Sitting at the top of HP's range of photo printers is the Photosmart 7960, an 8-ink colour inkjet - the world's first for a desktop environment - designed for the professional user or the home user who prints a lot of photos.

You'll also need a fair bit of desk space for this monster. It measures 530 x 383 x 194mm and weighs a hefty 7.5kg, but still manages to look quite stylish in its metallic blue-grey finish. Like its predecessor, the Photosmart 7550, it features a 2.5-inch colour LCD panel to preview photos from your memory card. And, somewhat usually for a USB peripheral these days, HP supplies a USB cable with the 7960.

Most conventional 7-ink printers include an additional photo black cartridge. Not so the 7960. HP's 8-ink system has a photo black dye plus two additional shades of grey. To gain easy access to the cartridges, HP has built a cunning button into the front of the 7960; pressing it opens up the whole top section of the printer.

Despite this technology the Photosmart 7960 is very easy to set up. The driver CD is easy to follow and - best news of all - this is a printer with automatic calibration, so no more squinting at coloured blocks and patterns to see which one is correct. While the monochrome quality of the Photosmart 7960 is very high, our colour test images needed a little tinkering to get the best results, as the HP driver tended to make them a little too bright.

The printer has a resolution of up to 1,200dpi for printing black and an optimised 4,800dpi for colour printing. To achieve these figures, the Photosmart 7960 uses the latest Pro version of HP's PhotoREt (Photo Resolution Enhancement Technology).

Built into the top of the Photosmart 7960 are four flash memory card readers, which support CompactFlash Type I and II (plus IBM Microdrives), SecureDigital/Multimedia Card, Smart Media and Memory Stick, including the latest Memory Stick Pro.

After loading in a memory card, its contents are displayed on the LCD panel, and you can scroll through the pictures using the four-way controller button under the panel. You then have the option to edit and print any picture listed, or print out all of them in the form of a contact sheet.

The Photosmart 7960 can print 60 or so thumbnails per sheet of paper. There is also a USB port should you wish to print directly from an HP digital camera.

After a little tinkering with the drivers, HP's Photosmart 7960 produced some superb colour images and is easy to set up, thanks to its automatic calibration. With its multi-flash card support and computer-free printing, the 7960 is an interesting addition to the Photosmart range.