Epson LabelWorks LW-600 review

Epson LabelWorks™ LW-600

It does what?  You talk to it and it prints? You take a picture of what's in a box and it shows you a picture of what's in that box a year later? No way!

WHAT IS IT:

There are label printers, and then there are label printers. This one stands above, and at a price that's very reasonable ... in some cases a fraction of the price of others. How does Epson do it? A good part of the cost savings is that Epson chose not to put a lot of buttons, color screens and fancy features inside the printer. They did what they do best, build printers, and left the fancy features to software using the power of your smartphone or tablet.

Brilliant!


HOW GOOD IS IT:

The printer itself is built much better than one would expect for the price, almost professional feeling. Through the availability of a wealth of tape cartridges, it can do much more than most label printers, like making ribbons, iron-on labels, and much more. It can even work with third-party apps for specialized applications and industries. And yes, it is well suited for business applications.

It is designed to be equally comfortable connected to a power source as well as with batteries. Oh and how about this for being "cool" ... you can talk to it and it will print a label of what you say!


HOW WELL DOES IT WORK:

My favorite feature is one that solves a major frustration around the house. How many times have you put something in a box and put the box on the top shelf of a closet or hidden away in a corner of the garage? I have and it's a pain to have to pull everything out when you forget what's in the box, even if the box has a label on it like "toys". Get this, you can take a picture of the box's contents with your cell phone, print out a QR code label and stick that to the box or even an easily accessible nearby shelf or wall. Then when you point your phone at the QR code it shows you a picture of what's actually in the box. Did I say brilliant?

Epson has solved one of the other frustrations of label printers as well by making the amount of wasted space on each label a fraction of what the other companies have. They must know how much it drives people crazy to have an inch of blank label come out of the printer before the printed part starts.

The downloadable software is exceptional in terms a versatility and ease of use. Task selection is intuitive and everything you need to know and do to produce just the label you want is right there on your smartphone's or tablet's screen (or of course your desktop computer).

Be sure to pull the tape through the slot
before you close the door. I didn't.

The only issue I ran in to, and it was user error, was when I inserted my first tape cartridge. The leader end of the tape was pressed up next to the cartridge and I didn't think otherwise than to just drop it in. My first label became a scrunched up wad of ribbon that I had to carefully extract. And it's not like I didn't read the instructions first, they do mention to slide the end of the tape into the slot but I suggest that they change the illustration to a pair of fingers actually PULLING the tape through the slot.


COMMENTS:

This is one of the better new products that's come out lately and absolutely worth the price. And it's not from some no-name company. It easily earns 5-stars.


TECH TOY WIZARD RATING: 5/5

WEBSITE: Epson website

BUYING OPTIONS: Amazon

SEE IT IN MOTION:

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