HP Deskjet 1510 review

Photo printing is very much an afterthought on this MFP. In fact, it doesn’t support borderless printing at all, which means you can’t even print a 6x4in snap. If you use 6x4in paper, you’ll get a print that’s just shy of 5x3in. Print quality isn’t too bad, given that this printer lacks a photographic black ink. Dark areas looked better after they’d had a couple of days to dry. A fair bit of detail was visible in our low-contrast images, and even areas of subtly gradated shading were fairly smooth. If the 1510 were capable borderless printing, its quality would be entirely respectable given its low price. The absence of this feature means that you’ll have to get to grips with a pair of scissors if you want to print photos, though.

HP Deskjet 1510 Scanners

The Deskjet 1510’s scanner driver is actually pretty good compared to previous incarnations, but it’s still very limited. You’re encouraged to pre-select the size and type of document you wish to scan, and it’s obviously designed with business users in mind. The MFP is fine if you just want to scan A4 documents, but fine control over scanner settings and even the ability to select some resolutions, such as 150dpi, is entirely missing.

Scan speeds were a little slow at higher resolutions; 20 seconds for a 300dpi A4 scan is fine, but we had to wait over two and a half minutes for a 1,200dpi scan of a 6x4in photo. Our 300dpi document scan looked great, and is perfect if you need to keep digital copies of important bills and letters. The all-in-one’s scanner is less well equipped when it comes to photo scanning at 600dpi or 1,200dpi, particularly if you want to edit them later. Scanned images has a slightly yellowish tone, and close examination of areas where one colour met another showed fuzzy lines appearing between them, apparently the product of an automatic sharpening process.

HP Deskjet 1510 Conclusion

The HP Deskjet 1510 is well suited to the home office but not necessarily ideal as a family all-in-one printer, as its support for photo printing is very limited indeed and its scanning is utilitarian at best. It all depends on your individual requirements. However, if you need something with similar capabilities, the HP Deskjet 2540 is currently cheaper, while the Budget Buy winning Epson Expression Home XP-212 is similarly priced but has better print quality.