Just before I left for second year of university this September, I was moaning to my parents about how terrible the quality of printing from my old Dell printer was. It printed blacks as green and reds as light orange! Not great when I'm doing a course that requires I print slides and essays out at a rate of about 6 documents every week. I was incredibly suprised when my Dad produced a box with this printer in it and told me it was an early Christmas present that they'd planned to pack away and surprise me with when we got to my new house.

First impressions of this printer are good; I managed to set it all up myself in about 15 minutes with no help, which included unpacking it and installing the ink cartridges. Initially I had no internet in my house so I had to have it connected to my laptop by a wire, which comes included, though I am now able to use it wirelessly. The printing quality has been top notch from day one and I only noticed that my black ink cartridge was running out when I got a blank page out of my printer one morning! I quickly re-ordered some more ink cartridges and was back in business soon. Again, the new and old ink cartridges are incredibly easy to swap over so you don't need to worry about being a technical whiz. The design is sleek whilst maintaining practicality and it's not a massive printer by any stretch of the imagination. The paper tray and documents tray are both adjustable and the documents tray can be folded up when the printer is not in use to provide extra space on your work station.

Features wise, this printer does most things that anyone will ever need. It scans, prints and photocopies in black + white and colour. On the top in the left hand bottom corner is the 'toolbox' if you will, with the buttons and display to show you what you can do. From the top the buttons are: On (nice and big, which lights up green when the printer is on), cancel (with a big red cross next to it so you can't miss it!), 'quick forms' which unfortunately I have yet to use, scan, and wireless on (again, with the wireless symbol on it so you can't miss it). Underneath that is a small blue lit display which when the printer is on and not printing shows you the buttons and options for setup, black and white copying and colour copying. When the printer is in use this displays the progress of the printer and any errors. Apparently you can print double sided on this printer but again I have yet to discover this function (I think I'll have a play when I get home!). It's not a loud printer and you can connect more than one to the network to allow you, your partner and your dog to print from it if you so wish. This again I haven't played with so I am unsure of how it works, though I imagine it would be simple enough to set up.

I've photocopied in colour craft background sheets and they printed out really well, the ink doesn't over saturate the paper and the colour remains sharp and true. One of these sheets was a gradiented polka dot green sheet which I thought would be a disaster to copy, but it looks even better than the original if I'm honest. A lot of my lecture notes are coloured and it picks up the detail on these as well, so the cartridges are definitely doing their job. Word proccessed documents print out sharp - although you may need to mess with the margins a little bit to make sure that you're getting the best value out of your paper. I tend to set mine to 'narrow' now; which it tells me is outside of the printing range but it still prints my headers, footers and full text off perfectly fine. This reminds me of another thing; when you first set up your printer you'll be prompted to download/install some HP software. This is probably the only thing that annoys me because this software seems to constantly need an update and it takes forever to get them! I'm not sure what the best way around this is; might just have to be something you live with.

Price wise, this printer will set you back between £35 and nearly £70 - obviously you do not need to pay that much! For £35 it's a really good value printer to have in your home or office and I would be prepared to pay up to £60 for it. Anything more than that though is just extortionate in my opinion. It's currently on offer in Currys for £19.95 - definite bargain for Christmas there! The printer needs a black and a colour ink cartridge, which will set you back around £14 for the pair, however if you look on eBay and the like you can often find them cheaper. You just need to be certain that they're official (helpfully, the display tells you when you've put a new ink cartridge in that you've installed an official HP product, which is simultaneously cute and intelligent). As it can hold 60 sheets of paper in the loader, you may find like me that you burn through paper really quickly; though if it is true that it has a double sided option then I will be using this from now on to save myself some paper and the planet some trees. If not you can always do the 'turn the paper around and reload' trick. I can confirm that if you do that though, you do indeed need to put the blank side in facing outwards or it'll print on top of the already printed side.

The one problem that I've had with this printer is that occasionally, it doesn't like me attempting to print wirelessly. Now, I have an absolutely shocking wireless provider who I will not name, so it could be this or equally it could just be the printer being temperamental. I'm inclined to say that it's the wireless itself as as soon as you plug the cord into the printer and laptop it works perfectly. I shouldn't have to but I do - and it's not a massive problem. As I've not had this printer for long I can't say whether any more problems will arise after a year or so's use, but I get the feeling that it's well built enough to last a decent amount of time.

To conclude, this printer is more than worth it's money, even though the paper and ink can get expensive. But to be honest this is the same with pretty much any printer there is out there! I don't think you'll find another wireless all in one that performs to the same ability on todays market.