Unlike many so-called direct photo printers, the new HP Photosmart 7760 offers an excellent range of standalone features. For starters, there’s a five-slot media card reader, conveniently stashed away under a flap on the top panel, which supports no less than 11 different formats of memory card. Better still, there’s no need to print an index sheet to see what photos are on the card, because there’s a full colour LCD panel that doubles as a menu display and preview panel for viewing photos.

A wide range of control buttons enables quick access to anything from viewing a slideshow of your shots on the LCD screen to zooming, rotating and changing the size of your photos before printing. Using the more advanced controls, you can enhance photos, altering the brightness, adding a picture frame or making use of colour effects. Fire up your PC and you can also email photos direct from the memory card or save them to your hard drive.

Standard issue includes HP’s tried and tested No 57 tri-colour cartridge and No 58 photo cartridge, which adds photo-cyan, magenta and black to the mix. Using this line-up, you get high quality, six-ink photo-printing with excellent colour and contrast, although HP’s Premium Plus Photo paper doesn’t give quite such high gloss results as the Canon or Epson equivalents.

The Photosmart 7760 is also adept at mono and general purpose colour printing but, to do this cost effectively and at high speed, you’ll need to invest in the optional No 56 black cartridge, which costs around £16. At least you get a cartridge storage holder free with the printer, which stops the ink drying out prematurely. Another option is the No 59 Photo Grey cartridge: a delight for black and white photos, giving great tonal range and accuracy in printing.

Adding to the overall convenience, there are separate paper input trays for A4 and 10x15cm pages, with a simple lever for selecting the media size you want to use. The 7760 can output borderless prints at both sizes. All in all, this is a very well thought out printer for both general purpose and photo output. Running costs aren’t the cheapest but, as with almost all HP inkjet printers, you’ll get new print heads with each and every cartridge you buy, maintaining the quality level almost indefinitely. It’s a very good buy at the price.