The Brother DCP-195/197C is a compact colour inkjet multifunction printer with a built in media card centre. This is Brothers current entry level machine and typically retails at around £50-£60. The 195 and 197 are essentially the same machine and the only thing that sets the two apart is the additional OCR software included in the DCP-197C.
As a multifunction printer it also has a scanner and copier and the media card centre allows you to print directly from SD, xD, Memory Stick or MMC card. Unfortunately the screen is a small calculator style LCD and not a full colour LCD like you may have seen on other models so it is a little harder to see and use. Thankfully a front facing USB port is also available so you can connect any digital camera that utilises Pictbridge technology and use the screen on your camera to choose the image you wish to print.
It comes with everything you need to get you up and running (ink, software, power cable) with the exception of a USB cable so make sure you either have a USB A-B cable from your old printer or you buy one along with the printer. When it comes to setting the printer up it is very easy as you simply plug in the power cable and run the USB cable through the channel located under the scanner bed. With most operating systems it will pick up the printer automatically and configure it for you but if you would rather install the software anyway or have it guide you through the installation software is included.
As the Brother description rightly states this is an extremely compact machine as instead of gravity fed paper popular in other inkjet printers it takes paper from the built in paper tray. The down side to this being the paper has to turn 180 degrees inside the printer and it can only handle paper with a maximum thickness of 220gsm as a result.
The Brother DCP-195/197C takes very reasonable sized cartridges with the high capacity units containing 25ml for the black and 12ml for each of the colours. As these cartridges are also un-chipped you will face little/no resistance if you decide to use compatible cartridges in your printer as the printer simply will not know. This makes this printer a very cheap and trouble free printer to run.
Printing at a maximum of 33 pages per minute it is a pretty fast inkjet printer and relatively quiet when compared to some of the competition. However with a resolution of 1200 by 6000dpi it does not give the sharpest photo prints and keen photographers may be better off looking at 6+ colour Epson/Canon machines. That said the quality of photo prints to the naked eye is acceptable and should be just fine for an occasional print.
In summery the DCP-195/197C is a great printer and thoroughly recommended for any small office or home user that is looking for an economic printer to run. It may not have masses of extra features but does everything is promises to a reasonable standard. However photographers may want to look elsewhere as they will almost certainly not be impressed with the print resolution it provides.
