Epson Stylus C84

The C84's translucent lid, silver styling and solid build befit a printer twice its price. Three fascia buttons control power, paper feeding, ink replacement and job cancellation. There's no direct printing capability, but the parallel port may suit those with older PCs.

However, it's the pigment-based DuraBrite ink that Epson is keen to push. Due to the way pigment inks work, prints won't smudge, are water resistant, fade resistant and have superior plain paper performance. We'll test fade claims over the coming months, but found that prints smudged much less than HP's.

Draft text was blocky and faint, although remained readable and should prolong ink life. From a high-capacity cartridge, the C84 printed 983 copies of our 5 per cent mono document - almost double that of its peers, leading to low running costs. Speeds of 10.4ppm and 5.2ppm for draft and mono were some of the fastest seen.

We were disappointed with photo quality, though. Flesh tones regularly sported blue casts and grain was evident when examined closely. The driver allows limited colour correction, but other printers needed no adjustment. What's more, detail was lacking in dark areas, particularly in the mono tests where grain again appeared. Speed was also lacking, as times of over seven minutes for the photomontage and four minutes for a 6 x 4in image illustrate.

The C84 handled our presentation document capably, although colour casts in pictures let it down. The pigment ink shone in the CorelDRAW tests, as the minimal absorption meant high colour saturation.

The C84 is an oddity this month. There are better budget printers, but if the benefits of DuraBrite ink and low printing costs appeal and you print a lot of text it could prove tempting.