Photo Printing

Four colours good – six colours better

Photo printing always used to be the big weakness of inkjet printers, but all those on test can produce good photo prints with fine detail and bold colours. They’re pretty quick too, producing a 4x6 postcard print in less than a minute.

The prints produced by the Canon MG2950, HP Envy 5640 and Officejet 5740 were perfectly adequate for creating cards and calendars, or even presentations for work. However, they were slightly darker than their rivals and sometimes lost detail on darker areas within an image.

The Canon MG6650 and Epson XP-620 managed to bring out a little extra detail, but the Epson XP-760 was the clear winner here. The XP-760 is a specialised photo printer that uses six different coloured inks for subtle colour graduations, especially on details such as skin tones in portraits. However, the XP-760 is also the most expensive printer in this group so you need to be serious about photography to pay for that extra quality.