There are plenty of label printers around, but most are intended for permanent connection to a PC and intended primarily for quick and easy address labelling. Brother's P-Touch 2100 is a little different. Styled to be handheld or used as a standalone device, it has a fairly full QWERTY keyboard of rubbery keys, though some punctuation has to be added via menus of symbols.

Text and symbols can be viewed on the bitmapped, mono LCD screen, set roughly in the middle of its top panel. The printer is packed with options and you can adjust font, size, style and introduce a number of pre-designed templates, without ever connecting it to a PC.

The tape, which is the only consumable, is supplied in cartridges, and a number of tape-widths and colour combinations are available. You can swap cartridges at any time, to use the right tape for the job. Cleverly, the tapes are a laminated sandwich and the layer which is printed on by the machine's thermal print head is not the top one, so there's a protective transparent layer over the print, to prevent it being scratched off.

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Less cleverly, the machine wastes 23mm of tape on each label, as it cuts off a small section to adjust the label position to that of the printhead. Rival printers from Dymo manage to avoid this by feeding the tape back before starting to print, something Brother might want to incorporate, as with labels of an average 100mm, you'll waste a significant portion of each 8m cartridge.

The machine is very capable as a standalone device and can be run from the supplied PSU or from six AA batteries. It comes with a hard, plastic, power-tool-style case, so it can be carried around easily.

With the P-Touch 2100 connected to a PC, you can use the excellent P-Touch Editor, a WYSIWYG application giving full control of all the facilities of the printer. This is one of the best label editors we've seen and includes access to an extensive range of symbols and clip-art characters.

The print speed isn't quick, but since you're typically printing short lengths, it's never going to be much of a problem. Printed labels have a very high contrast, though with a resolution of just 180dpi, curves and diagonals can look ragged, close up.

Cost is around 16p per 100mm label, which is on a par with what you'd pay elsewhere. The label cartridges are widely available, though it's worth using a price comparator, as prices vary considerably.

This is a highly versatile label printer, which can be used on its own to produce a wide range of durable, high-visibility labels or connected to a PC to make use of the well-designed label editor. Print costs are comparable with the competition, though the tape wastage is annoying.