Brother P-Touch PT-1290 Labeler
The P-Touch PT-1290 Home & Office Simply Stylish Labeler from Brother is a fantastic labeler for the home, office and more with its easy to use keyboard and variety of labels up to 1/2 inch wide.
Ease of Use, Performance: 22/25
Look & Feel: 23/25
Features 21/25
How much I enjoy 23/25
Total: 89/100
The Brother P-Touch labeler model PT-1290 is a handheld or desktop labeler that has a good sized keyboard on front along with other easy to use controls. The PT-1290 uses the common Brother label sizes up to 1/2 inch in its bottom loading cartridges and uses six AA batteries or a power adapter.
The Brother P-Touch PT-1290 comes with the labeler and instructions along with a 1/2 inch black on white cartridge for starters but has plenty of additional accessories available. The main accessory you may want to purchase is the power adapter but you can get a carry case and a variety of label cartridges at a variety of stores and online sites.
The PT-1290 labeler uses the standard sizes of cartridges from Brother and uses up to 1/2 inch wide labels that come in a variety of colors and a few different types. You can get labels that are white on black, black on white and several other colors as well as iron on fabric tape and flexible ID tag tapes.
The PT-1290 is easy to use by simply installing the six batteries and a cartridge in the bottom of the labeler and turn it on with the simple front panel buttons. The front panel is the control center of the labeler and allows you to not only change between the two fonts, sizes and add special characters along with the usual typing letters and numbers.
The Brother Labeler prints directly onto a special label tape using a thermal transfer process so the labels are dry coming out of the machine and will not smear. This thermal process allows you to print and use the label immediately as well as the labels being very waterproof.
The Brother labeler prints vertical or horizontal, does mirror printing for affixing labels onto windows, stores up to 9 copies, prints using different templates and more. The Brother PT-1290 costs about $40 while cartridges run from about $15 and more depending on size and type.
The PT-1290 labeler does the conventional 1/2 inch labels and smaller ones like the 1/4 and 3/8th inch as well as the small 9/64th inch wide labels that are readily available. The Brother Labeler and cartridges are available at stores like Target, Officemax and Office Depot with the more elaborate types being more expensive.
You can buy the labels at these stores and have a wide variety of labels to choose from like the common black printing on white, white printing on black and more. Colors available on regular laminated tape that use black printing are in white, red, blue, green, bright orange, matte clear, Bugs Bunny, Sylvester & Tweety and Tazmanian Devil patterns.
Labels are also available in several different types like the standard laminated, extra strength laminated, flexible ID for using around cords, tamper evident tape, acid free for scrapbooking, fabric iron on and non laminated narrow tape. Brother also sells the AC adapter, carrying cases, replacement cutting blades and a rechargeable battery pack for the PT-1290 that make up about any part or accessory you could want.
The PT-1290 is simple and very easy to use right from power on, there is a row of helpful size and type indicators across the top and the two font types on the left side of your screen. The indicators are printed above and to the side of the screen and an arrow on screen shows which type and font you're currently using.
The caps, width and underline/frame indicators are along the bottom of the screen to help you in labeling for the style of your type. The various styles like underlining, adding borders like vines, stars, hearts and more are nice along with features like horizontal and vertical printing.
The PT-1290 does a lot of various special features that you could want for labeling boxes, equipment, storage totes and more. For just about everything you could think of you could want to label the Brother PT-1290 makes a great portable labeler but it does have its limits.
The labeler does print in two lines using smaller text sizes so the words are smaller but still readable, it also has about the smallest keyboard possible and still be easily useable. The keys are 1/4 inch square with larger keys for shift, enter and such but this is not a regular keyboard and typing fast would be difficult.
You can type pretty fast but not as fast as a larger panel and keyboard would allow, of course a larger keyboard would mean an overall larger size making the resulting labeler not a portable handy design. The PT-1290 makes the perfect size between portable and desktop to keep things handy and the sizes are about right for using the labeler at home or the office.
The PT-1290 makes the perfect labeler for office use or work use like storage totes and bins, files and folders and more to keep things organized and handy. My wife has been using the Brother PT-1290 labeler more than I have and has no problems with using it or its functions and features.
She enjoys the ease of use for a quick way to label her various bins and totes at the daycare she works at when she is in a labeling frenzy. The labeler is a nice way to keep organized and even putting labels on cables like a computer or network system is easy using their ID tags.
The Brother PT-1290 makes a great labeler to easily and quickly create labels for around the home and at work on labels up to 1/2 inch wide. I highly recommend the Brother P-Touch PT-1290 labeler for a fantastic label maker for work or at home using a wide variety of plain and colorful labels.