Walgreens Photo Center Reviewer's Comments

To our surprise, Walgreens’ Photo Center managed to beat out some very large and well-known printing services to take the “TopTenREVIEWS Silver Award.” This service is easy to use, reasonably priced, includes many gift options and produces a nice print.

You can also order online and pick-up your order at your local Walgreens. However, your per-print price is a little more expensive.

Ease of Use - Ordering Process:  

Walgreen’s upload and ordering process is similar to many of the other services we reviewed. It is easy to use and even the most inexperienced computer novices would be able to upload and order prints with ease.

Quality of Prints:  

To test for quality, we sent the same digital photos to all of the online photo developers we reviewed.

• Sunset: Our sunset image came out nicely. Our models in the photograph were highlighted enough without looking like they were photoshopped into the picture.
• Black and White: Next to our true black and white image this photograph appears a little blue. But standing alone, this color distinction is hardly noticeable.
• Aerial: Our aerial photo is a picture of London from the top of St. Paul’s cathedral. It was a slightly foggy day and Walgreen’s photo center was able to make many of the buildings in the foreground crisp and bright. However, much like our #1 service, Snapfish, some of the buildings have a hint of yellow. Again, this is not distracting.

Note: To check quality, we took each set of prints received from the online photo developer and laid them down, side-by-side for comparison.

Pricing:  

Walgreen’s prices are extremely competitive. Although not the cheapest we’ve seen, they are definitely reasonable. However, prices do change depending on your mode of delivery. The difference between home delivery and in-store pickup is significant and Walgreens pushes for you to pick-up your photos rather than have them delivered.

Service and Site Features:  

Walgreens photo printing includes many of the usual photo gifts, like mugs, photo books, mousepads and more. We didn’t find anything particularly extraordinary; however, the items they offer is comprehensive. 

We also liked that unlike many chain stores, Walgreens photo printing services enables you to upload and print pictures from your camera phone.

Shipping Costs/ Turn Around Time:  

Walgreens ships their photographs in a standard paper photo folder with a piece of cardboard reinforcement in a paper envelope. Even though our photographs arrived without incident we weren’t impressed with the packaging.

We did experience some difficulties receiving our photos. We believe they were originally lost in the mail. When we contacted Walgreens about the situation they immediately re-printed our order and sent it 2-day delivery, for free.

To ship us four 4 x 6 prints Walgreens charges $.99 shipping plus tax. It cost them $.97 to ship our photographs leaving $.02 for handling. This is a great price if you are ordering five photographs at a time. Shipping cost does go up with the number of photos you order.

In store pick-up times depend on how busy your local Walgreens is. Most prints can be processed within an hour, and all orders should be processed in less than 24 hours.

Summary:  

We were pleasantly surprised to see Walgreens pull to the head of the pack. However, be careful when ordering your prints; Walgreens strongly advises you to pick-up your order rather than choose the home delivery method.