I've always gone with HP for my printing needs and since ive got this I've been asking myself why.

Its fast, quality is always good and I've never had a jam or malfunction and I do a lot of printing I usually get through about 500 sheets a month. Therese 2 paper sources which is useful I usually have the bottom tray loaded with paper, although it could do with being able to hole a bit more paper, and i leave the top feeding thing (dunno what the technical name is, slide thingy i recon) folded down which looks nicer and also have it ready set to accept 4x6" photo paper, so there's no having to swap over plain and photo paper, which saves a few seconds.

So far I've only printed photos on 4x6" photo paper but I'm guessing the quality would be the same no matter the size of the paper. I'm using Kodak premium ultra glossy 4x6" photo paper and although the name wouldn't suggest it was the cheapest Kodak photo paper WH Smiths had for sale (I think the other one was super amazing ultra glossy mega photo paper pro, or something along those lines). The quality of the print is very nice you can tell its been printed at home but this is mainly because it's not as glossy as they would like you to believe.
I've seen that some printers leave printing lines (what i mean by this is a regular pattern of lines or tracks where it looks as though the photo has been printed in blocks and you can see the joins) on the photo, but there's none here its a nice even smooth picture. I'm sure there are better photo printers out there but i would be very surprised if there was one for the same price

This would have to be my favourite aspect of this printer, there's nothing worse than having a boring cd/dvd you've written labelled with nothing more than a permanent marker or worse those useless sticker labels which never print right and you can always see that they've been slapped on. Well no more as long as you've got yourself a printable CD/DVD you just pop you disc into the provided caddy and put that into the printer and a few seconds later you have yourself a lovely printed disc. Its really quick and the quality is very good almost on par with the photo printing. The provided CD/DVD printing software is basic and very easy to use. I've used both normal white DVDs and the new silver face printable DVDs and they both come out very nice, white give better clarity where silver give a nice holographic effect. I'm not too sure if the printer prints full face discs but if it doesn't it dose get close (I know this because i accidentally changed the settings for the inner print margin instead of outer and printed on the plastic bit in the middle of a non full faced disc)

I have only done 1 direct print so far and that was from my phone (nokia n80) and although it was just as quick and the quality was good you could tell the difference in quality, whether this was because of the printing software on my phone, the quality of the phone picture (should be good 3MP but that doesn't necessarily mean good i suppose) or just that it prints better from a PC I don't know, but as your most likely going to want you photos on your PC anyway I suggest just printing from there. Its nice to have the option there but I don't think I'm ever going to use it again.

The printer comes complete with 5 separate ink cartridges, 2 blacks and 3 colour. The lifespan of the Ink is quite acceptable - after 2 months of heavy printing most are still nearly full, but the bigger black has less than half left. Having separate colour cartridges is definitely a plus, I always seem to run out of blue but have plenty of the others left, so saves there. The cartridges are easy to install and reasonable priced at around £10 each depending on where you buy them