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Used for: 3–6 months
Drop-in roll change takes seconds
The paper-out sensor cries wolf with a good yard of roll left
Four months of six-day weeks in a barber's and it has printed every receipt asked of it, so the missing star is not about reliability. It is about the paper-out sensor, which decides the roll is finished when there is still a good yard on it. You learn to ignore the flashing light and carry on, but the first fortnight had me changing rolls that were half full. The lid is the other thing. It is a drop-in roll, which is exactly what you want when somebody is waiting, but the catch has a cheap feel and ours has started needing a firm press before it clicks. Print is crisp, it is quiet next to clippers, and it has never jammed. For a shop that just needs a till receipt and a card slip, it does the job and the money is well spent.
Used for: Less than a month
Set this up as a kitchen ticket printer in a chippy, sitting on a shelf above the range where the old one had cooked itself. It talks plain ESC/POS, so the EPOS software found it as a generic receipt printer and nothing had to be bought or subscribed to. Some fiddling to get the cut command right, mind. Out of the box it did a partial cut and left the ticket hanging, which is fine on a counter and a nuisance when the kitchen wants to grab and go. One line in the printer settings fixed it. Thermal paper in a hot kitchen is the thing I would watch. Tickets that sit near the fryer go brown at the edges by the end of service, though they are in the bin by then anyway.
Used for: 6–12 months
Cheap to buy and cheaper to feed
Mac support is a do-it-yourself job
Prints well and costs less to run than the till paper it replaced, but the driver disk is Windows only and getting it onto the Mac in the office took a forum thread and a generic CUPS driver.
Used for: 6–12 months
Sits on a farm shop counter and has printed through a winter of frozen fingers and a summer of jam sales without a murmur. The reason I am writing at all is that we bought it as the cheap stopgap while we saved for a branded one, and a year in the branded one has quietly stopped being mentioned. There are things it does better than the till printer it replaced. The cutter has not stuck once, and the old one stuck about weekly. And it wakes instantly, so the first customer of the morning gets their receipt while the card machine is still thinking. If you use it outdoors in the cold, give it a minute before the first print, because a very cold roll comes out faint. That is thermal paper for you, not the printer.
Used for: 3–6 months
Volunteers work it out without being shown twice
No network port, so it has to live beside the till
Our volunteers are not technical and this has not once needed explaining twice. Roll goes in, lid shuts, green light, print. That was the whole criterion for a charity shop till and it was met on day one! We get about a thousand receipts out of a roll and a box of rolls lasts the best part of a season, so the running cost is essentially nothing. It has sat under a counter through a very warm summer with no sulking, and the drawer kick-out works off the same socket.
Used for: Less than a month
Standard 80mm rolls, no proprietary paper
The cutter is loud in a small space
Bought to sit in a coffee van next to a tablet till and it was printing within twenty minutes of coming out of the box. The USB lead the till software wanted was in the box, which surprised me for the money, and the driver installed without any hunting about. Receipts come out fast and the auto-cutter is clean rather than the ragged tear you get off a cheap one. It takes standard 80mm rolls, which every cash and carry sells, so there is no proprietary consumable to worry about. Loud enough that you hear it over a grinder, which in a van is the point!