HP Photosmart Plus B210 review

HP’s multifunction printers prove that Canon doesn’t have a monopoly on stylish devices at the moment. We particularly like the look of the Photosmart Plus B210, finished mostly in smart matte black and livened up by a glossy top. The scanner lid’s tessellated hexagon design is attractive too.

HP packs this MFP in a re-usable bag that’s probably too big for general shopping, but is excellent for students or anyone else who wants to keep it handy for protecting against scratches in transit. The device comes festooned with blue tape, but removing it all is a good way to familiarise yourself with its many features. Generally the Photosmart Plus has the same major interfaces, memory card slots and features as the Photosmart Premium C310, but it’s missing an automatic duplexer and has a smaller touchscreen.

Other than the tape, this is an easy device to set up. HP ships its ink cartridges in more minimal packaging than most and they come with a card to help you replace them with compatible ones. The printer makes a succession of intriguing sucking and whirring noises as it prepares to print, giving you something of a distraction while you sit through the incredibly slow software installer, which crashed on our Vista test PC.

When we began our print tests, we found a basic Windows print settings page rather than the user-friendly interface we’d normally expect with an HP device. We uninstalled all the software, rebooted and re-installed, only to find the same page. We were able to continue our normal print tests, but a more limited scan interface prevented us from testing the preview or 150dpi scan speeds as normal.

The Photosmart Plus completed all our print tests in competitive times, although at just shy of 10 minutes, it was slow to print six postcard-sized photos. Six direct photo prints were just over two minutes quicker, but we found setting the job up via the touchscreen interface infuriating. The controls are slower to respond to touches than Lexmark’s, and we found that some actions were missed unless we were very deliberate with our prodding. Left unattended with a memory card inserted before we tried to print, the Photosmart Plus begun a slideshow with no indication of how to stop it again.

Sadly, we weren’t overly impressed with the quality of this MFP’s scans, prints or copies. Colour prints on plain paper were among the best here, and colour photocopies were reasonably good, but the graphics in our mono copy test were too dark. Unusually for an HP printer, black text wasn’t perfect either. Low-resolution scans were crisp and our Q-60 test pattern scan revealed good colour accuracy with excellent preservation of shading detail, but high-resolution photo scans had been over processed, leaving them with a curious dappled effect that we’ve seen from other HP scanners.

Ultimately, though, we were most disappointed with photos which, whether printed from a PC or memory card, were weak. While skin tones in portraits were very natural, other shots revealed a variable colour accuracy and very poor detail in darker areas, contributed to by lacklustre black. Our blue sky test, which should reveal a smooth graduation of blue shades, was mottled at one edge.

Given these problems, we can’t recommend the B210. If you can afford the extra money, the Epson PX720WD is an all-round better choice.