Product Reviews

These days, you can buy a photo printer for eighty quid that will produce prints that only a professional with a magnifier could distinguish from traditional photos. So why spend over two hundred quid on the new HP 7960? The answer lies in shades of grey. Two extra grey inks, to be precise.

The first hint you get of this printer's secret is its extra width, which allows room for an extra ink cartridge. Normal inkjet printers use four colours: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Posh photo printers add two more inks: pale cyan and pale magenta, for more subtle graduations of colour. For subtle variations between black and white, the 7960 uses two more: medium and light grey.

For photographers, this is important. What are normally referred to as 'black and white' photos contain many shades of grey. A normal photo printer creates grey by mixing black with its other basic colours. This is fine for small graphics,

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but can leave proper black-and-white images looking a bit grainy, and with sharp divisions between shades where there should be a subtle blend. Because the 'greys' are made up of dots of other colours, these other colours can tint your photograph - known as 'colour cast'.

With a bit of judicious mixing, the 7960's additional inks make available 4,097 shades of grey. Consequently, mono prints look stunning. Colour casts are banished and mid-greys have a richness and clarity that you just can't get with a normal six-colour inkjet. There are improvements to colour photos too. Flesh tones look natural, and graduations smoother.

Eight-ink printing, though, isn't the only trick up the 7960's sleeve. It also has a built-in memory card reader with six slots, allowing you to insert all the major types of digital camera memory card into the printer. There's also a 2.5in TFT, on which you can view and edit pictures - all without having to switch your PC on.

The 7960 has downsides too. An A4 photo takes five and a half minutes. Text is annoyingly slow at 2 pages per minute, and not as crisp or dark as HP's usual high standard. Text and graphics on plain paper can look faded too.

For a printer that will do a decent job of your holiday snaps, stick to a decent six-colour printer. It will cost less, print faster and still produce great-looking prints.

If, on the other hand, you're an amateur photographer who works a lot in black and white, this is the printer you've been waiting for.