HP Photosmart 245 review

The Photosmart 245 is an incredibly dinky printer - it's attravailable, stylish and very small (if surprisingly heavy).

It's small because it's a dedicated photo printer. It can't use paper bigger than 6x4 inches. That makes it sound like a specialist product - but a huge proportion of the printing done today is of digital photos. If you already own a laser printer for mono output, a dedicated photo printer like this means you don't have to print whole A4 pages just to reproduce your holiday snaps. If, on the other hand, you like to blow them up to A4 or even 7x5 inches, you're out of luck.

Paper lies completely flat throughout the printing process - handy, as it means there's no risk of heavy photo paper getting bent. Instead, the paper passes through the printer, out the back and then back to the front of the device as it passes the print head. This means you need to leave about 6 inches of clearance behind.

The Photosmart 245 can be used in two modes. In the first, you connect it to your PC just like any other printer, and use it to print digital pictures from your hard disk. To help you, the printer comes with HP's standard bundle of photo printing and management software.

The Photosmart 245 can also be used as a standalone device. It has slots for all the main types of memory card used by digital cameras. You can then use the built-in 1.8inch LCD screen to preview the pictures, select which ones you want to print, and even apply some rudimentary effects such as adding a photo frame or changing the brightness. You then just press the Print button and watch as the printer produces excellent results. It can print right to the edge of the paper, and image quality is as good as the best A4 photo printers. Output looks almost as good as traditional photographic prints.

The printer comes with two cartridges - one for standard colour prints, the other for printing in greyscale. Annoyingly, you have to recalibrate the printer each time you change cartridge, using up a piece of photo paper. In terms of speed, the 245 takes two and a half minutes for each high-quality print.

The Photosmart 245 may be a bit of a toy for gadget fans, but it's good fun - and remarkably good at what it does.