HP PSC 1315 review

If you're looking for a multifunction device to save space and money, the PSC 1315 will be right up your street.

At just £91 including VAT it's one of the most affordable models on the market, and it takes up little more room on your desk than a flatbed scanner.

The compact design is helped by the fact that the input tray sits directly below the output tray at the front, which means you can push it up against the back of the desk. The downside is that paper has to do a U-turn as it passes through the printer, which makes it impractical to print on thick card. The petite design also leaves no room for memory card slots for direct printing from your camera memory cards, but a PictBridge USB port at the front makes up for it, if you have a PictBridge compatible camera. The small collection of buttons and a single-digit display limits the scope of photocopying options, but up to nine mono or colour prints, a choice of paper types and an option to enlarge to fit to page should be sufficient for most home users.

Sadly, text prints are the slowest on test at just 6.38ppm on its Draft mode, falling to 3.37ppm at its Normal quality setting. A4 photos took almost six minutes to appear at the Best setting. Thankfully, the 1315's Draft mode is great for text printing, with little signs of the spidery character edges displayed by the competition. Text at Normal quality gave the best results of the group, with sharpness that rivalled the output from a laser printer.

Photos proved to be worth the wait, with smooth prints on photo paper with standard CMYK cartridges, while using the optional six-colour cartridges improved results even further. Colours of photos weren't quite as saturated as in the Canon and Epson's prints, but HP's were arguably the most natural-looking. Business graphics on plain paper looked smooth and crisp, but once again were rather slow to appear at 62 seconds per page.

Scan quality was high, but inconsistent. 2,400dpi scans were pixel-sharp, but an odd, grainy effect in high resolution scans suggests that HP is using software processing to sharpen the image. The end result is preferable to the slightly blurry scans from Canon, but not as impressive as Epson's sharp, accurate 2,400dpi scans. Scan speeds were respectable, taking 112 seconds for a 600dpi A4 scan.

Although there's only one copy quality setting available, it's perfectly acceptable for most uses and reasonably quick at 44 seconds for monochrome and 78 seconds for colour. We found that graphics quickly degenerated when making copies of copies, but text stayed dark and legible.

The PSC 1315 isn't cheap to use, but its compact design, dependable quality and low price make it the ideal companion if money and space are tight.