Brother QL-1100 High Speed, Wide Format, Professional Label Printer

I bought this QL-1100 label printer from amongst a large choice of it's competitors. My choice was based largely on its appearance, specification and my personal experience of Brother products (this is my third Brother printer). I've felt pretty smug since buying it, my choice was justified by the quality of build, beautifully designed looks and second to none performance. Absolutely superb.

I was thinking of purchasing a label printer for a long while. I had a regular brother printer that lasted years so this was a good place to start. I was absolutely surprised at the quality of this thermal printer and how it has speed up the process of printing labels. Nice and compact too, it fits on my desk.

This has made my life so much simpler, I was printing on sticker paper previously and it took forever and I was constantly buying ink.

Brought for my Fiance to use for here at home business to save time on her having to go to the Post Office and wait in line so long.

Things are pretty smooth so far and it's high quality.

Smartest purchase I've made in a long time. Easy to set up and use. Free downloadable software that works great, you don't need other software or questionable apps.

Good printer and does the job very well. Versatile and takes a wide variety of sizes of labels. Setup was easy. Software could be better. Would help to have easier integrations with mainstream applications to simplify use.

I purchased this QL-1100 to print shipping labels from USPS, PayPal and UPS. The online literature states that the printer is an ideal solution for printing shipping labels. But, when trying to setup the printer, I wanted to insert the free labels that UPS provides on a roll. But, these free labels cannot work on the Brother label printer because the printer does not have a mounting system to install a generic roll of labels. Labels must be pre-mounted on a plastic gimbal that supports the label roll. You have to purchase labels with this plastic gimbal. Further, it appears that UPS does not support the Brother printer for direct printing. To summarize, the printer seems like a good buy and might work very well for customizing label printing, but for those who want to print directly from USPS, PayPal or UPS, this is an appropriate solution.

All my first impressions of this printer were great. I followed all the instructions as I unpacked and connected the printer up with my MacOS 11 laptop. I used the P-Touch editor that comes when downloading everything you would seemingly need to operate the printer. I printed my first few labels with the editor and they all came out pretty great except one that I had to crop down. I then was a little curious about the driver for the printer. I was thinking, "there's no way this prints without a driver, right?". Unfortunately, correct. It was so disappointing to realize this printer does not have a driver to connect with my Mac so I could easily print off labels more than one at a time. I originally really liked the printer, and if you're only printing a label here and there where you don't have multiple orders you want to ship at once, this is great. But, if you want a seamless process with a printer driver instead of a separate app, this isn't the label printer I would recommend.

Each roll of labels comes with its own plastic holder that has to be thrown away after, this also means that you can not even choose to buy more eco friendly labels to use with the printer and as the plastic holders are not recyclable contributes hugely to unnecessary plastic waste