Dymo has been making label printers for many years. Label printers incase you don’t know are small thermal printers that allow you to quickly and easily print labels. What is a thermal printer? A thermal printer is one that doesn’t use ink, toner or any form of ink. Instead it uses heat and heat sensitive paper. This allows you to basically print until you run out of labels without having to worry about buying more ink or toner. Many cash registers work this way too, though there are ink based ones as well. Some ticket vendors like Ticket Master also use this technology. The only drawback to this technology is that it is limited to black and white. I don’t know if there will ever come a time when there will be color thermal printers. Maybe if they can make the paper or in this case the label change color based on the amount of heat applied to it it would be possible. But, for right now it is black and white. You can achieve shades of gray thanks to dithering similar to what a black and white laser printer does.

 

What kind of labels can you print? Well, the printers are generally small compared to other printers like inkjet and laser printers. However, they are large enough to print return address labels, shipping labels, file folder labels and many more. Including VHS tape spin and face labels and even CD labels, though the CD labels are small more like a hub CD label instead of a full face label.

 

The Dymo LabelWriter 400 Turbo is their top of the line single label printer, meaning if you want to print CD labels and the printer is loaded with shipping labels you will have to take the shipping labels out and load the CD labels. Fortunately this is a quick and easy process. Dymo does however make a dual label printer that can have two types of labels installed at once. If you are printing two kinds of labels often this might be a more time efficient way to go.

 

The printers are easy to setup. Basically, you plug them in to a USB port, plug-in the power and install the software and drivers. The software is quite good and it can interface with databases as well as contact management programs like ACT, Outlook and Goldmine to name a few. You can change fonts, font sizes, alignment, draw boxes, circles and even add graphics and clipart. The thing to keep in mind is that all of this is printed in black and white. The printer’s resolution is 300 dpi which is enough to ensure good quality printing and the print speed is just a one second per label. It can also print barcodes like Code 39, Code 128, Codabar, UPC A/E, EAN 8/13/128, ITF-14 and Interleaved 2 of 5.

 

There is one other thing to keep in mind, you do have to use special labels designed for the printer. This doesn’t mean you have to buy Dymo brand, there are generic ones available. But, they do have to be designed for the printer, the Dymo brand label rolls run around $19.95 for 2 rolls for a total of 350 labels. The number of labels and their price varies depending on the type of labels you need. They come in long rolls and are made from thermal paper and being that they are labels have sticky backs.

 

Is there a down side to the printer? No, not that I have found, it prints label after label with each being just as perfect as the last. No alignment issues, no calibration issues or anything. My only real complaint about the 400 is that unlike the 330 Turbo (the previous model) it doesn’t include an on/off switch. Meaning if you want to turn it off you have to unplug it. This can be a drag if you don’t want to leave it turned on all of the time.

 

If you do a lot of shipping or actually if you do a lot of anything where you need labels the Dymo LabelWriter 400 Turbo printer is a great way to go. It is affordably priced, easy to setup and includes some very nice label design and printing software.

• Eliminates the hassle of printing labels with a standard office printer.
• Eliminates wasted trips to the Post Office – and wasted postage – with Dymo Stamps software, included free.
• Direct thermal printing means you never change a ribbon, toner or ink cartridges. The only supplies you ever need are the labels.
• Super fast print speed. About 1 second per label, 55 labels per minute. Very quiet.
• High resolution printing means crisp text, graphics, photos and bar codes.
• Includes easy to use Dymo Label Software that makes it simple to design labels and manage address books.
• Includes add-ins for instant printing from Microsoft Word, Outlook, QuickBooks, ACT!, Goldmine, Palm Desktop version 4 or later, WordPerfect and more. LabelWriter also prints from other programs through standard print drivers.
• Includes free Dymo Address Fixer, a unique software utility that automatically checks any address in Word, Outlook or the Dymo Label Software against the US Postal Service database, fixes errors and adds the 9 digit ZIP+4 code to ensure faster and accurate mail delivery.
• Easy to share over your Windows or Apple Macintosh network.
• Includes the Dymo Software Developers Kit (SDK). The SDK lets you develop support for the LabelWriter into your custom application in minutes. Includes tools for all major development languages.
• PC and Mac compatible.