You're here :  Label Printer Buyer Guide

Label Printer Buyer Guide

Label Printers Buyers Guide

Label printers (labelmakers) have become hugely popular among office and business environments as well as among home users. The range of labels types and sizes available for such printers allows you to tag almost any kind of material and surface, both indoor and outdoor. Label printers are very straight forward to use and do not require any special skills to use them.

What type of printer would suit me?

The first thing you need to decide on is whether you will need to print labels on the go or you are only going to use your printer at home or at office. Portable labelmakers have a lot of advantages but there are also some limitations in terms of features and performance when compared to desktop label printers. This is the most important factor when buying a labelling machine.

PC Label Printer HANDHELD PRINTERS
Range of handheld labelmakers includes simple and affordable printers for home users and basic office purposes as well as more expensive and higher spec machines designed for professionals such as electricians or cable installers.
Even though the simple models of handheld label printers are cheap, they provide very good quality labels as the tapes used for printing are the same for all kinds of label printers – the only difference is that handheld devices have more limited tape widths that they can work with. Handheld label printers usually come with a manual label cutter that is integrated within the machine.
   
PC Label Printer DESKTOP LABEL PRINTERS
In terms of desktop label printers there are standalone machines and PC/MAC connectable machines. The standalone devices allow you to create labels with the built in keypad and preview them on a LCD display. Usually such printers offer up to 10 font styles, allow printing in at least 2 lines and can work with various tape widths (4 widths is a minimum).
Such label printers work well in small/medium offices where there is a moderate demand for printing labels. If you think you might be printing labels that vary in sizes a lot you should check what sizes of tapes can the particular machine work with.
Depending on the model you might choose between printers which have a manual cutter or a automatic one.
   
PC Label Printer PC/MAC CONNECTABLE LABEL PRINTERS
Label printers that are designed to work when connected to a computer are a bit different as they do not have a built in keypad and usually lack a LCD screen. But the possibilities are much wider than in the standalone and handheld machines and there is a lot of room for creativity.
Since you have to use special dedicated software for creating labels (which either comes free with the printer or is available for free download from manufacturer’s website) the range of fonts, printing styles and templates available is amazing. The software also allows you to print directly from Microsoft Word, Excel or Outlook simply by adding a dedicated button on the toolbar.
Since this type of label printers is the most advanced one – most of PC/MAC label printers have an automatic cutter and function of pre-cutting which allows you to keep printed labels on one strip and peel them off whenever you need to.