If you're after a basic inkjet printer and have a low budget then there is always a limited choice, as most manufacturers only offer one or two budget models. The Stylus C42UX is Epson's latest offering and, for a budget printer, it's not bad.

The build quality is solid and Epson has at last included a slide-out paper output tray with its budget printers instead of a rather flimsy bit of plastic that you used to have to hook on. The rear paper support is a hook-on affair, and it's been made much more solid than in the past.

You get a separate black cartridge as well as a tri-colour one, which might prove expensive if you use an uneven amount of colours when you print, but otherwise it is a more convenient solution to separate ink cartridges.

The printer itself is fairly small and, even though it produces a fair amount of noise, it's fairly fast. The time between hitting the Print button and printing is virtually nothing. Print quality on plain paper isn't outstanding but is good enough for general use.

Photo quality is very good for a printer in this price range, although you'd better not be in a hurry as our test image took 18 minutes 35 seconds, which is hardly impressive. Pictures also come out a bit grainy, but you'll only notice this if you look very closely.

The major downfall of the C42UX is the ink capacity of the cartridges. The black cartridge lasted for only around 150 pages, so don't expect to get a huge amount of printouts from each cartridge. At around £17 a cartridge we'd expect them to last a bit longer than this.

Price: £59.99 (£51.05 ex VAT)

Specifications:
1,440 x 720 max resolution
Black and tri-colour cartridge format
Windows 98 to XP and Mac OS X support
Weight: 24.8kg
Dimensions: 424 x 227 x 168 (w x d x h)
USB connection
One-year on-site warranty.

Contact: Epson 0800 220 546
www.epson.co.uk