Best laser printer for labels?

August 15, 2006 12:02 PM

What is my best laser printer option for printing (lots of) labels?

I'm embarking on a new project that is going to (hopefully) involve mailing hundreds of packages every week. We'll be using an e-postage system to print out USPS shipping labels so we need a tough laser printer that can print our labels quickly and conveniently. We'll also be donig a lot of printing on standard paper as well. I've done a lot of research on this and it's not been easy to find printer reviews that talk a lot (or at all) about printing labels. The HP LaserJet 1320 looks like a good solution, but the manual suggests that you use the "single sheet priority slot" to print labels. That isn't going to work for printing out hundreds of pages of labels.

So:

1. Can we get away with loading sheets of labels in the HPLJ1320's standard 250-sheet input tray?

2. Is there another printer that is better suited for this job?

posted by subclub to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

We had a 1320 for a few days in our office. The manual feed slot is pretty lousy--it only accomodates a single sheet and you have to stand there and hold it because it has no tray or arm to hold what you're feeding in. We printed a few labels in it using the regular tray and they printed fine, though. I don't think any modern laser printer would have any trouble at all with printing labels from the regular input tray. Avery et al have made labels pretty foolproof.

Another issue we had with the 1320 is that it beeped after finishing every print job and we couldn't find a way to turn it off. There's probably a way to deal with that but we never found it--the manual feed issues trumped everything else and we returned it.
posted by bcwinters at 12:17 PM on August 15, 2006

Best answer: You might look into some kind of roll fed thermal printer. These print one label at a time off a continuous roll.

a quick froogle search uncovered This little zebra printer as one option. You might find something similar at a lower price point. 100+ labels a day would be a pain to do sheet-fed.
posted by freq at 12:42 PM on August 15, 2006

Response by poster: freq:

I had assumed that having a general purpose printer would be better, but after donig some research I am seriously looking at thermal label printers. Thanks!
posted by subclub at 1:08 PM on August 15, 2006

Best answer: This one is on the UPS site, but it's one that I've used with every shipping company and is a tank. Print it out, slap it on. Laser will DEFINITELY be a PITA.

http://www.ups.zebra.com/ctp/
posted by DandyRandy at 1:13 PM on August 15, 2006

Figure out what UPS uses and just use that.
posted by Wild_Eep at 6:42 PM on August 15, 2006

I print labels all the time from my OkiC3100 colour laser. I can fill the tray with laser label sheets (space for a couple of hundred sheets) and it has no problems at all printing them. Never had a single label detach during printing, and it's paper jammed once in the 18 months I've owned it (a quick fix).
posted by tomble at 6:45 PM on August 15, 2006