An interesting new technology, but cheap running costs are let down by poor quality.

Epson has two current specialist photo printers and the model which takes care of the lower end is the $399 Stylus Photo 810.

A slight speed boost and a new curvaceous shape keep Canon on top of the inkjet pile.

Colour Inkjet PRINTER

Expensive but solidly built – a fast way to get superbly vibrant A3 prints.

An excellent all-in-one, particularly when it comes to photo quality, but it’s possible to get more features elsewhere.

Once upon a time not too long ago, your average inkjet printer had a single tricolour ink cartridge. Of course, the print quality was fairly ordinary, but it did the job. Today, with digital cameras the norm and home users wanting to print their own photographs, your photo printer may have as many as eight different ink cartridges.

The Photosmart 7960 is HP's flagship photo inkjet and comes with the new Photoret Pro engine. It's a development of Photoret IV, and a fourth cartridge containing three grey inks has been added too. The 7960 can print 4,097 shades of grey - ideal for black-and-white photographs.

Cheap to buy and run, the X5470 is great for mono printing, but less so for photos and images.

It doesn't seem likely that one device could be all things to all people, but the Canon PIXMA MP780 is the closest thing we've seen yet. It has a feature set that would leave few wanting, and is capable of professional results. Not only that, but this is by far the quickest inkjet in this roundup.

The HP K80 takes our Quality Award this month, nudging ahead of the competition in all our speed, quality and features tests. Alongside the HP PSC750, the K80s highly specified 2,400 x 1,200 inkjet printer produced noticeably top-quality colour prints.

Lacklustre colour quality, but good speed and value for money make the K8600 a contender if you like blowing things up to A3 size

Good photo quality and a large touchscreen make this the A4 inkjet to buy.

Capable of reproducing good photos, but it’s slow, a bit expensive to run and has a poor scanner.

While HP’s strength in photo printing is once again proved, mono prints take too long and the scanner is poor.

Packed with features like network capability and transparency scanning, it also has the best scanner by far, with great print quality too.

Finishing a point above average overall, Canon's PIXMA iP5000 was unlucky to miss out on our coveted recommended award, pipped at the finishing line by Epson's PictureMate small format printer. Canon's five individual ink cartridges is a great system that allows you to replace only the inks you need without needing to replace a whole colour cartridge as is the case with the HP PhotoSmart 8150 printer.

The PhotoSmart 8150 boasts Compact Flash Type I and II, SmartMedia, Secure Digital, MultiMedia Card, Memory Stick, xD, USB flash drive support as well as PictBridge and an optional Bluetooth adaptor. Such a wide range of supported formats should leave you hassle free when it comes to plugging in and printing off those precious moments you've stored on your camera or other device.

This isn't the first time we've looked at the tiny Esky-esque PictureMate from Epson and at the time as a standalone product it garnered a Recommended award. It's good to see it do the same in a comparative environment, walking off with a second recommendation from the Labs team.

The Lexmark P6250 is a not just a photo printer as such, it's also an all in one multifunction device: printer/scanner/copier and media reader. You might be nodding to yourself with the obviousness of an all in one printer winning out over tiny single use photo printers in this roundup, but to be honest the distinction is not just made because of the broad functionality and applicability of the Lexmark P6250.