HP Photosmart Plus B209 review

HP's Photosmart Plus has a 2.4in touchscreen, PictBridge and a selection of memory card slots for direct printing.

The screen means it's easy to print photos from a memory card. Content from HP's new online App Studio can be downloaded, ranging from Disney-themed children's activity sheets to apps for printing photos from your Snapfish photo gallery.

There are both USB and WiFi interfaces, but you'll need a USB connection to transfer your wireless settings. We'd have preferred to enter network settings using the touchscreen. The Photosmart Plus has a replaceable print head that should last the lifetime of the printer. This holds three dye-based colour cartridges and a large pigmented black ink tank for text printing.

Photo quality was acceptable, with bright colours. However, composite black tones looked greyish, while harsh dithering made subtle shading look jagged. Our 6x4in photos were quick to print at just over a minute each and cost around 31p. Draft text is good enough for everyday use, and prints at a stunning 17ppm. At 8.6ppm, standard-quality text is beautifully solid and colour prints are clear, sharp and accurately coloured. Annoyingly, the default paper size is Letter rather than A4 and it can't be changed permanently, but you can create your own profiles.

The TWAIN scanner interface looks more polished than previous versions, but still has problems. It carries out a 21-second 200dpi scan whenever it's opened, closes after each scan and the resolution settings are hard to find. If your scanning requirements are simple, you're better off using the basic WIA driver. Scanned documents and photos looked great, with sharp text and bright, vivid colours.

Despite a few irritating failings in both its printer and scanner drivers, the Photosmart Plus is great value with loads of features, good print quality and a reasonable mixed-colour print cost of 7.1ppm. Canon's Pixma MP640 has better print quality, though.