Labs

The Z1420 is the cheapest wireless printer currently available, which is not to be sniffed at if you like to wander around your home or office with your WiFi laptop. But it's an otherwise basic device with flimsy build quality. It's easy to set up, with an installer that walks you through the process of connecting to your wireless network. It's also, ironically, one of the few printers on the market that comes supplied with a USB lead. You need this to set up WiFi initially, and you can also keep it connected and use the Z1420 as a conventional USB inkjet.

Our six photos

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took over 15 minutes to print, but we were pleasantly surprised by the results. Dark and intensely coloured images came out well, despite a bit of grain when we looked closely. However, skin tones looked unnatural, and there was a slight red tint to white backgrounds. An optional photo cartridge is available that includes additional colours to create more subtle shades.

Neither draft nor normal quality text prints took very long, although we weren't very impressed with the fuzzy edges of some letters. Mixed colour documents looked a bit sharper, but each page took over a minute and a half to print. These were accurately coloured, but there were faint pale stripes across all our images.

The Z1420 is very affordable for a device with built-in wireless networking, but is otherwise unremarkable. We liked the accurately coloured photos, but even repeated print head alignments and nozzle cleanings failed to improve the banded, fuzzy quality of document prints. Ink costs are fairly low if you buy high-yield cartridges, and it's the cheapest printer here to buy, but for only a few pounds more you can get a normal USB printer capable of far better results.