In addition to writing hundreds of articles for PCMag, over the years I have also written for many other computer and business publications, among them Computer Shopper, Digital Trends, MacUser, PC World, The Wirecutter, and Windows Magazine. (Over my long career, though, I have covered many aspects of IT.) My published expertise in those areas includes Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Photoshop, and QuarkXPress, as well as prepress imaging technology. I have authored or co-authored 20 books-including titles in the popular Bible, Secrets, and For Dummies series-on digital design and desktop publishing software applications. I have been writing about computer technology since well before the advent of the internet. I focus on printer and scanner technology and reviews. Yes, the older Cube is a good product at a fair price, but if you need to do some serious labeling at home or around the office, our latest Editors' Choice for a consumer-grade labeler, the P-touch Cube Plus, is an excellent choice. Spending the extra cash gets you a built-in rechargeable battery, an automatic cutter, twice the speed, and support for multiple users and more devices. Unless your labeling is very basic, the $40-list price difference between the P-Touch Cube and the P-Touch Cube Plus seems trivial. If you're printing huge numbers of labels at a time, you're better off with a die-cut label maker like Brother's own QL-800, which can churn out address labels for as low as 2.5 cents. Using Brother Mall pricing, printing 1-by-3-inch labels from a 26.2-foot roll will run you about 30 cents per label. What your per-label cost will be depends on the type, length, and width of the labels you print, where you buy them, whether you buy multi-cartridge packages or single-cartridge packs, etc. I printed several different types of labels, some with fancy frames and fonts, some with graphics, and so on, and everything came out looking well above acceptable. But then, since the machine did the cutting during the Cube Plus tests, while I had to cut each label with the manual cutter on the older model, this is hardly an empirically controlled test.Īs for print quality, the Cube Plus prints as well as most other thermal printers, having a maximum print resolution of 180dpi. It printed my simple 0.47-by-3.5-inch text label in 3 seconds, or in about half the time as its older sibling, and it printed 10 of them in succession, cutting each one, in about 30 seconds, which is, again about half the time of its predecessor. More importantly, though, is how fast it prints specific types of labels. The latter, shown to the left, is the more robust of the two and lets you create labels from your contact lists, but both come with ample label design tools and templates.īrother rates the Cube Plus at 20mm per second. You can also merge and print multiple labels for mass mailouts from Excel, Outlook, and other databases.įor designing and printing labels from your smartphone or tablet, you can use P-touch Design&Print and/or Brother iPrint&Label. The software bundle for both Windows and Mac consists of P-touch Editor, a label design tool comprising fonts, drawing tools, custom borders and frames, numerous predefined label templates, bar codes, imported graphics, and the ability to import your own images and graphics, such as your company logo. Compared with truly professional-grade label printers like Brother's own QL-820NWB, though, the P-touch Cube models and others in this group are indeed small. Measuring 5 by 2.6 by 5 inches (HWD) and weighing 1.4 pounds, the Cube Plus is a bit larger than the Cube, but close in size to a few other competing labelers in this class, including the Dymo MobileLabeler. The Cube Plus is clearly lower-end and just barely qualifies as "professional," though it is robust enough for easily and conveniently labeling the file folders, supply cabinets, and other items in your small or home-based office.Īside from coming in different colors (the Plus is black, and the non-Plus version comes in either white or blue), these two printers look very similar. Label printers span the gamut from inexpensive personal and home-oriented machines that manage a few labels per minute to honking multi-thousand-dollar beasts that churn out hundreds of labels in seconds. The P-touch Cube Plus easily supplants its older sibling as our Editors' Choice consumer label printer. Yes, the new label printer costs $40 more than its predecessor, but it's twice as fast, prints a more diverse array of label sizes, and has a more robust feature set. The Brother P-touch Cube Plus ($99.99) is an upgrade from the Editors' Choice Brother P-touch Cube.
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