Most ink-jet-based all-in-ones (AIOs) emphasize either photo-related or office-centric features. The former are best suited for a home, while the latter work well for a small office or home office. The HP Photosmart C7280 All-In-One ($299.99 direct) is strong in both departments. It offers photo-friendly features and high-quality photo prints, and also sports an automatic document feeder (ADF), standalone and fax, network connector, and Wi-Fi capability, all features that any office would welcome. All these capabilities make it a great choice for the dual role of home and home-office AIO.

On the photo-centric side, the C7280 can print from memory cards, PictBridge cameras, and USB keys. You can review photos on its 2.5-inch color LCD. Most important, you can print high-quality photos. It uses six ink colors with a separate cartridge for each color—cyan, yellow, magenta, black, light cyan, and light magenta—a common choice for photo printers.

As for its office features, it can print, scan, scan to e-mail (launching your e-mail program and adding the scanned file as an attachment), fax from your computer, and work as a standalone fax machine and copier. It makes quick work of scanning, faxing, or e-mailing multipage documents, thanks to a 50-page automatic document feeder (ADF). It can even scan legal-size pages using the ADF.

Still another feature that helps the C7280 fill a dual role is its network connector and Wi-Fi support, which make it easy to share on a home network. Setting up on a network is straightforward. The AIO measures 9.8 by 17.7 by 17.5 inches (HWD). Simply find a spot for it, remove the packing materials, plug it in, turn it on, and load the ink cartridges and paper. Then plug in the network cable, run the automated installation program, and wait while the software installs.

While you're waiting you might contemplate the paper handling, which is a mixed blessing. The C7280 includes two welcome touches: a duplexer for automatically printing on both sides of a page, and a 20-sheet, 4-by-6 photo tray so that you can switch between printing on standard paper and on 4-by-6 photo paper without having to swap paper. Unfortunately, the primary tray holds only 100 sheets. Refilling it could quickly get annoying if you print, fax, and copy more than about 20 sheets per day, making the C7280 suitable only for those offices that have the lightest of printing needs.

The C7280's performance is similarly limiting, particularly considering its price. It plodded through our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing, www.qualitylogic.com) in a poky 20 minutes 10 seconds. In contrast, the similarly priced Editors' Choice Canon Pixma MP970 Photo All-In-One took 15:58, and the less expensive Canon Pixma MP610—also an Editors' Choice, and one of the fastest ink jet AIOs I've tested—took just 12:18. The C7280 also takes its time printing photos, averaging 1:26 for a 4-by-6 and 3:51 for an 8-by-10.

As for output quality, the C7280 is a little weak on text, but strong on graphics and photos. The text quality is typical for an ink jet, though on the low side of the range. Most fonts in our test suite were easily readable, with well-formed characters at 6 points, but only one was easily readable at 4 points, and heavily stylized fonts with thick strokes needed 20 points. I'd call the text good enough for schoolwork or most business use, but not suitable for, say, legal contracts with small fonts or anything approaching desktop publishing, such as a client newsletter.

Graphics are easily good enough for any internal business use, including projects like PowerPoint handouts. Thin lines tend to disappear, which is a common issue with printers. Otherwise, the graphics are good enough to give to an important client or customer you need to impress with your professionalism. If you print full-page graphics, you may want to spend a little extra on better-quality paper. With the plain paper we use in our tests, full-page graphics tended to make the paper curl slightly.

Color-photo quality was terrific, close to what I expect to see from a more expensive photo printer or a professional photo lab. The one flaw worth mentioning was a color-balance problem in a monochrome photo. I saw slight, but obvious, tints in some shades of gray, with different colors in different shades. If you don't print black-and-white photos, however, this won't be a problem.

And the photos should last. HP claims a 200-year lifetime for photos kept in dark storage, as in an album, 40 years for photos behind glass, and 30 or more years for photos exposed to the air. The photos were also reasonably waterproof and scratch-resistant on my tests, which means you can pass them around for people to look at without worrying about their coming back ruined.

The slow speed, low paper capacity, and less-than-ideal text quality limit the C7280's appeal mainly to home offices with light-duty printing needs. If light duty is all you require, however, the C7280's full set of office features—from ADF to standalone fax—make it a superb choice. And given its focus on photos, it's one of the best models available if you want one AIO for both your home and home office.

Check out the HP Photosmart C7280 All-In-One's test scores.

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