Article – From the horse’s mouth
Brother Europe
Brother VC-500W full-colour label printer
VC-500W Full-Colour Label Printer
Product Page (EU – English, UK)
My Comments
Brother is offering to the European market the VC-500W compact thermal label printer as a full-colour label printing solution. It is being pitched at applications like colour-coded labels, labels with multi-colour company logos or employee/visitor security badges that use full-colour photos. In the UK, Brother were even pitching the printer not just as a business tool but as part of home-based craftwork and hobbies – think of labelling those jars of marmalade, jam or other preserved fruits you make and give as gifts.
It is while some of the other printer brands are releasing at least one model of full-colour compact label printer using inkjet printing or some other compact full-colour printing technology. The question about full-colour small-form (label / receipt / ticket) printing is whether it is a real business tool or simply a toy, especially where the technologies will become initially expensive to buy and use.
This label printing system is based on the ZINK thermal printing system that Polaroid developed in the 1990s. But ZINK was mainly used for compact photo printers and digital cameras with integrated printers in order to share hard-copy prints of digital snapshots “there and then” like with Polaroid’s instant-camera legacy. Here, this used the direct-thermal printing process but uses the heat-pulse length and intensity to bring up particular colours.
A question that can be raised about the use of ZINK technology is how long the printed labels will keep their same colour before they deteriorate. It also includes whether how long unused rolls of the ZINK-based label tape for this printer can stay unused before they print below par or jam up in the label printer.
This printer uses the P-Touch software for regular Windows or MacOS computers or uses a special colour label-printing app for iOS and Android. It can link to the host computer device via USB or Wi-Fi whether directly or via an extent Wi-Fi network. It can work with a range of label widths up to 50mm and each label roll comes with 5m worth of full-colour label tape.
Brother could also take the ZINK technology further by implementing it in A4/Letter page sizes to create a highly compact mobile colour printer of the same ilk as the “PocketJet” mobile printers. Here, the issue of long-term archiveability for ZINK-based colour printouts would have to be tested for it to have business value. But it could be considered acceptable for applications where full colour is required in transactional printouts like work quotes.
As Brother slowly releases the VC-500W full-colour label printer around the world, it could be a chance to prove to home and business users real use case for full-colour small-form printing rather than it just being a toy.
