Brother QL-700 High-speed, Professional Label Printer Save 30% off

• Office Machines
• Label Makers & Supplies

This device is fast, durable, prints high quality (options between speed priority 300 dpi, quality priority 300 dpi, and quality priority 600 dpi). It performs exactly as expected. Consumables are a little expensive (the continuous tape (DK-2205) costs more than $20), but there are a lot of generic products meant to work with it. All DK labels compatible with the Brother QL-570 are also compatible with this device -the QL-700 is faster than the QL-570.

I bought this device for $49.99 from Staples on sale.

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If you''re in the market for an inexpensive label printer and you have no intention of printing postage, then buy this printer: it''s excellent, fast, and you''ll love it. (In fact, contact me and I''ll sell you mine!)

I bought this printer SPECIFICALLY to print postage. In retrospect I should have called Stamps.com to see if they supported this device before I bought it, but I digress. The only e-postage vendor to support this printer is PitneyBowes, and dealing with them brings a whole new meaning to customer dis-service (printer won''t work unless you have their super-special, custom made, can only be bought from them e-stamp label stock and they make the process of requesting a refund absolutely as painful as possible). So unless you really have nothing better to do or take perverse pleasure in being told to jump through hoops to get your money back/obtain a service, do yourself a favor and stay as far away from PitneyBowes as possible... which means staying away from the Brother label writers as only PitneyBowes support printing postage with them.

As I said at the outset, as long as you don''t intend to print postage this is easily a four-star product. However, because of it''s lack of support by any decent e-postage companies and because I bought it for printing postage, I cannot give it any more than one star.

UPDATE: I''m changing this review to three stars because this printer works just fine with PayPal''s integrated postage and shipping label generation tool (though, much to my chagrin, that service is ''powered'' by Pitney Bowes). While printing postage through PayPal works for most orders, it''s kinda useless for international orders (won''t allow me to print international first class postage) and completely useless for generating postage without a corresponding PayPal order. If you exclusively use PayPal/eBay for shipping and want to make use of the built-in tool for buying postage and generating a shipping label then this printer will work for you (just configure your PayPal profile to indicate that you''re using a Brother QL-550 and it''s all good; the Pitney Bowes java applet will detect that you really have a QL-700 and print the label and postage correctly).

UPDATE (10/30/2012): I cannot stress enough that if you are buying this printer to print postage you will be extremely disappointed. After getting this printer in April I started a TRIAL account with Pitney Bowes'' PBSmartPostage product which NEVER worked with this printer and which I cancelled within the 30 day trial period. Six months later I am STILL being charged a monthly fee after submitting account cancellation and refund requests online. I finally reached someone in their customer support division who (1) cancelled my account and (2) explained to me that I cannot get a refund for past billing because I didn''t call sooner to request a refund. WTF?!?! I cannot believe that PB is willing to deny me a refund of $81 knowing that I am going to tell everyone for the rest of my life just how bad of a company they are and how horrible their customer service is. I know some will disagree with my doing this, but I am down-grading my review of this product to one star: Brother is guilty by association with PB. I would have never known just how bad customer service could be if I had not chosen this label printer. Call it unfair if you want, but because Brother caused me to be "introduced" to PB I''m not going to buy any of their products ever again. If you need a label printer get a Dymo. If you need a laser printer get an HP. Need an ink jet, get an Epson.

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I had expected this printer to integrate with Excel requiring minimal effort (Brother does provide an add-on application) but after a few hours installing, reinstalling, and searching online support I simply gave up and printed the labels one at a time from the basic application. Generic issue relating to ''communication with printer'' through MS Office, oddly there was no communication issue using the default basic software.

The machine otherwise printed as advertised.

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Overall: The hardware is well made. The software is very capable, still with a few minor glitches

Bit of an adventure to install w Mac-OS X. The ''Printer-Driver'' would not install from the software-CD included in the box. Eventually downloaded the Printer-Driver from their website. Printer connected via USB. Good compatibility with various Versions of Mac-OS X we''ve used the QL-700 with 10.8.2 and 10.4.11 same performance

At this time the ''Editor Lite'' software is not Mac compatible. Mac-Users have to use the full ''P-Touch Editor'' application probably overkill for simple address labels, but gives you complete freedom with the label appearance

Prints a nice address label. Automatically cuts each new label from the roll. The labels stick to an envelope with no problem. For simple address labels we''re using the ''DK-1209 Small Address Labels'' roll of 800 labels for ~$17

__ Height: 6"

__ Width : 5"

__ Depth : 8.5"

__ Weight: 3.5 pounds

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Before I begin this review let me lay it down for all potential international buyers (like myself).

this is a 115V ONLY machine. If your country operates on 115V then all is good but if you are on a 220-230V supply like me you''ll need a step-down converter

though the machine''s power label states this machine as 115V/1.7A I have been able to operate this on a 60W wall-plug transformer

despite all minor annoyances you are still looking at a substantial amount of savings as it retails for US$148 where I''m from

---Build Quality---

it is larger than the photos suggest but with a comparable footprint to earlier models

it is heavy but this ensures it stays on your desk with little chance of it getting accidentally knocked off

glossy plastic used is a fingerprint magnet

if you are using aftermarket labels without the caddy you will have problems feeding a roll into an empty caddy from the rear (hinge space) as the space is really tight in there

---The Machine Itself---

standard buttons such as feed, cut, power and "Editor-Lite" (more on this later)

pilot lights are not obnoxiously bright

on the economy mode print quality is acceptable on tiny font size < size 8

nice, grippy rubber feet so it stays on the desk

---Machine Driver/ Running as Networked Printer---

driver installation was smooth but do follow the instructions to the "T"

you need to disable "Editor-Lite" by long pressing the button before you connect the USB cable to your PC during driver install. If you don''t do so driver will not install properly

I connected this to a W7 64-bit desktop and the supplied driver works right off the bat

I then tried connecting this to my home server (WHS2011) and the W7 64-bit driver works for this install too. This turned my label printer into a networked printer with WHS2011 as the print server

the driver deployment wizard (Brother BRAdmin Professional) works and installed the driver and utilities onto all my networked machines (clients).

no indication of how much memory is in this printer (if any) but if you run more than one instance of print job it slows down a bit

Machine Software and Utilities

if you are running MS Office on your machines Brother will install an add-on for you to import data into the P-Touch editor software

database linking is buggy... seriously, you guys have been at this for years and STILL haven''t fixed this issue

if you deal with XLS files then it sometimes works better if you convert the file to CSV before importing it into P-Touch Editor

lots of templates to download for free

if you print just the odd label here and there then all these won''t matter

firmware and software updating tool works well and is very intuitive. I suggest updating it the very first time you run the software

Editor-Lite Software allows you to quickly print a label by skipping P-Touch editor. The software is built into the printer but can be disabled. When enabled you will see a new drive appears in your My Computer page, it appears as a removable drive. I disable it by default.

---Bottomline---

It works and for the low price they are selling this for it is just too good to pass on. If you have an older version I''d stick to the older machine as there is little in terms of upgrade. If you do not have a label printer then just get this. It''s a lot cheaper than what they are charging for their older machines and if you run an e-commerce business like I do it helps to have 2 printer loaded with 2 different sized labels so you do not need to change rolls all the time.

P.S. English is not my native language so please excuse my grammar.