All-in-one devices don’t have to look drab – the Kodak ESP-3 is a glossy black beauty, with sharp edges replaced by softer curves. It’s more than a match for the A-Listed Canon Pixma MP610 on the catwalk.

The ESP-3 is swift when printing 6 x 4in photographs – 45 seconds puts it up with the best we’ve seen. But our mono test document hit the tray at 11ppm in draft mode and just 5.5ppm at normal quality. The rest of our tests also showed it to be slower than the Canon.

Photographs did their best to match the Pixma’s high standards with vibrant colours, and blurred edges were only visible close-up. In documents, though, text suffers from a slight lack of clarity, particularly when compared to printers that use separate pigment-based black inks.

Our scanning tests yielded similarly disparate results: good enough quality, but poor speed. Times worsened as we increased resolution: a 6 x 4in photo at 600dpi took 81 seconds – longer than the Canon – and more than three minutes at 1200dpi.

The quality of the scanner and printer combine to produce sharp copies, but two-and-a-half minutes to churn out five isn’t exactly speedy.

The Kodak is reasonably priced, but the combination of all five colours into one closed colour cartridge potentially adds costs. Kodak claims this makes it a simpler and more economical system, with mono printing at a reasonable 3.5c per page, and colour at 11c.

It's quoted 15.9c per 6 x 4in photo also sounds great, but if you use the proper 5-star photo paper it’s actually more like 35c: still massively cheaper than the competition.

Kodak’s Home Centre software is particularly useful for customising the machine’s operation, as there’s hardly any control on the ESP-3 itself – one of the compromises to keep costs low.

That said, a card reader accepts CF, MS, XD and SD formats, while a USB socket caters for flash drives and Bluetooth adapters (which cost around $60).

Quality-wise the Kodak made a good fist of our tests, and the decent software and design set it apart from many all-in-ones.

It’s also affordable and the pigment inks won’t fade easily: a stark contrast to the faster, A-Listed Canon MP610 whose dye-based inks struggle in sunlight. If your main aim is to print photos, it’s a better buy.