HP Photosmart Premium e-All-in-One CN503B with ePrint technology

HP's ePrint system gives printers their own internet addresses so users can print documents over the internet.

The company is building the feature into most of its new printers and even adding it to some existing models using downloadable updates.

The Photosmart Premium e-All-in-One (model CN503B if you're confused by HP's rather silly naming convention) is a printer-scanner with a touchscreen control panel, two paper trays, double-sided printing and a wireless connection, all costing under £100.

The 11cm screen needed only a light touch and is used to download HP apps from its ePrint site once you have set up an account. Combined with extra touch buttons either side of the main screen, it also gave effective control of the scan, copy and photo printing functions. Besides being able to email a document to the printer – which worked well – the apps offer such treats as a daily Sudoku puzzle or weather report that's printed every morning.

Paper feeds either from the main 125-sheet paper tray or the 20-sheet photo tray, which powers into position when you choose to print photos. The printer has a single slot for camera memory cards, taking only SD and Memory Stick types. There is no USB connection for direct printing from a camera.

It was quite quick to print: in our tests it managed 7 pages per minute (ppm) for black text and 5ppm for colour. Even the double-sided speed was just under 4ppm, which is quick for this price.

The print quality wasn't too impressive, though, with some ink spatter on black text, but solid colours were better, and photo prints were as good as we had expected.

However, black text on double-sided pages came out lighter on the front than on the back, apparently because the printer uses faster-drying dye-based inks for the fronts and slower pigmented ink for the backs. Oddly, the printer also reduced the size of our pages when printing double-sided.

Copy quality was very good and scans were similarly accurate, giving well-balanced colour images. A full-colour A4 copy took 27 seconds to scan and print.

The five inks – two black and three colours – clipped easily into the print head and at current prices costs work out at 3p for black pages and 12p for colour. Both are reasonable for an inkjet at this price.

With better print quality, the CN503B would be a bargain but as it is, it's only average.