Epson Stylus Photo PX660

Epson was one of the first manufacturers to incorporate touch-sensitive controls into its printers, something that's been filtering down through its range as models are updated.

The Stylus Photo PX660 combined printer/scanner is relatively low in the range, but has a long, thin control panel with no physical buttons, just touch-controls. The control panel can be tilted up to see and access it more easily.

The controls are few, given the size of the panel, and Epson has compensated by making them big. There's a 6cm colour screen in the centre, with easy-to-use buttons either side of it. Underneath the control panel, in a strip, are two memory card slots and a USB socket for connecting a camera for direct printing. The USB socket at the back connects it to the computer – it doesn't work over a network.

Below the card slots is the printer's output tray, which telescopes out once you have folded down the front panel. A large grey lever on the left lowers the output tray to a horizontal position to load the tray printing CD and DVD labels. Paper comes from the 120-sheet tray at the rear.

The scanner lid has extending hinges, so you can scan books as well as single sheets, but it was hard to keep open as it doesn't fold far enough beyond the vertical.

Printing speed was so-so: our tests resulted in 4.7 pages per minute (ppm) for black text and 3.5ppm for colour when printing in normal mode. Draft mode was better at 15ppm, but draft prints came out brown instead of black and were not great quality.

Print quality in general was variable. Black text was good, though slightly more fuzzy than the best we have seen from other devices, and colours were punchy but areas of solid fill showed some banding. Colour photos were excellent with strong but natural colours and good levels of detail.

There are six ink cartridges to maintain but it still came out with fair black text running costs: we calculated 2.4p for a standard black page and 9.6p for a colour one. Both of these are reasonable for an inkjet at this price and photo print costs are also slightly below average.