Dymo LabelWriter Wireless Review - Review 2022

The newest Dymo desktop characterization printer, the Dymo LabelWriter Wireless ($149.99), is comparable in toll and features to Blood brother'south QL-810W, which itself is a stride down from our Editors' Choice, the QL-820NWB. The LabelWriter Wireless is much like the Brother QL-810W in that they both have adept label design and print software for PCs and mobile devices, and you can connect to either via Wi-Fi or USB. Still, the Brother model is somewhat slicker in a few central ways: It comes with an automated cutter, as well as support for an optional battery that makes the printer functional where power is unavailable. Even so, the LabelWriter Wireless is a highly capable, networkable label pattern and print system, making it a decent alternative to the Blood brother QL-810W as a abode-based or small office labeling solution.

Sleek and Simple

The LabelWriter Wireless ($112.93 at Amazon) is available in 1 of two colors: white or black. On both versions, the midriff (where the controls are located) is encircled with a swish silver (or nighttime-gray) decorative ring. For what it is, the LabelWriter Wireless looks stylish. However, while taking information technology out of the box for my initial inspection, the starting time thing I noticed was that it feels hollow and, well, plastic-like.

Given that the LabelWriter Wireless measures 4.nine by 5 past 8 inches (HWD) and weighs 3.ane pounds; finding a place to put it shouldn't be difficult, but then again, that'southward the case with most desktop label printers. The Brother QL-810W ($129.99 at Amazon) , for instance, measures v.vii by five past 9.2 inches and weighs merely 2.4 pounds, as does its costlier sibling, the Brother QL-820NWB ($174.98 at Amazon) , making them both slightly smaller and lighter than the LabelWriter Wireless.

Both the Brother models come with an electronic cutter that you can set up to cut automatically after each label or at the end of each impress job. The LabelWriter Wireless's cutter, on the other hand, consists of a serrated bract that spans the width of the output slot, and you tear the labels off (either ane label at a time equally you print or at the stop of a impress job), manually, much similar cut a sheet of aluminum foil from the bract affixed to the box in which the foil is packaged. While this method—violent the labels off their roll–may seem somewhat crude (peculiarly if you're cutting i characterization at a time), from an efficiency standpoint, it works well enough; not once did I lose a characterization to a bad tear. That said, the Blood brother models' electronic cutter is much more productive and user-friendly.

Setup, Connectivity, Software, and Labels

As with about of its competitors, you pattern your labels for printing from PCs with the LabelWriter Wireless'due south bundled software (aptly dubbed Dymo Label Software), or from tablets and smartphones with the Dymo Connect Mobile App. Thus, the LabelWriter Wireless neither has (nor needs) much of a control panel; in this case, the controls consist of three buttons—power, Accelerate, and Back—and two status LEDs (ability on and Wi-Fi). Advance and Back allow you lot to feed the label media back and forth in the output slot for alignment and cut.

Dymo LabelWriter Wireless Right Side

Setting up the LabelWriter Wireless to connect wirelessly is a snap, only during my testing I also gear up information technology up to use the included USB cable, which turned out to be somewhat of an ordeal. Allow's look at using Wi-Fi, first, though, which consists of unboxing the unit, loading the included starter roll of blank labels, and installing the software on your PC. After you get the printer itself unboxed and plugged into a ability source, the easiest fashion to connect it to your Wi-Fi network is with Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS), where you connect the device in question to your wireless router with the bear upon of 2 buttons, one on the printer and ane on the router itself.

Now that the printer is on your network, you download the appropriate drivers and software past navigating to the printer's URL (which is designated in the Getting Started material). This starts Dymo's Quick Setup Wizard, which in turn downloads the drivers and configures the connection. Adjacent, you lot go to back up.dymo.com to download and install Dymo Label Software, and at present you're ready to design and impress labels.

Configuring the drivers to use a USB connexion isn't nearly as straightforward (nor is it laid out well in the bundled documentation). Getting it done required that I rely on Windows Plug 'n' Play's power to identify the device, and then search the spider web, first, to observe the appropriate drivers, and so again to download and install Dymo Label Software. This all worked equally information technology should take, but if you lot're familiar with this manual process, information technology may non sound similar much of a chore; my business is that many of today's potential users are acquaint to more automated installation procedures. I should also point out that, in improver to Wi-Fi and a direct connection via USB, the Blood brother QL-820NWB also supports Ethernet, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi Direct (for a routerless peer-to-peer network connectedness between the printer and mobile devices in close proximity), thereby providing a much wider range of connectivity options than the LabelWriter Wireless.

Dymo LabelWriter Wireless Controls

Dymo's label design software is a piddling rudimentary, compared with Brother's software. For ane thing, I establish that it often required several more steps to get the same results. For case, neither the desktop software nor the mobile app can recognize which label blazon is loaded in the printer. The Brother software, on the other hand, recognized the blank label blazon and presented me with an appropriately formatted template to go me started. In addition, Brother's templates continuously reformatted themselves equally I worked, whereas the Dymo templates did not. The lesser line in all this is that while I was able to design and print labels in Dymo's software well enough, I found Brother's programs (the PC software and the mobile app) easier to utilise.

As for blank label rolls, Dymo offers about forty label sizes up to two⁵⁄_xviinches broad, in both paper and plastic media types and several unlike colors, including clear. To load a office in your printer, y'all simply open the top of the automobile, remove and adjust the newspaper roll spool to accommodate the size on manus, feed the cease of the bare roll into the feed slot, and printing the Advance button to feed the media through the printhead and out through the output slot. It's all quite quick and efficient. Y'all're now gear up to print labels.

Quick, Quality Prints

Dymo rates the LabelWriter Wireless at 71 labels per minute (lpm), which is the aforementioned rating as a few of its predecessors, including the Dymo LabelWriter Turbo 450 and the LabelWriter 4XL. Brother, on the other hand, rates its QL-810W and QL-820NWB at 110 ane-color text labels (the Brother models can also impress in ruby, or black and carmine). I tested the LabelWriter Wireless over USB from our standard Intel Core i5-equipped testbed PC running Windows x Professional.

Dymo LabelWriter Wireless Inside

The LabelWriter Wireless printed iii-line "standard address labels," at a rate of nearly 67.8lpm.That'south less than 1lpm slower than the Dymo 450 Turbo and around 30lpm slower than Brother'south QL-820NWB and QL-810W, every bit well as 25lpm slower than Brother'south QL-800 ($75.97 at Amazon) , a non-networkable version of the Brother QL-800-series discussed throughout. The Leitz Icon Smart Labeling System, another networkable desktop labeler in this class, printed similar standard address labels (though not as attractively) at 116lpm, outpacing the LabelWriter Wireless past about 50lpm. All that said, how fast the LabelWriter Wireless will print for you depends on several factors, including foremost on what you're printing.

As for impress quality, when I printed standard address, file folder, and barcode labels, the LabelWriter Wireless'south output looked fine. Different the Brother models discussed here, though, the Dymo machine didn't do equally well with grayscales and tints. I likewise saw better kerning and other alphabetic character- and line-spacing from some of Dymo's 42 supported type styles over others, merely overall, the LabelWriter Wireless's print quality is above acceptable for a label printer.

The Ongoing Price of Staying Organized

Given the types, sizes, quantities, and several other factors, zeroing in on a cost per label (CPL) is peradventure even more of a moving target than is coming up with a general print speed. When I did the math (using Dymo'due south prices from its website) to figure out the per-label cost of printing a one^one⁄₈-by-3^one⁄_two white standard accost label from a roll of 350 die-cutting labels, it came to well-nigh ii.3 cents per label. That'due south non bad at all, considering that printing a similar label on any of the Brother printers discussed here volition run y'all around 3.nine cents each.

Dymo LabelWriter Wireless Back

You lot tin become even lower running costs past purchasing your blank characterization rolls in quantities. Buying fourscore of the aforementioned rolls volition salvage you just over $2 per gyre, which will drop the CPL past just over 25 percent—merely that, of course, isn't limited to merely Dymo label purchases. Other characterization printer makers offer quantity discounts, as well.

Uncomplicated Often Works Best

Once you've taken the time to go the hang of Dymo'south rustic little label design program and/or mobile app, creating labels and printing them out should be unproblematic; although yous do get somewhat amend layout tools and, as a result, a little more bonny-looking labels, from Blood brother's software. While Blood brother's QL-series label makers may exist slightly superior and a fleck more than polished in some means, both systems get the job washed speedily, and without a lot of fuss.

What I like most about the Dymo LabelWriter Wireless, though, is that the characterization print media—the blank tapes or characterization rolls—do, when yous're selective about what you buy, get the job washed for less coin. If you're planning on printing hundreds, perhaps even thousands of labels ongoing and for a while, the Dymo LabelWriter Wireless label printer should save you some money on running costs, which seems like reason enough to consider it equally a viable labeling system for your habitation-based or minor office or workgroup.