How to choose a label printer?

Labels applied to goods and products are currently the most common and recognizable system for identifying them. It is used all over the world, not only by large corporations but increasingly by small companies, which use labels not only for commercial purposes but also to mark processes taking place between individual departments of the business. Just as a label carrying data, often encoded in a barcode, is today the standard way of marking goods and services, a label printer is a basic piece of equipment in almost every company.
While creating a label is not a difficult task, especially with the help of suitable label design software, printing it on an ordinary office printer rather misses the point. Why? Because the quality of a label, and therefore how easily it can be read, depends largely on the printing technique and precision, which, although achievable on an ordinary printer, would simply be uneconomical. So there is no point in improvising: it is better to go straight for a specialized printer designed for printing labels and barcodes. Regardless of the nature of your business and the industry you operate in, such a printer will considerably simplify many processes inside the company and beyond it. But which printer should you choose?

First, a few words about labels themselves. Most often they are small self-adhesive stickers containing all the information needed to identify the goods. For example, labels on food products state the weight of the product, its price and the best-before date. In addition, labels that also contain barcodes provide the production date, batch, manufacturer, intended use or storage conditions. All this information is placed on the label at the printing stage, and the data itself is entered using dedicated software.

This system saves time and money, especially when marking large batches of products. It also means higher employee efficiency and, as a result, a stronger market position for the company. The main manufacturers of this type of equipment are Zebra and Honeywell (which now includes the former Datamax). Their ranges include both devices designed for printing a small number of labels in an office and those printing several hundred labels on a production line. And this is the factor to consider first when choosing a label printer: its intended use. An industrial label printer, because of its size and operating noise, is not suited to office conditions, while a desktop printer will not meet the throughput demands of a production line.

The next, equally important decision is the choice between a direct thermal and a thermal transfer printer. The difference between them lies in how the data is applied to the label and in how the labels are used afterwards. Direct thermal printers require special paper and print only black-and-white labels, while thermal transfer printers use plain paper or synthetic labels. In addition, thermal paper is a very sensitive material, susceptible to temperature changes, which is why industry more often uses thermal transfer printing, which is more durable and resistant to temperature and mechanical damage. Direct thermal printing is more common in offices and in the food industry, where the labels have a shorter service life. Remember, too, that a thermal transfer printer can print in direct thermal mode, but not the other way round.
It is also important to choose the right label width. Desktop printers tend to have a rather limited width range, whereas industrial models can print labels from 54 mm up to as much as 220 mm. There are exceptions among desktop printers too, such as the Honeywell PC42E-T, which reaches a print width of 108 mm.

Printer throughput, that is printing as many labels as possible in the shortest possible time, matters as well. The higher it is, the greater the assurance of an uninterrupted production process. Of course, correct operation of the device also plays a role here, and that depends above all on choosing the right consumables, such as ribbons and paper. This keeps the printheads working long and efficiently. Printer resolution, in turn, affects print quality itself, and therefore readability. The standard resolution is 203 dpi, while industrial printers reach up to 600 dpi. Keep in mind, however, that the higher the print resolution a printer offers, the lower the print speed, though the quality will certainly be higher. The price of a label printer also rises with print width and printhead resolution.

Bear in mind as well that barcode label printers differ in size. Desktop models are more compact and take up little space. Industrial ones are larger and heavier, but can easily be installed on a production line. For a printer intended for a production line it also matters that it can operate without external communication. This is possible thanks to specially developed software. It is also important that industrial printers are equipped with additional ports to which coordinated devices can be connected.