It is all well and good selecting expensive printers based on the quality of the photo prints they produce, but the general home user often wants something that can do basic print jobs well, and make the kids' homework look good.

The 3420 fits that bill to a Tee. For a start it's cheap: the cheapest of any of the printers in this Labs. But its price tag belies its quality. The 3420 frequently scored better than printers with much higher price tags such as the Canon 530D and the Lexmark Z65.

It's not a photo printer, but it will produce photo prints, and it will manage pages of text at a nominal rate of 10ppm. The 3420 uses HP's PhotoRET III technology, which ensures consistent colour and particularly good reproduction on plain paper.

Not only is it the cheapest printer tested it was also the smallest, weighing in a fraction over 2kg and taking up only slightly more desktop space than your average office telephone. Despite its size it worked nice and quietly, giving the impression of a well put together printer – this fact proved by the included one-year full replacement warranty.

One of the major concerns with any entry-level printer is the cost of consumables, which is how many printer manufacturers subsidise the cost of the printer. While the running costs are a little more expensive than those for any of the other HP printers tested, it is still reasonable for an entry level printer.