Brother DCP-330C
Quick presentation and ergonomics
The color of the cover varies, a color LCD screen, and the control panel now authorizes navigation in menus. For the rest, this product is completely identical to the DCP-130C. It’s up to you to determine if the commonly found 20 euro difference is justified. In our opinion, it is. The small monochrome screen like that of the 130C’s does not really allow autonomous use. To print photos without a computer or make several copies of documents, the color option is a little clearer.
Quality of printing and scanning
The cartridges and print heads are same as the 130C‘s, and we find the same advantages and weaknesses.
The good points are: surprisingly good precision (an evolution for Brother) and superiority in detail even to HP‘s high end product. Characters are perfectly reproduced, black ink doesn’t spill into colors. Another strong point is the small size of ink drops, which gives us photos without any visible dots. (There were, however, rows that were slightly visible indicating a repetition of an imprecise setting, perhaps a poorly adapted ink drying time for the chariot speed, or a slight recovering of the precedent layer). We didn’t expect such precision.
The bad point: color rendering. Colors from the original document weren’t respected and prints of all types lacked intensity and contrast.
Speed
Without attaining the announced 25 pages per minute, the 330C and its 4.2 ppm finished before Epson models but slightly behind all the others. This was not by much (except for high end models) and all printers are more or less together.
On the other hand, it is a bit slower than the average for photos and scanning.
Ink costs
Cartridges don’t have integrated print heads, and they are simple ink blocks. For this reason, we were hoping to find very low ink costs, inferior to even those of Canon. We were wrong, and the cartridges are too expensive to make Brother AIOs (All In One) economical products in use. It’s better to avoid printing photos (27 cents each without paper!) and to be content with the more interesting office use.
A serious defect?
Sound in normal use was a problem. It’s not that it was too loud, but rather there was a whining, especially noticeable in photo mode. It wasn’t too strong but very distinct and all Brother products we tested were affected. For example, here it is on the 330C:
