HP Deskjet D1560 review

HP's Deskjet D1560 is compact, lightweight and inexpensive.

It weighs less than 2kg and has a footprint of just 422x260mm. Its small size means it should fit on your desk, but we were more excited by its low price and the high-quality prints it produced in our tests.

After installing the drivers, we were encouraged to perform a manual print head alignment. The printer produced a couple of pages and asked us to select the best option from several marked symbols. This process not only helps to optimise the output from the print heads, but also asks you to locate the edge of the page. We've experienced problems with some front-feeding HP inkjets, and this process helps to eliminate skewed prints.

Draft text printed at 10.4ppm and with significantly better print quality than that of most budget inkjets. Text was dark and well aligned, with slightly fuzzy edges but no broken letters. However, without an output tray, we had to keep an eye on our pages to prevent them spilling on to the floor.

Normal quality prints were clear and sharp, with precise lettering that's good enough for formal correspondence. At 3.7ppm, we had to wait a little under seven minutes for 25 pages, which is slower than most of the printers in our last inkjet group test (Labs, Shopper 246), but acceptable for occasional high-quality print runs. Colour prints looked good, although a speed of just 0.9ppm won't set any records. Solid colours were clear and bright, while text and fine detail was easy to make out. Closer examination revealed graininess and white specks, though.

Photo printing was problematic, as the printer's driver only allowed us to print 6x4in pictures with a 1cm white tab down the side. Quality was generally good, and we printed some great-looking photos with borders. Shading was smooth, although some colours could have been more vivid.

If you use high-yield cartridges, print costs are a surprisingly reasonable 3.1p per mono page and 4p per three-colour page, produding a total page cost of 7.1p. This is slightly cheaper than Canon's Pixma iP2600. It's worth buying extra ink cartridges when you buy the printer, as our low-yield starter cartridge ran out quickly. A pair of high-yield HP 21XL and HP 22XL cartridges will cost £32; this is more than the price of the printer itself, although it isn't unusual for a budget inkjet.

The D1560 is slightly cheaper to buy and run than the iP2600, and its draft prints are quicker. Its small size and excellent draft quality make it the better choice, if you don't want borderless photos. If you print a lot of text documents, look for a printer with lower mono print costs. Otherwise, it's great value.

Author: Kat Orphanides