I sometimes have a need to print shipping labels from my home office as opposed to waiting until later in the day when I get to the warehouse. Not wanting to spring for the expense of another Zebra printer for relatively light home office use, this was an appealing alternative...until I started to use it. First, they include a test print page in the box that I cannot get anywhere close to replicating, even after altering and tweaking the appropriate settings. I can’t see any way that test print came from this printer. The labels Im printing are not nearly as full, crisp, dark, etc.; theyre worse in every regard compared to that included test print page. Ive tried printing on two different brands of otherwise good quality thermal labels, so they cant say thats the reason... Second, set-up was slightly cumbersome, although I did finally get it working on my Dell (Windows) laptop after somehow ending up with duplicated installed drivers. Third, the printer itself is noticeably bulkier than the Zebra that Im accustomed to using. Roll insertion is more time consuming, and the overall build quality leaves something to be desired. After only 1 days use, I really have to decide if this is worth it, or if I should just get a refurb Zebra (even of slightly more expensive, even as a refurb...) and have the ease and quality that I can already tell Im not likely to get from this printer. I cant attest to the print speed, since we print labels as orders are packed, 1 at a time...others have said that its super fast for multiple-label printing, so if youre bulk printing, that alone *might* outweigh the cons for you...but for my situation, I wouldnt recommend this printer, personally. 3 stars seems fair here. I feel very neutral about this printer -- I dont necessarily hate it, but Im not even close to loving it either.

The printer is of a reasonable form factor for a desktop thermal printer. I inserted a roll of 4x6 direct thermal paper, installed the drivers and was able to do a test print easily. Printing directly to it using the system print dialog was easy enough as well. Print quality - even using the settings claimed on the provided sample - was not as good as the sample. Assuming the settings are accurate, either their label paper is significantly better, or they faked the samples on another printer. The sample is darker, has no directional smudging, and is generally clearer. Using the same settings (speed of 4, darkness of 8) generates lighter print, directional smear, and fuzzy edges. At 1/3rd the cost of a comparable Zebra printer, I definitely get the appeal. If you plan to use this in a commercial environment, I recommend spending extra for the Zebra. If you are doing small quantity or low-priority stuff at home, this might be a decent fit. Where I ran into issues was using the Zebra SDK to send print jobs directly to the printer. Ive used it with a variety of other printers via TCP and USB, however this printer by default uses a virtual printer connection and does not seem to be compatible either with the Zebra SDK or with a direct USB logic. I reached out to the manufacturers regarding this but never got a reply. Eventually I resolved it by running through the winspool.drv using C#. I know Im an outlier in designing a program to print to it, but the reason I bring this up is that it may not be compatible with some programs that need to print to it. If you print with the system dialog youll probably be fine, though.