Brother QL-810W - Review 2022

The Brother QL-810W ($149.99) label printer is a step downwards from the recent Editors' Choice QL-820NWB. Although these two labelers essentially impress the aforementioned types of labels at the same speeds over wireless networks or from mobile devices, what you give up feature-wise for the $50 listing price difference between them is significant. With the QL-810W, for instance, yous forgo a few unlike types of connectivity options, as well as the ability to employ the label maker apart from a computing device. Overall, though, the Q-810W is a versatile and capable option, well worth because for designing and printing many types of business labels via Wi-Fi, or from your team's tablets and smartphones.

Sleek and Elementary

The QL-810W is one of Brother's contempo QL-800 series models, which includes the QL-820NWB and 1 other, the QL-800. Measuring 5.7 by 5 by nine.ii inches (HWD) and weighing 2.four pounds, the QL-810W is the aforementioned size as the QL-820NWB and nigh three ounces lighter. It'due south a piddling taller and longer, yet more than a pound lighter, than the Leitz Smart Labeling Organization, a competing characterization printer with similar features, and it's also quite close in size and weight to its predecessor, the QL-710W, but significantly larger and heavier than the less-capable Dymo LabelWriter 450 Turbo.

The QL-810W's connectivity options are Wi-Fi, connecting to a unmarried PC via USB, and Wi-Fi Directly. While the Leitz Icon comes with the aforementioned connectivity options, the QL-820NWB too supports Ethernet and Bluetooth.

Both the QL-820NWB and the QL-810W back up an optional battery ($115.49) that, according to Brother, is capable of printing more than 2,000 labels without needing a recharge. However, the level of versatility the battery provides the former over the latter is vast. When installed on the QL-820NWB, for example, not but does the printer become portable to the extent that you tin use it with your laptop, tablet, or smartphone without Air conditioning power, but it also becomes an democratic standalone label maker on which y'all can design and impress labels without a computing device. With the QL-810W, on the other hand, the merely advantage the battery provides is that you can employ the printer without having to plug it in.

Similar all Brother QL-model labelers, the QL-810W uses the visitor's DK-series labels, which come up in dice-cutting or continuous rolls upward to ii.iv inches wide (with a 2.three-inch printing surface area). The QL-800 series as well supports two-color (blackness and blood-red) labels, simply currently Blood brother offers simply one (two.4-inch) continuous tape capable of that. Like the QL-820NWB, the QL-810W has nine resolution settings ranging from 100dpi to 600dpi, with the highest being 600dpi by 300dpi. While, when press text, I didn't notice a significant quality difference after 300dpi, the higher resolutions did meliorate graphics and photo output.

Since the QL-810W tin't design and print labels without a connection to a computing device, its six-button control console provides options that pertain primarily to the physical performance of the printer itself, instead of label design. The buttons are: power, Feed, Cutter, WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup, for a fast and piece of cake connection to your wireless network), Wi-Fi, and Editor Light (launches Editor Lite software on your PC). At that place are besides four condition LEDs: Battery (displays when running on the optional battery), Condition (on or off), Wi-Fi (on, off, connecting), Editor Low-cal (on or off).

Again, most operations are handled via the PC software or mobile app.

Easy Setup, Comprehensive Software

The physical setup of the QL-810W entails unpacking it, dropping in one of the two included starter characterization rolls, plugging in the power cable, and connecting to a PC via the included USB 2.0 cablevision. Unlike the QL-820NWB, though, the QL-810W won't practice anything until you've installed the drivers and utilities from Brother's install.brother web-based installation app.

The app establish the printer correct away and installed the drivers, and so asked me which connection option to install. The other bundled software includes both Windows and Mac versions of P-affect Editor five.1 and P-touch Update Software, equally well equally P-bear on Accost Book i.2 for Windows, and Printer Setting Tool. P-touch Editor is a full-featured characterization design and print utility with consummate integration of the numerous DK label types and a powerful set of page—well, label—layout features—near everything you'll need to create professional-looking labels.

The P-touch Update Software utility helps you continue your P-impact software and firmware upward to date, equally well as various other configuration options, and P-touch Address Book is a database for storing contacts and printing accost labels. Brother besides provides its iPrint&Label mobile app for designing and printing labels from your smartphone or tablet. While it's not as powerful as P-bear on Editor from a design perspective, iPrint&Label still provides a respectable set of characterization pattern features, complete with integration of the DK characterization types and the ability to insert barcodes, contacts, logos, graphics, photos, and such, on your labels.

The QL-810W doesn't back up Bluetooth, which ways that you cannot switch seamlessly between a wired and wireless connection, or from a PC to a mobile device. The printer must be configured to use one connection blazon or the other; you tin can't, for instance, just pick up your smartphone and get-go press.

In other words, if the printer is gear up up to use USB, you must launch the Printer Setting Tool to reconfigure the QL-810W to use Wireless Directly. At that point, the printer is no longer accessible via USB. A feature that the QL-810W has that the QL-820NWB does not, though, is P-touch Editor Light, a plan that resides in the automobile's firmware and doesn't require you lot to install software or drivers on your PC. When connected via USB, y'all just press the Editor Lite button on the printer, which in turn launches the programme.

Granted, this is not as handy equally having the ability to employ the printer every bit a standalone label maker, just it does permit you to use QL-810W well-nigh anywhere, as long as there's a computer to connect to.

Impressive Speed and Good Print Quality

Blood brother rates the QL-810W at 110 labels per minute (lpm), when printing black, all text, "standard accost labels" (1.1-past-iii.5-inch dice-cut), at 300dpi, which is well-nigh right, when you lot don't count the lag time (the time information technology takes your PC or mobile device to process the print job before the first label starts printing). With the lag fourth dimension, I clocked information technology at 98.8lpm, or three.6lpm slower than the QL-820NWB. When printing the same labels on continuous tape and letting the printer practice the cutting, it managed simply 22.1lpm, which was 2.1lpm faster than the higher-end model. (I tested from P-touch Editor over USB from our standard Core i5 testbed PC running Windows x Professional person.)

The Leitz Icon came in about 18lpm faster, simply its impress quality wasn't as good every bit the Brother models, and the Dymo 450 Turbo managed 68.5lpm. Simply if you're not planning to impress address labels (or only do information technology occasionally), these numbers probably don't hateful much to you lot. How fast the QL-810W prints other labels, such as product labels, "caution" signs, or name badges, differs past label type and the complexity of the labels themselves. I printed a two.4-by-nine-inch, black and red (red lettering with a black edge) Circumspection banner from iPrint&Label on an Android smartphone in only less than 6 seconds, for example.

Labelers like this i tin can't, as total-blown iv-ink inkjet or laser printers can, churn out exquisite-looking labels and banners, but as I said most the QL-820NWB, as characterization maker output goes, the QL-810W's impress quality isn't half bad. Text came out well-shaped and highly legible at all sizes, and graphics and photos looked equally skillful as you'd expect from one-color reproductions—not masterpieces, but surprisingly clearly detailed, more than acceptable for the majority of business-labeling settings.

Ongoing Costs

With characterization makers like this, you don't accept to buy ink, only the DK label paper. Fifty-fifty so, like its competitors, on a per-label ground, the QL-810W'south running costs are not a drib in the proverbial bucket. When yous purchase the 400-label roll at Brother Mall, those die-cut i.one-by-3.5-inch standard address labels cost about 3.9 cents each. You tin, however, reduce those costs, sometimes significantly, by buying multi-roll packs. When you purchase the standard address label six-pack (ii,400 labels), for case, the per-label price drops to 2.5 cents.

Printing 2.4-inch by 3.iv-inch die cutting name badges from the 260-count ringlet costs well-nigh viii cents each, whereas printing the same labels on the 2.4-inch wide by 50-foot long blackness/ruddy continuous tape (which will yield well-nigh 176 badges) volition toll you about xx cents each. No matter how y'all cut it, when press labels this style, much of the cost is for convenience.

A Highly Competent Labeler

Information technology's difficult to recommend a device when the same manufacturer makes a much more robust model for but a little more money. The Brother QL-810W is a capable labeler that prints well and reasonably fast, with a wide range of label types to cull from—a label for almost every application. The problem is, though, that its higher-stop sibling is and then much more versatile, with a wider telescopic of connectivity and other features. The QL-820NWB's support for Bluetooth and Ethernet, for example, makes it much easier to switch from, say, your PC to your smartphone, seamlessly. And its power to function as a standalone label maker lets you design and print labels without power or a connected computing device. And the list goes on.

Even and so, there are plenty of occassions where the QL-810W won't need to be used anywhere else merely in a Wi-Fi-networked function, or perchance a warehouse where smartphones and tablets are always readily available. In those scenarios, it comes with everything you demand for creating and press a wide range of label types quickly and easily. In whatsoever example, because its higher-stop sibling offers so much more than for so picayune, nosotros tin't give the QL-810W our Editors' Pick nod, but that doesn't mean that it's non a fine label printer worthy of your consideration.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/printers/17165/brother-ql-810w

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