Dell Colour Printer 720 review

In terms of print costs, things started well for the Dell. Although it only manages 88 pages continuously, it's 95 per cent efficient, even factoring in cartridge changes. So, over the course of a cartridge's life, you'll only lose five pages. This efficiency means that the Dell is well suited to a home environment where you're not printing photos every single day, and will also lend itself well to document printing, which, in all fairness, is what it's designed for.

Dell also deserves praise for how easy it makes it to re-order cartridges. Its driver is directly linked to the website, making the ordering process almost as easy as one click. Others could learn lessons from this.

Unfortunately, things go rapidly downhill from there. With the black cartridge costing £24.33 and the colour cartridge a fairly scandalous £27.34, replacing the cartridges costs £51.67. Expensive cartridges are okay so long as they print a reasonably large number of pages, but the double whammy of high unit costs and low page yields is bad for Dell.

For those who are tempted to print the odd photo, Dell sells two value packs: one with a black and tri-colour cartridge plus 100 6 x 4in sheets, and another with 75 A4 sheets. Both cost £55.50. Unfortunately, the low yields mean the cost per print, despite the high efficiency, is still very high: 57p per 6 x 4in photo and £2.39 for an A4 photo.