Some all in one printer, scanner and copier units are defined by their nifty add-ons, or groovy style choices The PSC1210 is just small. No, strike that, it's very small. Read our Australian review.

The PSC1210 is a budget all-in-one aimed at the home/SOHO market, or anyone with a severe lack of desk space. The only thing that other all-in-one (AIO) units do that the PSC1210 doesn't is fax documents, although there's nothing stopping you connecting up any faxing software to your PC and adding that functionality in other ways. The most interesting thing about the unit is its remarkably small size -- 425.7mm by 259.1mm by 169.7mm. It's also relatively light at 5kg, although its small size makes it seem heavier than it should be.

Setting up the PSC1210 is mostly identical to every other printer we've reviewed over the last year or so. Install HP's Director application, which sits noisily in your system tray, plug in the unit and reboot. Only two things of note caught our attention. It appears that our consistent whinging about printer vendors not shipping USB cables has finally caught someone's attention; the PSC1210 is the second printer we've seen in as many weeks that comes with its own USB cable.

The secondary point is less complimentary. As with any printer, there comes a time when you have to insert print cartridges, and this is tougher than on many other units, including HP's own. There's no colour-coding to the cartridge slots, and insertion requires more force than with similar units. We can see many SOHO consumers being a touch worried about breaking the system.

The scanner on the PSC1210 is of the bargain basement variety, but what do you expect at an AU$299 price point? It's only of an average speed, and like the printing function, is a touch noisy when in operation. HP includes some rudimentary OCR software that managed a reasonable job with most text in basic layout. While the director software gives you the option to scan graphics and text, we'd steer clear of that; all of our test scans with complex images ended up with some quite major errors. Scans completed in around 30 seconds, which is acceptable for a home unit.

Copying can be performed from the Director application or directly from the buttons on the unit itself. These buttons will cover most basic functions, and while they're quite easy to use they don't allow for subsequent print or copy jobs to be queued without PC direction.

The core of any AIO unit is the print engine, and here the PSC1210 has its good side and one distinctly bad side. It's a photo-capable printer (up to 4,800 x 1,200 optimised dpi from a 1,200 x 1,200 source) that manages reasonable speed printing. Our test text document managed to come out in 25 seconds, with multiples taking a further 15 seconds each. Dropping down to fast draft mode saw initial printing time drop to a very acceptable 15 seconds. If you want a quiet office, though, the PSC1210 isn't for you. Possibly due to its cramped construction, the unit is one of the noisiest printers we've seen in a long while.

Photo printing likewise was of decent quality for a printer in this price range. A4 prints took five minutes to print at best quality, while smaller 4R prints came out in an average of 1:45. Neither score is lightning fast, but for a home printer it still sits in the acceptable category.

We did hit one major problem with printing, though; if paper is inserted too far into the PSC1210 -- an easy thing to do -- it will pick up multiple pages when printing singles. As they can then slide while printing, you can end up with a surprising amount of wasted paper this way, although it's a mistake you're unlikely to make twice. Pickup of photo paper was actually worse; rather than pick up multiple sheets, the PSC1210 tended to jam with photo media still in the unit. Given the price of photo printing media, that's an expensive jam to have to face on a regular basis. Compounding our printing woes is the fact that the PSC1210 doesn't have an out tray. Printed paper is sent out to sit on top of the existing in tray, which can create problems if you need to load paper while the printer is running.

Were it not for our paper feeding woes, we'd be raving about the PSC1210, which at its size and price point is otherwise a quite remarkable little all-in-one unit. As it is, it's only recommended if you're willing to put up with the occasional mangled sheet of paper.

HP PSC1210
Company: HP Australia
Price: AU$299
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 13 13 47

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