Compared with the similarly priced new Epson CX3600 all-in-one printer, also reviewed in this issue, the HP is smaller, neater and lighter in weight. It’s also simpler to use in standalone mode, although this is mainly due to a basic selection of top panel buttons. Rudimentary controls include ‘Start Copy’ buttons for mono and colour copying, a ‘Paper Type’ choice for switching between plain and photo paper, scaling options of 100 per cent or ‘fit to page’, and a quantity selection button for between one and nine copies.

In keeping with its history, HP has used a U-turn paper path, and the straightforward open-topped paper tray at the bottom of the printer also serves as the output tray. Sheets coming out of the printer are simply laid over the feed pages, so you have to be careful not to grab a handful of unused sheets with your printouts if you’re in a hurry. Standalone copy modes are bolstered by a PictBridge port for direct photo-printing, as well as the standard USB 2.0 interface for computer connection.

At the heart of the printer lie the HP’s ‘No.27’ black cartridge and the ‘No.28’ for colour. These are among the most expensive of HP’s range in terms of running costs. At a standard five per cent coverage, mono printing works out to around 6.5p per A4 page, and colour costs just over 8.5p. Worse still, the colour cartridge contains all three cyan, magenta and yellow inks so, if you run out of one colour, you have to throw the rest away. For photo-printing, you can swap the black cartridge for an optional ‘No.58’ photo cartridge. This enables full six-colour photo printing with better colour range, especially for blue skies and skin tones.

In terms of speed, the PSC 1315 looks slower than the Epson on the spec sheet but, in real terms, there’s little to choose between the two. In our text for mono-text page copying, the HP returned a time of 33 seconds for a single A4 page. This stretched to just over a minute for a colour graphics page printed on plain paper, and nearly four minutes for a 5x7in photo-on-photo paper.

Quick and easy to use, the only real flaws in the PSC 1315 are its relatively expensive running costs and the fact that colour photocopies tend to be a little washed out, but photo-quality is excellent if you use the optional ‘No.58’ cartridge.
Matthew Richards