Inside the smart grey and white casing of the HP Photosmart D7160 there are six inkjet cartridges. In addition to the usual CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black), there are light cyan and light magenta to add to the palette of available colours

Epson's PictureMate 240 looks similar to the type of kid's bucket you take on the beach to make sandcastles. It comes across as a rugged device that you can use to print 6 x 4-inch postcards while on holiday

Canon has played an important role in the development of the mobile printer market, having produced a range of compact devices. The iP90V has a rechargeable battery you can use when you haven't got mains power

Brother doesn't produce a dedicated photo printer, but the DCP-330C is a decent all-in-one that also includes a scanner and fax function. The MFL-Pro Suite software handles scanning and copying duties, but you're on your own when it comes to printing

The time has come for more choice in life than lasers and inkjets for colour printing. Obligingly, Ricoh has just launched some new competition, in the semi-liquid consistency of gel printing

Compared with the frankly enormous, weighty colour laser printers that typified the market a few years ago, some of the latest 'personal' colour lasers have footprints barely larger than an A4 inkjet.

Most inkjet printers are either four-ink printers without colour space for photo realism, or six-ink printers that are expensive to run for document printing. The Canon Pixma iP5300 solves this problem the obvious way - by being a five-ink printer

Do you have stacks of old prints and slides, and want high-quality scans? Perhaps you can't afford a dedicated high-end film scanner? Then consider this Epson model. It's a high-quality flatbed with print and slide adaptor frames for volume scanning

The latest in HP's long and illustrious history of LaserJet printers, the 2600n has an inline toner cartridge arrangement and, with no carousel churning around, it's remarkably quiet in operation. And in performance terms, it more than meets expectations

Despite its reasonably compact size, the TallyGenicom 8108N feels like it weighs a ton, although the actual weight is 29kg. It's loud, too, even when sitting idle, with two fans and an intermittent pinging noise emanating from the machine

The Samsung CLP-300N is only slightly larger than many an inkjet printer. Yet it still comes with a full compliment of features. It offers an effective 2400 x 600dpi, just like the big boys in its class, and sports a healthy 32MB of memory

There's always somebody that has to be different, and this time it's Oki. Just when you thought that all colour printers were one of two basic shapes, along comes the C3300n. It's much longer than it is wide and not very tall at all

Tune into TV advertising and you'd think that most of the business world is running on Lexmark printers. Unlike some of Lexmark's flimsier inkjet printers, the C500n has a real business-like feel to it with seemingly rock-solid build quality

Comparatively compact and light in weight, the 2350DL jumps the first hurdle of installation by being refreshingly easy to get out of the box and position on your desk. Once there it looks stylishly designed, well finished and built to a high standard

Compared to some of the more lightweight models around, you can tell the Epson really means business as you struggle to lift all 28kg of printer out of its box. It's two to four inches larger in every direction than many other desktop colour lasers

Everything about the Laser Shot LBP-5000 screams simplicity. With a modest footprint and easily inserted toner cartridges, which are based on a vertically stacked, inline system rather than relying on a carousel.

The latest vogue might be for colour lasers in the office but these are usually big, noisy beasts. The new LaserJet P2015 mono printer is an exercise in space-saving simplicity.

This machine is an all-in- one fax, colour inkjet printer, scanner and copier. It performs with varying ability, faces stiff competition from HP and Epson, but generally failed to impress us considering the price

Compact photo printers like this Photosmart A618 are bread and butter to HP. Each year the company spends tens of millions of dollars refining its inks, optimising its nozzles and blending coatings for its photo paper

Flatbed scanners still offer the highest quality scans for graphics work. For document scanning, though, where you don't need fine graphics quality, machines like the ScanSnap are the better option...

The Photosmart 7450 costs £30 more than the baby HP Deskjet, but it'smoney well spent. Apart from reduced running costs that will soon clawback the extra outlay, the Photosmart also comes with a host of extras.

With the C534, Lexmark is entering the market for quality laser printers under a grand. The initial investment is low enough for this printer to find its way into both homes and offices alike

Laser printers aren't what they used to be. The price tags have seen unprecedented drops in recent times, plus they're far more efficient than the dinosaurs of yesteryear. The quality of colour prints from a laser has also seen big improvements