HP PSC 1610 review

HP's PSC 1610 is one of two new additions to the company's range of basic multifunction peripherals (MFPs). The 1610 is inexpensive and has a decent specification. HP says it can print up to 23 mono pages per minute (ppm) and 18 in colour.

Digital photographers are well catered for. There is a PictBridge interface and memory card slots that read seven common formats. The PSC 1610 has regular-capacity black and tri-colour cartridges, but you can replace the black with an optional photo supply for six-ink printing.

Unlike other products we've tested that use the newer HP cartridges, the 1610 won't accept the 800-sheet #339 black consumable. Its mono print costs of 2.8p per page are still OK, but the larger cartridge would save half a penny per page and would print quicker due to the larger nozzle area.

Like the Color LaserJet reviewed on page 27, this MFP's setup program offers no custom option. The Express installation requires a whopping 365MB of disk space and full installation takes 780MB. We welcome the generous software bundle, but HP shouldn't force it on users.

Fortunately, there's little else to criticise about the PSC 1610. It was fast in our draft mono print tests, producing our 50-page document at an impressive 12.9ppm. Higher quality settings slowed the printer down, but it remained competitive. Print quality was fine on all our plain paper tests.

Using the standard four-ink setup, our six 6x4" test photos printed in 19 minutes and 40 seconds. Re-running the test using six inks reduced grain and improved fine detail, but the four-ink results were competent enough for occasional photo use. Despite the lack of a preview screen, we found it easy to make prints from memory cards using HP's proof sheet system.

The PSC 1610 scans at up to 1,200x4,800 dots per inch (dpi), and we were impressed with the sharp images captured in our tests. Previews and low-resolution scans were quite quick. However, capturing a 6x4" photograph at 1,200dpi took one minute and 27 seconds, which is a bit slow.

Given its memory card slots, six-ink printing and solid performance, the PSC 1610 is great value. It's also cheap to run, though it would be even more so if HP had allowed it to use the high-capacity black cartridge.