Hewlett-Packard Photosmart 2710 All-in-One

The Photosmart 2710 is well designed, good looking and very functional. It has a rare built-in wireless network adapter in addition to a 10/100 Ethernet port and it will work on existing 802.11b or 802.11g networks. It also has both a memory card reader and a PictBridge port. Images from cards and digital cameras can be viewed on the large built-in colour LCD, which tilts vertically. Borderless prints up to A4 size are supported.

When in full swing, the printer in this unit was very quiet and only the paper loading mechanism made substantial noise. Overall, its build quality is very good, although we didn't like the output tray, which did not securely attach itself to the unit.

During our tests, this unit produced very sharp results and nice, vibrant colour output in good time. It took only 5 minutes 34 seconds to produce an A4 colour photo.

Text output was also excellent, especially in the maximum dpi quality mode, although pages took a very long time to print in this mode. Other text modes include fast normal, fast draft, normal and best quality. Fast draft mode actually provided very readable text, and a full page of text can be printed in only 12 seconds in this mode.

The printer driver supports two-sided printing and instructions are provided on how to re-insert the printed pages for printing on the other side.

Among the fastest scanning machines we have seen, the 2710 scanned colour and greyscale A4-size images in only 18 seconds--and that's with the descreen filter turned on. Its detail and colour reproduction was excellent, although its greyscale scanning suffered a little from oversaturated blacks, and patterning from the source material was clearly visible, even though descreen was enabled. It's worth noting that this machine will also scan 3D images (physical objects) with relatively good accuracy.

OCR software is provided, and its accuracy proved to be excellent in our tests.

Our photocopies of a glossy A4 photograph were reproduced in fine style with excellent colour tones and image detail, and the output only took 4 minutes 21 seconds. Text copies in normal mode were a little muddy, though, and slightly hard to read.

The control panel of the unit is located on the right-hand side just below the large LCD and was very easy to use. Furthermore, the large LCD screen provides plenty of information on how to solve any problems or what steps to take when performing tasks or changing system settings. HP Director for the PC also provides a central location for scan, fax and copy functions.

The only drawback of this unit is its use of a two-cartridge system, which means that it does not have individual ink tanks for each colour.