Although it isn’t the most stylish printer out there, the PM270 prints fairly fast and produces decent quality. It won’t fit in your backpacking luggage, but for the average family photographer, the PM270 is portable enough to take away on holidays.

The HL-4040CN is designed to be, and is priced as, a low-end machine. Its only option is a networking add-on.

The Pixma MP470's design shortcomings should be easy for many people to forgive, considering everything the MFP offers for the price. Its print, scan and copy functions are sound, and its software gives you lots of options.

With many photo-centric features such as film scanning, the easy-to-use Canon Pixma MP960 will appeal to photographers who work with both film and digital cameras. It performs most tasks quickly and makes superb photo prints.

The Canon Pixma MP510 makes an excellent choice if you're looking for a straightforward printer/scanner combo capable of printing good-looking photos, though its colour LCD could be bigger.

The Samsung CLP-315 is relatively light on dimensions and rather pleasing to look at. For home users who need to run off numbers of text documents mixed in with the odd colour image, this printer's $269 price makes it an enticing buy. Just don't expect it to run at a blistering pace.

If you plan on printing a lot of snapshots, you'll appreciate the R800's roll feeder; and as long as you stick with RGB files, the R800 will reward you with great-looking photo prints.

Fast print speeds and a lot of features--including wireless capability--would make the IP4000R a good buy even if its printing costs weren't so low.

The wide-format Deskjet 9650 delivers consistently good print quality on many kinds of documents. This printer is no speed demon, however, and its costs per page are quite high.

This entry-level colour laser delivers high text quality and fast colour speeds, but operating costs are high.

The Epson Aculaser C1100 is a good choice for low-volume colour printing, with best of breed output quality, providing you don't mind the slightly higher than average running costs and slow colour output.

The Photosmart A526's minimal-options approach to printing photos will be a relief for some, a frustration for others. But it's the slow printing that dampens its value somewhat, even if the photos are worth the wait.