HP Deskjet 2540 review – still one of the cheapest inkjets

HP Deskjet 2540 Scanner

Photocopies are rather slow, at 35 seconds for a mono reproduction and 51 for colour, but once again, quality is good. You can only make a maximum of 9 copies; both colour and mono copy quality are very good, though, with evenly coloured or shaded images and clear, legible text reproduction.

The scanner is a perfectly good 1,200×1,200dpi CIS model, but you have to deal with HP’s software interface. It’s improved a bit over the years in terms of speed and usability, but the scanner interface is remarkably restrictive in other ways. For example, you can only choose a very limited range of resolutions from the scanner’s pull-down options. We were unable to carry out our 150dpi scan test for this reason. Scan speeds were rather slow; although 20 seconds for a 300dpi A4 scan isn’t entirely awful, two minutes and 37 seconds for a 1,200dpi photo scan was pretty poor. Cropping options are also very poor, with your best bet being to pre-select the size of image you wish you scan and positioning it on the platen accordingly.

Scan quality was a little dull, with a slight yellow tint visible on pale areas, but contrast between similar hues was fairly good and edges were clearly defined. Zoom in too far, though, and a speckled effect on borders between blocks of contrasting colour indicates automatic sharpening, which may not be welcome if you plan on doing close-up editing work on the scanned image.

HP Deskjet 2540 Conclusion

If you scan and print documents, but have little interest in photos, then this is a sound little MFP, albeit one with expensive mono costs. We’d have preferred more of an all-rounder, but if you’re okay the scanning and photo printing limitations of the Deskjet 2540, you get a decent range of other features for your money. When we first reviewed the Deskjet 2540 it cost £40, making it one of the cheapest MFPs around, and that hasn’t changed almost a year later – the price has dropped even further to £35, and although the ink costs remain higher than competing models, at this price it’s almost cheaper to replace the entire printer than it is to resupply its consumables.

This kind of purchase is a terrible impact on the environment, however, and when there are superior printers available for only slightly more, that end up cheaper to run in the long term, it’s still difficult to recommend. At the time of the original review the Epson Expression Home XP-312 was even more capable, cost less to run and could actually print photos properly, but price cuts mean that Canon’s PIXMA MG3250 is now even better value. Available for around £40 from Argos, it delivers great results and looks a lot more attractive than HP’s ugly white monster.