book, making sure I used the same photos for each book.
When I received the Mimeo Photo Book, I carefully compared it to the other websites’ photo books. I have checked the image quality and possible color deviations. I also made sure that neither the cover nor the individual pages of the book show any damage or scratches.
First reviewed May 2023
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