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The time when printing speed does come into play is if you are labeling products, adding SKUs, or putting labels on items for Amazon FBA. However, the speed of all printers can be adjusted in settings if you’re dissatisfied with the speed/quality balance you’re getting. The fastest printers will never be the highest quality.
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Thermal labels react to heat (which makes the “printed” part black) and they can only react so fast. The other truth that nobody talks about is that there is a balance between speed and quality. Everyone raves about the ROLLO being the fastest printer available and, while it’s fast, label printing speed is not a limiting factor in our business. Printing Speedįor the average small business, eBay seller, or home shipping, printing speed really doesn’t matter. The best shipping label printers should last for 10 years or so without any serious maintenance so, anything less than that, gives us cause to drop it from our search. There are some new printers popping up on the market (mostly rebranded imports) so we’ve done our best to vet those we haven’t had direct experience with and ask around to get an idea about how they will perform for the long term.
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Shipping labels haven’t changed in forever after all. Like many commercial or office products, thermal label printers can stay on the market for a decade or more with little to no change. Having the option to print more sizes means you can also print product labels, name tags, etc. Whether you do or don’t swap labels often, it is nice to have the ability to print a wide variety of things in a wide variety of sizes. However, it’s a big enough pain that when we wanted a thermal label printer for Amazon FBA we actually bought a separate printer instead of constantly swapping the labels in our shipping printer. Label Type & SizesĬhanging labels isn’t a huge deal in a thermal printer. I looked for printers that had as wide of connectivity range as possible, meaning Windows, Mac, Bluetooth, WiFi, etc. Most small businesses have a dedicated shipping computer (if you don’t, get one) but many eBay or Etsy sellers who work only their phones want to be able to print from them too. While I don’t mind a bit of set-up work to get a better printer, ease of use is typically a sign of quality in my book.
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However, several printers require you to have an Installation CD or to download drivers/software from a website. Meaning you plug it in, it installs itself, and you start printing. The best thermal label printer will connect just like a regular printer. So anything that is “plug and play” gets extra points. We’ve upgraded our shipping computer, there has been a strange glitch or connectivity issue, or another odd problem has cropped up. You might think it’s not a big deal to get it set up once but, with one thing and another, we’ve ended up setting up our printers several times apiece. When it comes to finding the best shipping label printer, ease of installation and use are of paramount importance. 8 Characteristics of the Best Thermal Label Printer: 1. Looking for handheld label printers? Find them here. While my search for the best shipping label printer turned up lots of options, only 5 of them are real competitors for the top spot and no small business should need anything outside one of these five: However, that was years ago and we’ve become acquainted with nearly a dozen printers since then. I knew that I didn’t want to buy ink forever (meaning I needed the best thermal label printer) but beyond that, we were shooting in the dark. When it came to finding a label printer, we were pretty clueless at first. We knew that simplifying our shipping process would be instrumental in improving not only our shipping time but our entire business model. In fact, it quickly got to the point where we couldn’t source new products because we were just barely keeping up. When our store first started to pick up momentum and we were shipping a significant number of packages, Kirstie and I would spend hours every day shipping. While we mainly focus on our digital products, we still ship 5 to 10 packages a day and, in the past, have sent out as many as 4,000 packages in a year! While that may be lower than what you’re doing, we probably have something in common, both of us want to invest in the best shipping label printer we can find because we know it will improve our bottom line. Sourcing products, marketing, and customer support are all important but making a sale and delivering the goods is where the rubber hits the road.
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If you’ll be running a shop that sells physical products, getting them into the customer’s hands is the entire cornerstone of your business. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
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