HP Photosmart 5510 multi-function inkjet printer-scanner

Low-cost all-in-one inkjet printers have a reputation for being quite basic, but they don't have to be. With the Photosmart 5510, HP has gone out of its way to dispel this image. It's a neat, low-profile device designed for printing, copying, and scanning and has several features you wouldn't expect at such a low price.

For a start, it's controlled using a 2.4in touchscreen along with dedicated touch buttons down either side. It's surprisingly responsive and provides easy control of all the main functions.

All-in-one printers at this price often have one black and one tri-colour cartridge, but the 5510 has four separate ink cartridges, which is more economical since you only need to replace each individual colour cartridge as they run out. Against these pluses is the paper tray which feels flimsy and only just supports the paper.

There's a single memory card slot for SD and Memory Stick cards, but it's fiddly to load an SD card. There's the usual USB port for connecting a single computer, but wireless is the preferable connection. Not only does this allow multiple computers to print, it allows you to print wirelessly from Apple handhelds and from a remote computer over the internet using the ePrint service.

Print speeds are fast for a printer at this price. We saw speeds of 9.2ppm for black and 4.6ppm for colour, both good results. Print quality is also well above average, with clean black text and bright colours while photo prints look good with natural-looking shades and plenty of shadow detail.

A full colour copy came through with very little degradation, indicating that the flatbed scanner isn't a cheap shoe-in. Separate scans confirmed this as a capable, budget device.

Running costs are often steep in entry-level printers but, using the best cartridge prices we could find, we calculate ISO black pages at around 2.2p and ISO colour at 6.6p, both of which are very competitive. HP isn't going to sting you on consumables to make up for the low purchase price.

We were pleasantly surprised by the Photosmart 5510. HP hasn't skimped on quality to produce a good-value all-in-one printer.