Brother Network Label Printer
The Brother Network Ready Label Printer, model QL-1060N, is an easy to use and exceedingly fast label printer using a thermal print head for your labeling needs.
Ease of Use, Performance: 24/25, Look & Feel: 23/25,
Features 24/25, How much I enjoy 24/25
Total: 95/100
The Brother Network Ready Label Printer Model QL-1060N is a great label printer that uses a quick thermal print head that creates labels using the brother label cartridges. You can purchase label cartridges at many office supply and internet websites so finding labels for your printer is simple.
I ordered a few at a local office supply store and found several like Office Max and Office Depot that would also order them at a lower cost than directly from sites on the internet. The cost is lower for labels when you order them from an office supply if they don’t charge for shipping which the internet sites will.
I mention the cost and availability of labels first because that is the main cost of a printer like this; actually just about any printer is not as expensive as the print cartridges or paper. With a thermal label printer the cost is more in the paper or labels as it needs a special type of paper in order for the thermal print head to print on the labels.
A thermal print head can print using heat in a prescribed pattern using a thermal strip in the printer in contact with the label paper. The heat is in a pattern of whatever you want using the label maker software up to a 300 x 300 dots per inch quality for any kind of label paper the printer will accept.
The Brother Label Printer uses label cartridges in a wide variety as well as a continuous roll for banner type printing so you have a good variety to choose from. Square and rectangle labels for shipping and labeling as well as round and continuous for specialty printing is all available in the Brother cartridges.
A label printer using thermal printing is extremely fast due to the printing method and the Brother is super quick; you can print labels at 69 labels per minute. The speed of course will depend on what you’re printing like words or simple pictures but I can tell you it is fast.
The first time I printed I did not have the little paper tray open to catch the papers that fell out and I could not flip the tray over fast enough to catch the first one while printing. The Thermal printing and the paper being cut after printing occur so fast you cannot go from hitting the enter key or mouse button to actually catching the first label through the printer.
This kind of speed is only possible with the thermal printer and the paper cutter also works extremely well and has a very long life. According to the Brother website the cutter will perform 300,000 cuts in its lifetime so I cannot see any problems with that part of the Brother label printer. You can actually see the cutting blades inside the front slot and they look like pretty sturdy razor edges but they cut very well even given the speed that the paper comes out.
The Brother Label Printer prints the labels quickly and uses the thermal print head to transfer the images words and even barcode onto the label paper. You can print all kinds of things onto the labels like wording and simplified pictures in black and white such as quick drawings or id pictures.
The Brother Label Printer only prints the black color but you can simplify drawings and pictures using an image editor to create more clearly black and white pictures. You can use an editor like Photoshop Elements or even some simpler editing software to bring the resolution of your image down and convert it to black and white to make the image clear when you transfer it to a label.
The Brother Printer comes with a couple of programs and drivers on the CD that install easily and are simple to use; one is the P-Touch Editor and the other is the P-Touch Address Book. The P-Touch Editor is your all around editing software to create labels, name tags and anything other than regular address labels.
