An all-in-one device at nearly £230 doesn't look great value, when they start at around £50. At over four times the entry-level price, you'd expect some extras and, fortunately, Canon's PIXMA MP830 has plenty to offer. It's a big, robust machine, obviously designed for general office use, and its feature list includes duplex printing, duplex scanning, an auto-document feeder (ADF), twin paper sources and sockets for memory cards and direct camera connection.

Liveried in black and silver, the machine is quite tall but has a surprisingly small footprint. As well as a 150-sheet feed tray at the back, there's a 150-sheet paper cartridge, which slots in from the front. Either or both of these feed sources can be set to A4 paper or photo print widths, depending on how you want to use the device. There's also a CD/DVD carrier which slots in from the front so you can print coated discs. This is fiddly to fit as it goes way inside.

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On the left-hand side of the full-width control panel along the front of the machine are mode selection buttons and fast dial buttons for faxing. A number pad and start buttons for monochrome and colour copies are on the right, together with a four-way button ring for menu control. In the middle is a 63mm LCD display, which can be used for previewing images before printing and for navigating the menus.

The memory card slot sits behind a small hatch cover on the right-hand side of the front panel and the PictBridge socket sits below this. Lift the top section of the machine and you can get at the print carriage. This takes five cartridges, as the PIXMA MP830 uses a pigmented black ink as well as the dye-based black which works with its cyan, yellow and magenta inks.

Print speeds are good for simple jobs, with a five-page text document printing in just over half a minute and five pages of text and graphics taking around 70 seconds. A 15 x 10cm (6 x 4-inch) photo print takes 36 seconds. The main disappointment comes when trying to use the device's built-in duplex facility. To print on both sides of the paper, each page is taken back inside the machine so the second side can be printed bottom to top, before being ejected feet-first. For 20 duplex pages - 10 sheets - you have to wait the best part of nine minutes.

Print quality is generally good, with sharp black text and smoothly coloured graphics. Photo prints come out well rendered, with natural blending from shade to shade, but again, duplex pages are not up to the standard of single-sided prints. The costs of the ink cartridges and Canon glossy photo paper give page costs of 2.4p and 36p for 5 percent black and 20 percent colour pages, respectively. The black print rate is reasonable, but the colour cost is on the high side.

The PIXMA MP830 sits at the top of Canon's range of home and home office multifunction devices and the specification list shows enough goodies to get you interested. In most ways it fulfils its promise, though its ability to print on both sides of the paper is disappointingly slow.