Friday, June 10, 2011
DYMO LabelWriter 450 Twin Turbo
9:02 AM | 
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Tecnewslogi |
Printing labels has always been problematical for standard printers, and probably always will be. That's why label printers are a worthwhile convenience to have sitting on your desk. But label printers have shortcomings too. In particular, if you regularly print more than one kind of label, like address labels and printed postage labels, switching the rolls back and forth can be a chore.
The DYMO LabelWriter 450 Twin Turbo ($199 direct) makes switching easy, earning it a place as Editors' Choice.
The 450 Twin Turbo, like the LabelWriter Twin Turbo before it, is effectively two printers in one. It offers two sets of printer mechanisms and can hold two rolls of labels. Compared with typical label printers, like the Brother QL-500 PC Label Printer and the Editors' Choice Brother QL-570 Professional Label Printer, it has roughly twice the footprint, at 8.5 by 7.25 inches (WD). However, it won't clutter up your desk as much as two separate printers would, taking up less total space, and needing only one power cord and one USB cable. The DYMO software is among the more capable and easier to use label printing utilities that I've seen. Among other features, it lets you insert an automatic date and time stamp and any of nearly 20 bar codes, including Postnet for mailing labels. The installation routine also installs add-ons in Word and Excel to let you easily create a label from an address or other text in a letter, for example, or from data in a spreadsheet.
Aside from these minor issues, the 450 Twin Turbo worked swimmingly. Being able to print an address label from within a Word document with just two or three mouse clicks almost makes up for the inconvenience of the warning about Normal.dot every time you close Word. The printer's fast speed doesn't hurt either. I printed 50 address labels at just under 50 seconds. Printing individual labels is just as fast per label. Note too that if you have to print a large number of labels, you can load two rolls of the same label types, set the software to print on both, and the printer will automatically switch to the second roll when the first runs out. Also very much worth mention is that DYMO offers a wide variety of labels with different colors, shapes, and sizes, and even labels for printing postage. (The postage labels work in tandem with DYMO Stamps [stay tuned for our review], a free software package.)
One final plus is that changing rolls is easier than with many label printers. It's not quite as easy as with the Brother models, but it's a close second, with the rolls moving out of the way of the slots when you lift the top cover. The Brother printers also add a manual cutter in the QL-500 and an automatic cutter in the QL-570, while the DYMO printer leaves it to you to tear off the label without ripping it. On any reasonable scale, however, the ability to print on either of two rolls outweighs the convenience of a cutter.
Ultimately, the only real issue for the 450 Twin Turbo is the problem I ran across with the Word add-on. It's hard to count that as a seriously problem however, since it's an extra feature whose absence wouldn't be an issue if DYMO had left it out altogether. If you run into the same problem I had with it, you can simply uninstall the add-in and the problem will go away. What you'll be left with is still worthy of being Editors' Choice, as a highly impressive label printer and one of the most convenient to use.
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2 Comment:
What an interesting place, i have bookmarked your site for future reference.
http://www.dymoonline.com.au/
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