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Used for: 6–12 months
Ribbon print that does not fade
No display, just a light and a button
The cheapest way into a proper thermal transfer printer, and it has done everything a small stockroom asks. The ribbon means labels that do not fade, which was the whole reason for choosing it over the direct thermal version!
Used for: 6–12 months
Takes shop dust in its stride
Ribbons need buying in the right width
In a hardware shop it does the shelf-edge labels, and in nine months the only attention it has wanted is a new ribbon and the occasional blast of the air line to shift the dust. It lives under the counter and prints when the till tells it to.
Used for: More than a year
Dark labels, and it takes third-party ribbons
Calibration has become a fight in the second year
Three stars after fourteen months, and it is the honest rating. When it works it is very good. Dark, square labels, no fading, and it has taken third-party ribbons quite happily. The trouble is that it has become fussy about calibration. Every roll change now needs the button-hold routine two or three times before it finds the gap, and about once a fortnight it decides mid-run that a label is not where it thought and feeds four blanks through. It may be dust, it may be a tiring sensor. For the money it has printed far more than it owes us and I would probably buy another. But it is no longer the machine that can be left with anybody.
Used for: 3–6 months
Printed part numbers scan, handwritten ones do not
USB only unless you buy the network version
Ordered to replace a handheld label gun in a small parts store, and the difference is not speed so much as legibility. Printed part numbers scan; handwritten ones get retyped by somebody. Setup was a USB lead and a driver, and the label software we already had recognised it straight away
Used for: 3–6 months
Four hundred labels in an hour on a Friday night
The bundled software is best left in the box
We run a market stall selling spices and every jar needs a label with a name, a weight and a barcode on it. This prints them onto a roll of blanks fast enough that I can do a whole Saturday's stock on the Friday night: about four hundred labels in the hour, where it used to be an entire evening with a sheet of stickers and a printer that jammed. It is basic. There is no screen, calibration is a button held down while it feeds a few labels through, and the software in the box is best ignored in favour of something free. None of that has stopped it earning its keep twice over.
Used for: Less than a month
Loaded and printing without reading the manual
Unboxed on a Saturday and printing barcodes for our stock take by the afternoon. The ribbon and roll go in obviously enough that I never opened the manual, and the first label came out square and dark. Very pleased so far!
Used for: 3–6 months
Square labels every time
The lid feels light in the hand
Small, cheap, and the labels come out square and dark every single time