HP Deskjet 2510 review

HP makes a number of fine all-in-one printers, including many bargain-priced models, something the company is trying to repeat with the Deskjet 2510. However, its current price of £50 is relatively high compared to its existing range.

The two-tone grey colour of the printer is interrupted in certain places by an orange-coloured band. A flip-up cover forms the paper feed tray, taking up to 60 plain paper sheets, or 10 to 20 photo paper sheets. You have to swap paper for photo prints as there is no separate photo tray. The front panel folds down to form an output tray with a support that swivels out of its front edge. The Deskjet 2510 uses two print cartridges: one black and a three-colour one.

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The control panel, which sits to the left of the scanner cover, has few controls. All the buttons require a very firm press. There is a graph-style ink indicator, although oddly there is no indication of which is black and which is colour. There is no built-in Wifi, just a USB port for a wired connection to a single PC.

HP claims speeds of 7.5 pages per minute (ppm) and 4.5ppm for black and colour prints respectively, which is reasonably quick for a printer at this price. Our tests produced 7.3ppm for black, very close to the claimed speed, but only 2.5ppm for colour. However, this is still not bad for a cheap printer. A single-page colour copy took 41 seconds and a 15x10cm photo print completed in just over a minute, which are good times.

Printed text is dense with little sign of ink run, although some characters do not look particularly well-formed when examined closely. Colours are generally bright and black text laid over colour graphics do not bleed into one another. Text in photocopies looks a little washed-out, though, and colour graphics are paler than in the originals.

Print cartridges are available in two capacities, with the XL versions giving ISO page costs of 4p and 9.6p for black and colour. The black cost is a little high, but colour is reasonable. Bear in mind, though, that the use of a tri-colour cartridge means you can end up wasting ink if you have to dispose of a cartridge when one colour runs out before the others. Separate colour cartridges would eliminate this wastage, but are not available for this model.