My Viovio Review

ETA: I have another little update here: More Viovio.

First, I must preface this by saying that I do not have a fancy camera or great camera skills. Books are hard to take pictures of! You get horrible glares with the flash, and of course I waited until the sun was going behind a house and it didn't help. I should have just taken the pictures outside. :) I'll try to get better ones, but you get the general idea.

I also have to say that all of my opinions are based on the comparison of Shutterfly books. That's all I have to compare it to.

Overall, I absolutely LOVE my book. There is something very satisfying about seeing your layouts printed and having them in your hands. It doesn't have to be the greatest quality to be appreciated. It's just so much better when it's tangible! So here's my official review:

Print quality: Excellent. Much better than Shutterfly. Colors are bright and sharp. Nothing looks pixelated (is that not a word?). I noticed in my very first Shutterfly book that the pages looked grainy, but I didn't have anything to compare it to, so I didn't complain. These are incredibly sharp. I am EXTREMELY impressed. And an added cool feature, you can feel some of the black areas or other parts with lots of ink. I don't know why, but that's very cool to me.

Price: I'm pretty sure it can't be beat. I ended up paying $60 total (slightly more than I had expected) for a 133 page book with a custom hardcover. With Shutterfly, it would have cost about $145 without shipping (but of course I would have found every discount coupon available... but it would still be much more).

Binding: I'm not binding expert, but I think it could be better. It will be kept safe, so I'm not worried about losing pages, but I don't know. I think part of the problem is that my book is on the large end.

Printing (cropping and such): Part of this goes with printing and part with binding. I was aware of their specs for cropping. I uploaded my layouts at 8.75"x8.75" knowing that it would be cropped to 8.5"x8.5". They suggest keeping everything important 1/2" away from the edge, so I knew that. I would say on some edges, that much was cropped. It would be fine, but I do a lot of "matting" with my pages and you can tell that the outer edges all around the "mat" are not equal when they should be. Specifically, on the left page, on the left side, a lot was cropped. I didn't lose anything important, but some scalloped mats and fancy borders were cropped. A little disappointing, that it was more even all around, but I can deal with that. The other interesting thing is that there is about 1/8th inch of white in the "gutters" of every page. I don't know if that was supposed to be in the binding, but in my book, it's not, and you can see it. Not terribly noticeable, but definitely something I notice and it stands out to me. Again, I'm not sure if this is because my book was big and hardcover, or if this is normal. I plan to print a softcover book of just Kathryn (and eventually one for just Hannah) from 2007 to compare. Oh, and I am 99% sure my cover is stretched a little and the picture is slightly distorted.

Processing and Shipping: It took 19 days to get to me. I think they said for my book, to expect 8-9 days to put it together or print it or something. They said it should be shipped by the 24th. So I was surprised it came today. At the same time, 19 days is a LONG time!! With Shutterfly, it took 4-5 days. But, I didn't need this for anything except my own pleasure, so it was okay. And now that I have 1, hopefully I can be more patient in the future.

Will I order again?: Absolutely. For that kind of price, it is definitely worth it. Definitely. And for the quality of the printing as well. Those two things are enough for me to not be too picking with the trimming and binding. I really am hoping it is just because of how big my book is, but we'll see.

Here are some pictures, again, ignore the poor quality.

Lastly, I tried to take a comparison photo. The 2 pager is the Viovio book and the other is from a Shutterfly book. I don't think you can see the difference here, but it is very noticeable to me! If you click on them, you can see how grainy the Shutterfly book is. And you can kind of see the cropping on the Viovio book as well!

Please let me know if you have any questions!