Label Printer Tips, News & Reviews | Labelzone blog

The Brady BMP51 thermal printer, and its sister model the BMP53, represents a serious step forward in the evolution of portable label printing. Introduced early in 2012, these two muscular printers are essentially the same except that the BMP53 has no keyboard for stand-alone use. While printers using smart cartridge technology take the pain out of setting up labels from scratch they tend to be restricted in versatility and size maxima, but this model produces labels up to a reasonable 38mm wide (maximum print width 36mm). At 300 dpi resolution the BMP51/53 is as good as any on the market for print quality and label longevity and boasts a robust construction suitable for most industrial and laboratory environments, its demand volume niche being about 250 labels per day. Weighing less than 1.5Kg and churning out monochrome labels at just over 25mm per second it offers its owner the freedom to roam using either a Li-ion battery or 4 x AA cells, otherwise providing freedom from fiddly batteries by way of a mains adaptor. Another optional extra, the M50 magnet, gives the printer a deceptively useful ability to be parked vertically on any nearby steel surface. Users of Brady BMP printers will be familiar with label retention, a mechanism which prevents finished labels from fluttering to the floor when cut. A couple of small criticisms would be that the top-cover feels a bit flimsy and doesn’t always snap down reliably, and the manual cutter feels rather clunky and needs a long push to operate it.

Jumping straight into the printer’s more interesting features, this after all being a Brady product so the basics are a done deal, the BMP51/53 labeller incorporates WiFi, USB and Bluetooth with optional Ethernet. Bluetooth allows wireless printing, and when used in conjunction with the Brady mobile app (available free of charge) labels may be printed from an Android Smartphone! This means that from the palm of your hand (Android OS Version 2.2 or later) you can access previously downloaded label templates, design and store new ones from scratch, and even import a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (or other tabular data file) to populate existing labels from stored data. The smart chip in the printer communicates bi-directionally with the phone to maintain the convenience of automatic cartridge detection, and there’s no fussing with drivers. Being based on Bluetooth technology the printer may be activated from up to 100 metres away depending on surroundings. The app can generate bar codes in numerous formats and recall hundreds of ready-made symbols and pictograms (icons). Furthermore, it updates automatically (free of charge) whenever new consumables or hardware become available. It has to be said, this app is not a fast way to print labels and it could frustrate a user with big fingers or little time, also it is difficult to perceive the target market for something which combines personal and commercial hardware in this way, but which of us is brave enough to predict future trends when it comes to electronics?

The labelling software, LabelMark 5, is strikingly versatile and easy to use. This and the printer driver are supplied on CD, and to get started on the learning curve a cartridge of white vinyl continuous label (MC-1500-595-WT-BK) is supplied.

In short, the BMP51/53 is the next generation IDXpert and ideal for electrical, communications and laboratory use. In addition to general labelling it makes easy work of terminals, 110, 66 and BIX blocks, patch panels and wires/cables, whether the requirement is for continuous or multi-cut. Each model has a real-time clock for independent date/time stamping and an option to print multiple copies using the sequence: print > pause (with instruction to cut) > print next label for each copy. It has a very excellent LCD display measuring 65 x 40mm but the backlight, when switched on, converts quickly to touch activated which may save power but can be a nuisance.

The Brother GL100 garden plant labels hand-held printer is designed primarily for horticulturists and gardeners but is also useful as a general purpose home and office labeller.

The GL100 can print on three widths of label: 6mm, 9mm and 12mm from Brother’s TZ range of tape cartridges. These cartridges automatically identify themselves to the printer when inserted and produce labels that are resistant to sun and rain, and can withstand temperatures from -80oC to +150ºC. Humidity, abrasion, oil and most chemicals are also withstood. Apart from the regular black print on white label the range includes options such as fluorescent and transparent finish (standard laminated range) and matt finish, extra strong adhesive, and flexi ID in the specialist non-laminated range. Standard tapes have a length of eight metres.

GL100 plant labeller

The only fonts available are Helsinki and Oklahoma, these coming in three basic sizes (height) with a further two settings which expand character width. Up to two lines of text may be printed, the font size obviously being reduced as necessary. The GL100 can also print vertically to give upright labels, although this consumes loads of label. To make your labels really interesting you can print them in various styles such as shadow, outline, italic, bold (and combinations thereof) plus mirror image (for transparent tape) with a choice of four decorative borders (called frames). The choice of effects comprises plain with rounded corners, curly ended banner, rough hewn wood, and vine, none of which can be used with vertical text. For some reason it is in this section that you find text Underline. A good range of accented characters is provided, including umlauts and ligatures etc.

If you don’t know what PAT means, or have never come across the acronym, then you might be ignorant of something which has quietly saved your life. PAT stands for ‘Portable Appliance Testing’ and it pertains to every electrical appliance that is powered through a mains plug. Typically such appliances are your table-lamp, computer and electric kettle etc, but not an electric oven which is wired directly to a junction box. If you live in furnished accommodation then your landlord has for safety reasons a legal obligation to PAT test all your portable electrical appliances at appropriate intervals, in compliance with the Electrical Equipment (Safety) Regulations Act of 1994. Likewise, if you are an employee then your boss has a similar obligation to PAT test all qualifying equipment used in your workplace, in compliance with PUWER (Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998). Failure to comply with the requirement can invalidate an insurance claim and even lead to prosecution by the HSE (Health & Safety Executive). Each appliance should be tested by a ‘competent person’ using specialised equipment and afterwards marked with a durable sticker stating whether or not the test was passed.

At first glance a safety regime of this rigour might seem excessive given that the typical modern appliance draws power via a fused plug and probably from a wiring system that incorporates earth leakage protection, but many kinds of electrical fault remain dangerously invisible to these safety devices. The electrical resistance of a poor connection can produce sufficient heat to start a fire while actually reducing the current drawn by the appliance, and a loose earth wire can lead to someone’s electrocution. It is these situations that PAT testing is intended to prevent, and PAT test labels are mandatory to provide the evidence. In a typical year in the UK over 10% of all fires in the home and workplace are caused by faulty electrical apparatus.

These days electrical appliances are everywhere and hopefully, if your boss or landlord is taking the law seriously, you are surrounded by little green stickers stating when safety checks were last made and when the next are due. If you come across a sticker on an appliance displaying an expired ‘due’ date then you should draw this to someone’s attention, and if you come across a red ‘fail’ sticker you should place the condemned appliance beyond use immediately. Sound a klaxon if you have one, for this is the raison d’etre of the PAT testing label.

On the other hand, if you are the ‘competent person’ who checks appliances then as part of your toolkit you need a supply of PAT testing labels. Such labels vary in size and shape and may be purchased in generic form with blank areas to be filled in by hand, possibly including a pre-printed zone containing your contact details, or you may customise them yourself. The one option that is not generally practical is to print your own PAT labels from scratch. If you wish to avoid the long term £ouch factor of hiring a third party to customise your labels you can obviously buy a printer and do the job yourself, the advantage of this being that your labels may readily be designed to contain any record-keeping information you like, such as a serial number or job number, and appliance ID. The important thing is that your label shows when the last test was conducted, the result of this test, and the date of the next test due.

To accommodate these requirements, PAT labels come in many guises. There is the plain sticker for attaching directly to the side of the appliance that has been tested, such as the microwave oven label that is used to record radiation leakage and the efficacy of the interlock switch (disables oven when door is opened), and the mini PAT test label for attaching to plug tops and other small areas. Then, for cables, there is the self-tie tag and the self-adhesive wrap or flag. There is even a simple PAT label to record the result of a humble fuse test. Labels need not necessarily be green for ‘passed’ or red for ‘failed’ but the information they display must be clear and unambiguous.

So keep an eye on those labels and keep safe.

Landlords, Agents and Businesses who need to comply with The Health & Safety Act (1974).

Some time ago, before I got my foot through the door at Advanced Labelling (I’d been trying for years) I was in a local garden centre and found myself pondering plants and how they are sold. In particular, most species being a bit floppy and awkwardly shaped, I considered how they are labelled and if there’s a better way. Wandering (lonely as a cloud) among shrubs in tubs and lots of pots, it was with a glance at some plants that I formed the opinion that the humble loop-lock tag was, after all, the best solution. Alas, from this insight sprang further nagging questions. What types of plant tag are available, or even possible, and what kind of printer and software best suits them? Luckily, though I have little to do with plants and plant tags myself, on my first day in harness at Advanced Labelling I learned the answers to all these questions and many more that I hadn’t asked. Sitting bewildered at my desk with the world of plant tags and labels advancing towards me, I discovered the following:

Of the three types of label used in horticulture the simplest is, of course, the die-cut. This is typically oblong (like an address label) and self-adhesive so that once printed it can be peeled off the backing paper and applied to a plant pot or seed tray. A paper die-cut makes a cheap way to label a plant, but if you prefer to reuse your pots and would rather not have the bother of removing past labels from them, the option below might be better.

The stick-in tag is made of relatively stiff material and has a pointed end so that it can be poked easily into the soil alongside the plant it is to identify. Truth to tell, the point is a bit of a token gesture because you would probably embed the tag at the same time as potting up the seedling rather than inserting it later when there’s the possibility of a mistake, but hey…

The third option is the big brother of plant labelling and favoured for large shrubs. Called the loop-lock tag this type is usually made of a durable material like Tyvek and punched with holes so that it can be looped around the base of the plant then fastened to itself. As plant labels go, these make good tree tags but they are so versatile as to make excellent garden tags generally.

If you have thousands of pounds to spare for a colour printer you can even print a photograph of the plant in flower, but if you have only a few hundred pounds in your budget then there’s a good choice of single-colour printers on the market. The thermal transfer type of printer produces the necessary weatherproof finish, and if you choose your model wisely it will even print other types of label too, such as regular office labels, and even ‘exit’ and ‘safety’ signs etc. for posting around your premises.

Loop-lock labels are available in a range of colours, likewise the print ribbons, and for the eco-sensitive user some are made of biodegradable material. With so much to choose from, if you manage a garden centre or nursery and wake up in the night with a Dalek voice in your head saying ‘must label plant’ followed by your own voice saying: ‘but how?’ then why not buy a versatile monochrome printer such as a LabelStation, along with a suitable roll of label-stock, and discover what pleasant horticultural labels can be produced by the deft!

The Dymo LabelManager 260P is lightweight, fits snugly in your hand at 120 x 173 x 62mm, and is inviting to use. If you are a ‘qwerty’ keyboard orientated user then the alphabetically laid out keys of printers like this can initially slow down your typing, but how little this matters when there is so much compensation in the printer’s overall ease of use.

The 260P uses the D1 range of cassettes which comprises Standard, Flexible Nylon and Permanent Polyester material, and can print up to two lines of text on 9mm and 12mm labels (single line only on 6mm and 9mm labels) in fixed font steps of 8pt, 12pt, 18pt, 24pt, 28pt and 32pt. The printer auto-detects the insertion of a cassette even when it is switched off, and prompts you (when next switched on) to indicate which of the three label sizes (6, 9 & 12mm) has been inserted. Obviously the narrower the label then the smaller is the maximum font size you can use, such that 6mm label accommodates only 8pt font, and 9mm label accommodates 8pt, 12pt and 18pt. Nevertheless, Dymo LabelManager labels find use in a wealth of situations.

Three font types are available, these being: Basic, Serif, and Fun, a range which loosely equates to the Windows fonts: Arial, Times New Roman, and Comic Sans. With a couple of keystrokes, six font styles become available, these being: Normal, Bold, Italic, Outline, Shadow, and Vertical, the latter rotating the characters individually rather than whole words. Equally easy to select is the range of ready-made oblong borders which are best described as: straight lined, rounded-ends, jagged/torn-off ends, pointed-ends, curly edged parchment, curly-ended banner, floral ends, and call-out shape, plus, of course, simple underline. As ever, with label printers these days, you can also print mirror image. All text may be aligned left, right, or centre, with no need for inverse printing because if you want white text on a black background you simply choose D1 cassette 720610 white-on-black tape (or whatever colour combination suits).

The printer provides quick access to a good range of symbols including several currency symbols, international characters and diacriticals (accents) plus an extended Latin character set. The clip art range runs to approximately 100 handy images. I quite like the fact that the keypad is purely alphanumeric, by which I mean there is no Alt key for accessing punctuation marks and currency symbols etc., these being accessed quickly enough from a menu. This approach avoids overloaded key legends in which you have, for example, the letter ‘L’ flanked by a question mark and an ampersand and have to hold down a second key to select which you want. After all, in label making, how often do you need a question mark, asterisk or apostrophe?

Should you wish to insert previously used text you can do this as long as the label on which it was used has been saved in memory. This feature resembles ‘AutoText’ in Microsoft Word except that you cannot copy parts of previous labels — it has to be the whole label and will include symbols et al. However, if a phrase or fragment of text is used frequently you could create and save a label to act as a container for it. Unfortunately you would not be able to make a large library of such texts because the memory is limited to nine labels. Nevertheless, it’s is a nice touch.

The Dymo 260P is supposed to make fixed length labels too, a feature by which it adjusts the font size automatically to fit a predetermined label length, but in this I found disappointment. Put simply, in the model I had for review the feature did not work. Enquiries revealed that Dymo developers have experienced a problem with early models and we can only hope that later batches ‘do what it says on the tin’. The printer has no USB interface so an online upgrade when the bug is fixed will not be possible for existing models but I doubt the absence of this feature will bother many users, especially as there is another feature called Print Preview which gives an instant display of label length.

The printer is powered by a lithium-ion battery of the kind used in mobile phones and laptop computers and is capable of printing up to two cassettes worth of labels between charges. It is supplied with a charger which, despite its appearance, is not an adaptor and cannot power the printer directly. In other words, you can use the printer while it is on charge but not from the charger alone. With no battery fitted it will do everything except print, and any attempt to print without a battery will produce the message: ‘Battery Failure’. Once again there is compensation. In cold weather, while the battery is charging, the keypad warms your fingers nicely!

The printer shuts down automatically after 2 minutes of inactivity, which can seem a bit impatient if composing your label involves looking up information, but when this happens the label is saved and reappears the moment you switch back on. If you shut down manually, however, the displayed label is not saved automatically.

The LabelManager 260P has a large, 2-line LCD (60 x 30mm display) which provides an informative print preview facility. If the preview is too long for the screen then it automatically scrolls. You cannot control the scroll rate, or pause it, but the loop speed is sufficiently slow to scrutinise anything you might put on labelmanager labels.

The handy little 260P printer has much in common with other portable labellers in that you can print up to nine copies of a label in one go at moderate speed and detach them using a manual cutter. However, one difference is found on the keyboard where most curiously shaped numeral keys give the printer an endearing visual quality but would frustrate someone with plump fingers.

If you don’t know what PAT means, or have never come across the acronym, then you might be ignorant of something which has quietly saved your life. PAT stands for ‘Portable Appliance Testing’ and it pertains to every electrical appliance that is powered through a mains plug. Typically such appliances are your table-lamp, computer and electric kettle etc, but not an electric oven which is wired directly to a junction box. If you live in furnished accommodation then your landlord has for safety reasons a legal obligation to PAT test all your portable electrical appliances at appropriate intervals, in compliance with the Electrical Equipment (Safety) Regulations Act of 1994. Likewise, if you are an employee then your boss has a similar obligation to PAT test all qualifying equipment used in your workplace, in compliance with PUWER (Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998). Failure to comply with the requirement can invalidate an insurance claim and even lead to prosecution by the HSE (Health & Safety Executive). Each appliance should be tested by a ‘competent person’ using specialised equipment and afterwards marked with a durable sticker stating whether or not the test was passed.

At first glance a safety regime of this rigour might seem excessive given that the typical modern appliance draws power via a fused plug and probably from a wiring system that incorporates earth leakage protection, but many kinds of electrical fault remain dangerously invisible to these safety devices. The electrical resistance of a poor connection can produce sufficient heat to start a fire while actually reducing the current drawn by the appliance, and a loose earth wire can lead to someone’s electrocution. It is these situations that PAT testing is intended to prevent, and PAT test labels are mandatory to provide the evidence. In a typical year in the UK over 10% of all fires in the home and workplace are caused by faulty electrical apparatus.

These days electrical appliances are everywhere and hopefully, if your boss or landlord is taking the law seriously, you are surrounded by little green stickers stating when safety checks were last made and when the next are due. If you come across a sticker on an appliance displaying an expired ‘due’ date then you should draw this to someone’s attention, and if you come across a red ‘fail’ sticker you should place the condemned appliance beyond use immediately. Sound a klaxon if you have one, for this is the raison d’etre of the PAT testing label.

On the other hand, if you are the ‘competent person’ who checks appliances then as part of your toolkit you need a supply of PAT testing labels. Such labels vary in size and shape and may be purchased in generic form with blank areas to be filled in by hand, possibly including a pre-printed zone containing your contact details, or you may customise them yourself. The one option that is not generally practical is to print your own PAT labels from scratch. If you wish to avoid the long term £ouch factor of hiring a third party to customise your labels you can obviously buy a printer and do the job yourself, the advantage of this being that your labels may readily be designed to contain any record-keeping information you like, such as a serial number or job number, and appliance ID. The important thing is that your label shows when the last test was conducted, the result of this test, and the date of the next test due.

To accommodate these requirements, PAT labels come in many guises. There is the plain sticker for attaching directly to the side of the appliance that has been tested, such as the microwave oven label that is used to record radiation leakage and the efficacy of the interlock switch (disables oven when door is opened), and the mini PAT test label for attaching to plug tops and other small areas. Then, for cables, there is the self-tie tag and the self-adhesive wrap or flag. There is even a simple PAT label to record the result of a humble fuse test. Labels need not necessarily be green for ‘passed’ or red for ‘failed’ but the information they display must be clear and unambiguous.

So keep an eye on those labels and keep safe.

Landlords, Agents and Businesses who need to comply with The Health & Safety Act (1974).

Trying to get your head around colossal amounts of data can be migraine-inducing, if not completely nauseating (for me anyway). Thankfully, data visualisation (showing complex relationships in multi-dimensional data) junkies are creating elegant diagrams that communicate messages so clearly and effectively. Its ability to convey statistics and trends that might otherwise be considered boring or trivial has lead to a boom in web sites devoted to showcasing these remarkable things. In this post, we look at 11 stunning data visualisation diagrams.

Roger Federer 10 Year Grand Slam History – sacks08 on Flickr

Country Codes of the World – historyshots

Animal Experiments in the UK – GDS Digital on Flickr

Swine Flu Deaths – blprnt_van on Flickr

Kraft vs Cadbury – GDS Digital on Flickr

Who Rules The Social Web – InformationIsBeautiful

Facebook Growth – Mashable

Haiti Aftermath – Good

Pixellabs – Browser Wars

History of Pink Floyd – 802.11

The Last 10 Years – New York Times

Zara Wood, also known as Woody, is an artist and illustrator living in Brighton. Previously based in London and Melbourne, Zara originally studied Fine Art and began illustrating in 2001. Deemed as a prolific and versatile artist, Zara works in a variety of mediums and scales, from miniature drawings to large free-standing cardboard sculptures. Whether drawing with a digital pen or making intricate boxed dioramas there is a beautiful hand crafted honesty to her work.

Her Star Gaze collection became the most successful artist range Topshop has ever launched

Commissioned by editorial, publishing and fashion clients in Europe and Australia, Zara also designs her own range of limited edition design-led products stocked in gallery and museum shops including the V&A and the Barbican in London, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.

In December 2008 she collaborated with Topshop to create their most successful artist range ever launched. Most recently, Little Treasures, her collection of original art framed within vintage jewellery gained a hugely positive response with the first range selling out within days.

Click the images above to enlarge them.

A regular exhibitor in both group and solo shows, Zara’s character-focused work intimately engages with the viewer and has been described by Elle Magazine’s Francesca Gavin (November 2009), as so refreshingly sincere.

What’s your favourite project you’ve worked on?

I’ve enjoyed fashion projects with Stussy in Australia and working with Topshop on limited edition t-shirt ranges. Most recently I’ve loved making tiny originals to go in vintage lockets and brooches for my Little Treasures range. The response from the public has been lovely, if not somewhat overwhelming. When people order through my web shop they have the option of leaving a little message. You’d expect that people would write something about the delivery or dates, but I’ve received some really beautiful notes from people about the pieces. It’s very motivating and heart warming to get such lovely feedback.

What are you up to right now?

Well, trying to catch up on endless paper work as ever. I’m also just about to do a big mail out to all my web customers and clients. I designed a mini card with a new year’s resolution on it. Then I’ll be working on some new Little Treasures and cards for Valentines Day.

Click the images above to enlarge them.

What label printer do you have, and how is it helping?

I’ve got the Dymo Labelwriter 400 Turbo. I use it for all my web orders and mail outs. What’s fab about it, is it prints instantly. No funny warm up noises or trying to load label sheets. It really saves me a lot of time and the labels look very professional. A fellow illustrator I did a show with, has been using a Dymo for a few years now. We used it to do all the title/price labels for a large group show for the Brighton Fringe Festival. Because it’s compact and portable, we could take it down with a laptop to the venue and print what we needed. Simple and quick…

This is our first post of 2010, happy new year! Last month you may have seen the post I wrote about QR codes & the future of mobile marketing, where I looked at the innovative ways they’ve been used in advertising / environmental campaigns, and what the future might have in store. The N Building near Tachikawa station in Tokyo has had its facade adorned with QR codes where you can obtain the typical store information and download coupons, but what follows is simply stunning. Using an iPhone application specifcally developed for this project, you can follow a Twitter stream of what people are saying inside the building.

[vimeo width="500" height="400"]http://vimeo.com/8468513[/vimeo]

Point your phone at the building and its shape will be detected. Cartoon-characters are superimposed over it, then the iPhone’s GPS feature is used to track the location of each tweet.

The software isn’t available in the Apple app store; but you can get it on request. Head over to the Sonasphere site for further information.

Print Quality:
Print Speed:
Versatility:
Ease of Setup:
Ease of Use:

The Dymo LabelWriter 450 Turbo is a very attractive little printer and is supplied with equally attractive labelling software in the form of DYMO Label V8 on CD. It is powered exclusively by a mains power adaptor and ships with a USB cable, quick start guide, roll of 35 x 90mm address labels and a head cleaning card. There is no stand-alone option. This printer must be used in conjunction with a PC.

To begin with the software, when you launch Label V8 you find yourself looking at a pleasing layout, the design window being on the right with the usual formatting icons along the top, plus a three-tab selection area on the left. The first of these tabs offers a range of ready-made labels, primarily address and shipping labels, each of which includes a subset of smart layouts featuring symbols and instant place-holders for text, plus your logo if you have one. Under the heading ‘Speciality/Retail’ there is just one forlorn item, which is a CD label that would cover about one-third of a CD. Here again there is a subset of instant layouts allowing curved text in various arrangements. Three file folder labels and one badge label are also to be found, along with a miscellany of multi-purpose labels including one for a VHS/spine!

The second tab is called ‘Designer’ and this makes available all the objects required to design a label from scratch. An object may be dragged to the label or inserted by double-clicking it, its properties being altered by double-clicking the resulting field. These objects are:

1. An intelligent text box for importing addresses from your email address book. The fields thus created are populated automatically when you change to the third tab, called ‘Address Book’, wherein checkboxes may be ticked to indicate which addresses you wish to print.
2. A static text box for typing fixed text.
3. An automatic counter for serial numbering. You can choose any start number you like, and any increment, using the ‘Width’ setting to control the number of leading zeros. Text cannot be included incrementally but fixed ‘before’ and ‘after’ text can be included in any Windows font. There is also a ‘vertical text’ option of the kind which rotates the text line but not its characters.
4. A date and time stamp in any format you like, 12 or 24 hour clock, with optional ‘before’ and ‘after’ text in any Windows font. Now, don’t get excited when you see controls for ‘Font Colour’ and ‘Background Colour’ as these are just shades of grey, of course, the 450 Turbo not being a colour printer. Naturally, the date and time stamp is updated by the Windows clock each time your label is printed.
5. A barcode stamp with18 barcode formats to choose from. Source data can be fixed (typed directly) or linked to another label object. You can print the barcode with the ‘human readable’ equivalent above or below the code in any Windows font. The barcode may be rotated in 90 degree steps. The formats available are: Code 39 (in its various guises), Interleaved 2 of 5, UPC, EAN, Codabar and Code 39 Library in their various guises, UCC EAN 128, and ITF-14.
6. A shape object which can insert a square or an oblong, a circle or an oval, a horizontal or vertical line, and do each in a range of line thicknesses and greyscale interior fills. It has to be said that the Turbo 450 produces greyscale tones extremely well.
7. An image object which allows the insertion of a picture file or even the contents of the Windows clipboard, or alternatively the default image of a telephone. Care has to be taken when loading anything from the clipboard as Dymo Label 8 struggles for memory when a large amount has been placed there. Your image may be inserted with or without a border, rotated in 90 degree steps, and be protected from horizontal or vertical distortion by locking the aspect ratio.
8. Circular text, which allows text to follow a top arc, bottom arc, or full circle. A side arc is achieved by rotating the top arc through 90 degrees.
9. A gallery of 94 symbols arranged for quick access. It should be noted that these symbols are not of great industrial or commercial use, being mainly of a decorative bias.

Altogether, then, the software is very intuitive and truly graphical in nature, but there are some endearing quirks. For example, a conventional zoom control for enlarging the label itself is partnered with a zoom slider for magnifying the whole window. This slider is strangely satisfying to operate but of little use unless you have poor eyesight or an outsized monitor.

Another oddity, in my view, is ‘Mirror Image’ which frequently appears as a text option but doesn’t actually produce back-to-front text, as one might expect, instead producing upside-down text facing the original text. This would be fun if the end product looked like a reflection in a puddle but it doesn’t. In fact, if you type a word and select mirror image, then rotate the resulting ensemble through 180 degrees, you finish up with the same thing! But there does remain the amusing option of stretching the box horizontally until the words separate.

Moving to the printer itself, such a creditable job does it do that there is very little to say about it. The minimum font size is a tiny 4pt, which is faint but still readable, and the maximum font size is anything that fits the label. As for speed, in a quick test the printer took twelve seconds to produce ten typical address labels. Knocking off the two seconds download time, you are left with about one label per second. Pretty cool.

There is no electric cutter but a serrated blade provides good, clean tear-off.

In addition to the usual form-feed button there is a back-feed button to make easy work of disengaging the label prior to removing the roll from the printer.

Don’t look for an on/off switch, there isn’t one. One can only guess at the reasoning for this. Perhaps switching off the mains adaptor is considered greener and safer. Which, of course, is true. In any case, a ‘low power’ mode kicks in after a period of dormancy.

I found no user manual in the box, only a quick start guide, but the printer is just too simple to necessitate one and the software provides extensive help files.

In conclusion, the strength of this printer and its software lies in its user-friendliness. If you are intimidated by computers then the LabelWriter 450 Turbo, with its Dymo Label software Version 8, might just be the antidote you need.

What’s In The Box

• Adaptor and mains lead
• USB cable
• Quick-start guide
• Roll of 35 x 90mm address labels
• Label design software CD
• Head cleaning card

Dimensions and Supported Operating Systems

• Dimensions: 125 x 180 x 135mm
• Print Type: Direct thermal
• Supported Operating Systems: Windows XP, Vista, 7 and Mac OSx