Hewlett-Packard PSC 1510 review

As its name suggests, the PSC 1510 is a printer, scanner and copier built into one box.

In many respects, it's very similar to the HP PSC 1610 currently in our Best Buy list. But it takes longer to print both text and images, and its scanner has slightly lower resolution than that of the 1610.

Setup is remarkably easy. You run the driver software from the disc provided and plug the multifunction device in when prompted. To align the printheads, you print out a test page, provided for you, and then scan the page using the unit's scanner. The driver automatically does the rest.

Despite its slightly slower print engine, the 1510 is still relatively nippy. It took only 4 minutes and 28 seconds to print out our A4 photo - that's fast. Text documents were printed at a zippy 5.4 pages per minute (ppm): not quite the 8ppm claimed by HP, but still a good performance.

Text quality was very good. At the normal quality setting characters were clearly picked out in crisp, clean black with no spidery edges of grey speckling. Even in draft mode text was printed in reasonably good quality, though you wouldn't want to use it for a job application or CV. Photo quality was good - colours were natural and a good range of shade and tone was rendered accurately. Compared to the 1610, however, this device wasn't as good at picking out details in areas of highly saturated light or dark colour.

Scan quality was generally good, although a few scans were a little less saturated than the originals. They will still be fine for most purposes, but if you're planning on using them for home art projects, they might need a little tweaking in an image editor. The 1510 scanned quickly, and took just 1 minute 15 seconds for an A4 photo scan. The copy function works just as you'd expect it to.

This is a good multifunction device, but for only an extra tenner you can buy the PSC 1610, which is better.

Author: Karl Wright