Pixum Personalised Photo Calendar Review

Pixum is an online store offering various printed products you can personalise with your own images. The products on offer range from print and photo books to posters and phone cases but it's the Pixum calendar range we'll be focusing on in this review. Perfect for gifts, the whole range of calendars are personalisable and prices start at £9.99. Three calendar types are available: wall, desk and year planners, all of which we will take a look at in our review. 

Pixum Personalised Photo Calendar Features

The calendar line-up from Pixum is pretty impressive with almost 60 designs to choose from. We'd be still reviewing calendars well into 2018 if we took a look at them all so we've just focused on four designs: free-standing desk calendar, Photo year planner (A2), wall calendar classic (A3) and wall calendar classic (A4). The paper used on them is slightly different, too, as are the designs so we can get a more rounded view on what Pixum has to offer. To see what other products you can design with the help of Pixum, take a look at their website. 

Available in A2, A3 or A4-format, you can choose between a landscape or portrait orientation when designing a wall calendar while desk calendars come in a square or landscape format. Year planners give you a quick overview of the whole year so they're flat and big enough to jot important dates on. As for the design, you can personalise this or use pre-made theme-specific designs Pixum has created. 

Pixum Personalised Photo Calendar Key Features:

• Various styles and sizes available 
• Freely choose a month to start with as well as the date display
• Variable template designs
• 4 paper choices
• 3 ways to create products
• Excellent colours and print quality
• Edit your pictures while you're creating your wall calendar
• The average shipping period is 3 to 5 working days.

Pixum Personalised Photo Calendar Handling & Performance

To reduce the wait time for the products we ordered, each calendar arrived separately. They were delivered in cardboard sleeves which do a great job at protecting the calendars when out for delivery. 

We will talk about the quality of the products further into the review but as soon as you take them out of their packaging you can see that each of the styles are well-made and the print quality is excellent. Even the A4 calendar, which features images from social media and a smartphone, looks great. It is worth noting that Pixum does recommend using high-quality images to ensure the quality of your personalised product and the Pixum upload system supports file sizes from 50MB right up, and over, 50KB. As for file type, JPG files (colour space: standard sRGB, 24 Bit) are recommended but the system also supports BMP, GIF, PNG, PCX, TGA and TIFF file types. 

There are three ways you can create calendars with Pixum: Online, by downloading software or via an app. The software and app are free to download but we found we didn't need to use them as the online editor was quick and really simple to use. However, if you don't plan on creating a calendar in one go, we'd recommend you download the software as you can then save designs to your computer and pick them back up later. Plus, you work offline, which some prefer to do. If you don't own a desktop computer or laptop but do have a tablet, the app will be your best option as it's optimised for mobile devices. As we used the online editor, this is what we'll be focusing on when discussing 'ease of use'.

Once you find the design you like, click 'create now' and the Pixum online editor will open. The interface is, pretty much, self-explanatory with the calendar design in the centre, editing options to the top and bottom and an area for uploading images to the left. If you change your mind about the design you want to use, you can pick a different product as well as size, orientation and paper type by clicking on the product type drop-down. Here's where you also change the starting month on the calendar if you don't want it to begin in January. 

'Change design' is where you can select a different design for your calendar and it's worth having a look through them as there are different options for how the dates/months are set out. Some give you more space for writing important information on them while other designs are simply numbers you can tick off. 

All aspects of the design, including the cover, are customisable so you really can spend quite some time creating personalised calendars. Various layouts are available so you can have just one or multiple images on your pages and there's also an option to add text boxes. If you don't like the pre-designed templates you can create your own by clicking the 'add' button. When you do create a new layout, there's an option to 'add to all pages' which is really useful when you want the calendar to be uniform. 

To add images, simply drag and drop from the photos you've uploaded or click the camera icon to upload directly from your device to the design. Pulling them from the upload area does mean you won't accidentally use an image twice as the software marks them with the month you've already used the photo on. You can also make basic edits to photos and adjust the zoom as well as orientation and add colour to backgrounds. 

You can use the text tool to add birthdays and other important dates but it's not the easiest of tools we've used as you have to adjust the text size and move the text box into position manually. Other sites we've used in the past allowed you to simply click on the date you want to add information to which made it a lot easier. 

The online editor creates automatic saves but if you want to be extra safe, you can save your own projects from the project tab. Here's where you also load previous projects, too. 

A word of warning, a couple of my images were too low in quality for the calendar, which the software told me about when I tried to add it to the basket, but the software didn't say which images were the ones causing the problems so I had to use a bit of guesswork which was annoying. 

Once you've completed your design, preview it then simply add it to your shopping cart. 

Pixum Free-standing desk calendar (square, premium paper matt)

Pixum Photo year planner A2 (one-sided print, premium paper matt)

Pixum Wall calendar classic A3 (portrait, glossy paper)

Pixum Wall calendar classic A4 (portrait, premium paper matt)

All of the calendars we designed and had printed, really do, look great. Image quality is good with accurate colour reproduction and good detail throughout. Also, to say that the resolution of many of the images used in the A4 calendar aren't as high as those used in the other calendars (they were snapped on a mobile), the quality is still pleasing. Overall, colours are vibrant and true-to-life in all of the prints and yes, you can see a difference in the quality of image when you compare those captured with a smartphone and a DSLR but unless the person who you're buying the calendar for is a pro photographer, we don't think they'll actually notice that much. Plus, it's not like the image quality is poor, it's just that, obviously, the bigger image files produce better results. 

Pxium offers a variety of paper choices, of which we tested, and even though all produce good results, we actually like the premium matt (250 g/m² ) option the best. The premium matt paper is, actually, really strong and the best surface for writing on. This paper type is also UV-resistant. The glossy paper we used on the A3 calendar is very durable and colours look great but it can be a little shiny at certain light angles. The ring-binding on all of the calendars is also well built, robust and has no problem holding the weight of the paper hanging from it. 

Delivery times change depending on what type of calendar you order. The production time for photo calendars with premium paper matt & extra matt finishes is 4 working days and delivery times sit at 3-5 days. Photo calendars with premium glossy finishes take 5 working days to complete then have a delivery time of 3-5 working days and finally, photo calendars with glossy photo paper take 6 working days to produce then have a delivery time of 3-5 days. From ordering the products to delivery at the office was 5 working days and we were kept up-to-date on our order via email. P&P to the UK various from product-to-product but for calendars, it's £3.99 which is very reasonable. 

Value For Money

The cost of each product varies depending what size you want and if you add any premium extras but as a guide, prices range from £9.99 - £54.99. The image and overall product quality make the prices rather reasonable. Some other photo calendar produces do have slightly lower prices for some sizes but as we've not reviewed their products, we can't tell you if the quality level is the same as what Pixum offers. Other manufacturers creating calendars include PhotoBox, Bonusprint and Vistaprint but do a quick Google and you will find plenty more.

Pixum Personalised Photo Calendar Verdict 

From start to finish, Pixum made choosing, creating and ordering a personalised photo calendar a doddle. The quality of the products they produce is excellent and the calendars we received are all well made, sturdy and colour reproduction is spot on. Personalised photo products make reasonably priced gifts for loved ones and with quick turnarounds, you won't be waiting long for them to arrive. As you'd expect, making a product a little bit more special comes at a premium but you can stick with basic paper quality if you don't want to spend too much, although we would recommend the premium choice. We did have a couple of niggles with the design software but nothing so major that it's worth knocking lots of points off the overall score and its ease of use balances this out anyway. With Pixum, you get plenty of choices and you really can personalise everything in the final design, allowing you to make something really special as a result. 

Overall, we are more than happy to 'Highly Recommend' the personalised photo calendar from Pixum as the quality is really excellent and turnaround times are great.