Brother QL-800 - Review 2022

Like its higher-end QL-810W and QL-820NWB siblings, the Blood brother QL-800 ($99.99) is a reasonably fast label printer that churns out good-looking labels in several different types and sizes, ranging from small 1-line barcodes, to address labels, and everything in between. It tin can impress labels upwardly to about 0.five inch wide by 1 inch long to two.4 inches wide by 36 inches long.

As the least expensive (and therefore lesser-endowed) model of the 3 in Brother'south QL-800 serial of characterization printers, yous surrender a lot of features and aptitude for the $50 deviation betwixt it and the QL-810W, and quite a bit more nevertheless for the $100 deviation between the QL-800 and the QL-820NWB. Withal, if all you need is the ability to design labels on your PC, Mac, or Android smartphone, and so impress them out over USB, the budget-minded QL-800 will serve you well, making it our Editors' Choice for entry-level professional characterization printers.

No-Frills Label Making

An upgrade from the Brother QL-700, a top choice from 2022, the QL-800 measures 4.9 by 5.6 past eight.four inches (HWD) and weighs ii.5 pounds. That's about the same size as its predecessor and slightly smaller than the Brother QL-810W and QL-820NWB. Unlike the other two 800-series models, though, this entry-level model has much fewer connectivity options: only USB two.0 or a microUSB-to-printer cable and the visitor's "USBtoGo" app for Android mobile devices. The Brother QL-810W, on the other mitt, supports USB, Wi-Fi, and Wireless Directly (a.grand.a. Wi-Fi Direct), and the Brother QL-820NWB connects via USB, Wi-Fi, Wireless Straight, Ethernet, and Bluetooth. The Leitz Icon Smart Labeling System, a label printer close to the QL-800 in terms of capabilities and features, supports USB, Wi-Fi, and Wi-Fi Direct, and the Dymo LabelWriter 450 Turbo connects through only USB.

While all three of the 800-series (as well as all other QL) models support all 25 or so of Brother'southward DK drib-in continuous tape and dice-cut label types, only the QL-820NWB can operate as a standalone label designer and printer (with the aid of an improver battery), and the QL-810W can run sans an Ac connection via the same optional battery. The QL-800, on the other hand, can't function without being plugged in to an AC power source and continued to a computing device.

All three 800-series models tin, with the correct label installed, print in not only black, just also black and crimson, or red only. Nevertheless, currently Blood brother offers simply ane two.4-inch continuous black/blood-red tape. With a little ingenuity (and the built-in cutter), though, y'all can create many different kinds of crimson or black-and-red labels, such as FRAGILE banners, or eye-catching shipping labels and name badges from that single 2.4-inch broad, ruby-red/blackness agglutinative-back tape.

Like its siblings, the QL-800 supports nine preset resolutions, ranging from 100 dots per inch (dpi) to 600dpi, with the highest setting being 300-by-600dpi. As with the Brother QL-810W and QL-820NWB, when printing text, I saw very fiddling quality differences with the QL-800 after 300dpi, only when printing images and graphics, the higher resolutions did produce more than detailed results. In addition, since all label pattern and creation takes place on a PC, Mac, or Android mobile device, the QL-800 doesn't actually need much of a control console. To that finish—printing labels—it has only 4 buttons on the front: Accelerate (for advancing the label gyre forward), Cutter, Editor Lite (for launching the Editor Low-cal programme on your PC, discussed in the next section), and power. In that location are besides two condition LEDs, power on/off and Editor Lite on/off.

Uncomplicated Installation and Non-So-Simple Software

To install the QL-800, you simply plug it in and connect it to your PC via the included USB 2.0 cable. At this signal, y'all can launch the Editor Low-cal program, which resides in the printer'due south firmware, onto your PC by pressing the Editor Lite button on the front of the device. Editor Low-cal is a pared-down version of Blood brother's more robust P-touch Editor software. If quick and unproblematic labels are all yous need, the Editor Lite utility is fine, merely you get a much wider range of features and design options from P-impact Editor, which you install from Brother's install.brother web app.

From P-touch Editor, you lot can also install P-touch Address Book (Windows only), P-bear on Update Software (Windows and Mac), and the Printer Setting Tool (Windows, Mac). P-touch Editor is a powerful characterization layout tool with integrated access to all the DK label types, as well as robust design options for decision-making fonts, importing contacts from P-bear on Address (a database for storing contacts and press aircraft labels, and inserting barcodes, images, graphics, logos, and such on to your labels).

Brother also provides the iPrint&Label and USBtoGo (mentioned earlier) apps at Google's Play Store for Android and Chrome Bone devices (there are currently no iOS iPhone and iPad equivalents). iPrint&Label is not as versatile as P-touch Editor, but it, too, delivers a powerful ready of layout, design, and print tools for creating labels on the DK drop-in label rolls. No matter which option yous use—P-touch Editor or iPrint&Label on an Adroid mobile device—both provide everything you demand for creating labels from Blood brother's myriad templates, or your ain custom label designs.

Fast, Good-Looking Labels

How fast the QL-800 prints depends primarily on the size and complexity of your labels. (I tested with P-touch Editor running on our standard Intel Core i5-equipped PC running Windows ten Professional over USB 2.0.) Brother says that the QL-800 can impress all-black text "standard address labels" (i.1 past 3.v inches) at upwardly to 93 labels per minute (lpm), compared with its two higher-cease siblings' 110lpm rating. Without the lag fourth dimension (the time required for the computer and P-touch Editor to process the print job before the commencement label starts printing) I clocked the QL-800 at 95.2lpm.

With the lag time, the QL-800 printed the same address labels at 85.3lpm, and when I used continuous i.1-inch-wide tape, telling the printer to cutting each characterization at three.v-inch intervals, it managed only 17.4lpm. When printing die-cutting address labels (without cutting), the QL-800 came in at a little under 20lpm slower than the Brother QL-820NWB and about 13lpm behind the Blood brother QL-810W. The Leitz Icon, on the other hand, churned at 30.7lpm faster than the QL-800, only the quondam'due south print quality wasn't every bit good. The Dymo 450 Turbo, at 68.5lpm, was well backside the other label printers mentioned here.

Fifty-fifty if mailing labels aren't the type of labels you'll be printing on the QL-800, these numbers tin give you an idea how fast each of these machines print. However, they don't actually tell y'all how fast they print, say, name badges with logos or photos of faces on them. I clocked several label types with varying content, only reporting them here probably wouldn't be all that helpful. In whatever example, information technology took the QL-800 seven seconds to print a red-and-black, two.4-by-9-inch label, which was one 2d slower than its ii higher-cease siblings.

As for overall print quality, the labels I printed came out with skillful-looking, well-shaped, highly legible text at sizes ranging from 6 to 100 points (and beyond). I did, however, detect some slight banding in large areas of cerise, especially large red letters. Merely then you lot can't expect masterpieces on thermal printers like these, and it certainly wasn't bad enough to make the labels await unprofessional.

Running Costs

No matter which of the 800-serial models you cull, y'all'll pay the same, on a per-label basis, for the labels themselves. Every bit mentioned, Brother offers effectually 25 different characterization types. Those 1.i-by-iii.5-inch die-cut address labels we mentioned before will run you almost 3.9 cents per label (when y'all purchase the 400-count roll online at Brother Mall), but when you buy a six-pack of the aforementioned rolls (2,400 labels), the per-characterization cost drops to ii.5 cents.

File folder labels run about four.4 cents each, and much less when yous buy the rolls in multiples. In add-on, a few companies sell QL "compatible" labels for half equally much (or less) as Brother's refills cost, though we haven't tried them and therefore can't recommend that you utilize them. And finally, those two-color (black/red) continuous curl labels mentioned in a higher place will cost a little more than twice as much as the one-color equivalents, no matter what blazon of characterization you create from them.

A Label for Every Purpose

While short on frills and connectivity options, the Brother QL-800 prints professional-quality labels in multiple shapes and sizes at a reasonably fast clip. You tin can't utilize information technology on a network, or wirelessly from your smartphone; you'll have to stride up to either the Brother QL-810W or QL-820NWB for that (or perhaps the Leitz Icon, if label quality isn't mission critical). Nor can yous use it as a standalone label maker without a connection to a calculating device; but the Brother QL-820NWB tin do that. If, on the other mitt, all y'all demand is to make labels—several different types of labels or but one kind—from your PC, Mac, or Android mobile device, the QL-800 can do that, and well plenty that nosotros similar information technology every bit our summit pick for a non-networkable, entry-level professional label printer.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/printers/17310/brother-ql-800

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