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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
68 labels per minute print speed / Up to 300×600 dpi / Built-in auto cutter / Barcode printing / USB computer connected operation / Accepts 2.4″ wide tape Built-in Durable Automatic cutter Prints multiple copies 3 color LED control panel display Uses easy drop-in label and tape rolls Computer generated time and date function Label Creation software with 3 input modes - Snap Mode, Express Mode, and Professional Mode Label creation software integrates with Microsoft Outlook, Word and Excel USB cable connectivity System Requirements - Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Mac OS 10.3.9-10.4.10

Rating: - Bad bad bad - worst customer service ever
I go this very promising printer and it did print and didn’t cut the labels at the wrong places. I called Brother 10 or 15 times after being in a waiting line for 30 minutes or so and being transferred 3 to 5 times and having to give my phone number over and over again I get hang up as soon as I reach the Mac department. Brother printer aren’t that bad but they aren’t that great either. And they are definitely not worth for you to wait on the phone for several hours in case you need help or the product is defect like in my case.

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Rating: - Excellent product.
I have had this for about 4 months and it has been terrific.

Recently had a conference and I used shipping labels to make name tags. I printed over 1,100 labels and it never faltered.

And it is fast. A couple of minutes or so to print 100 labels.

And the beauty of it is no ink.

I am now using it for creating CD/DVD labels.

It is extremely easy to change label sizes and the software knows what size labels are in the printer so makes it a snap to click on print and go.

The supplied software works great on both my Powerbook and MacBook Pro running Leopard.

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Rating: - Love this little guy!
Fantastic piece of peripheral hardware for those of you who hate to try and figure out how to put your envelopes into your regular printers. This little labeler will do it all from envelope sized address labels to shipping labels. It is quick and easy and there is software that makes the process a breeze. There are also add-ons that you can hook up to word, excel etc..to make it even easier. The quality of the prints are great! It takes 5 seconds to make a label. The negative aspects I’ve come across has more to do with the software than the printer itself. I’m not sure if it is just me b/c I haven’t spent enough time with it or the feature is not included, but I’m having some difficulty putting a return address automatically appear in the label. I can of course add it in as an extra text box, but it would be so nice for it to automatically appear every time in the upper left hand corner, sort of like how it comes up in the mailing tab of MS Word. Other than that this is definitely worth the money and it makes life a whole lot easier. I don’t think the cost of the printer sticky paper is too expensive unlike having to buy color toner for laser printers (…the extent where it is cheaper to buy a new printer than buy toner, drum and belt). Thumbs up for this little printer! Fantastic!

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Rating: - Great printer, confusing setup
Great label printer. Fast, reliable, and quiet. A bit bulky but the size makes it easy to change the label.

Note about setting up printer for postage:

I bought this printer to print folder labels and postage. Folder labels was easy enough but postage proved difficult. I read on a forum that you could print USPS click and ship postage. Signed up on USPS and spent a few hours trying to fit the postage image onto the label. Finally, a search revealed that paypal has this functionality. I signed into paypal and under Profile -> shipping settings set the printer settings to ql-550 (ql-570 not listed but it’s okay). It gives you a heads up that you need Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment to print labels to your label printer and points to you a link for the no longer unsupported J2SE JRE from 2005 that no longer works. You do need Java Run Time Environment but can use the newer one. You can get it by searching for JRE or get the older one by searching J2SE JRE.

Then I went into Label Printing Application found under Aution Tools tab -> PayPal MultiOrder Shipping and printed two labels. Wasted about 1 foot of labels trying to get them to print. Then finally realized there is another setting inside this MultiOrder Shipping App under Edit -> Settings. I set this to the ql-550 and hit the “Reprint” button (next to View Details…) under the History tab. I wasted another foot of continuous label trying to print the labels. Then realized that reprinting keeps the original printing formatting. Had to void out the labels and /really/ re-print them (luckily I didn’t have to refill in the shipping details). Very annoying experience. end rant.

1. Download Java http://www.java.com/en/download/index.jsp

2. Create or login your Paypal Account

3. Click auction tools -> free MultiOrder Shipping

4. If Getting Started pops up click Close

5. Click Edit -> Settings -> Print Settings -> Label Printer, and choose ql-550. (Also I unchecked packing slips and receipt. Packlist comes up after printing labels and you can choose your regular printer)

6. Click Ok

7. You are done. Click File -> Create New Order

Also, turn off pop-up blocker before trying to print and you might want to change your OS’s “Printer Preferences” paper size to the correct value so you don’t have to do this everytime you print. The default is wrong for the ql-570.

This is a big feature for the ql series so they should have some better documentation but it is equally paypals fault for poor documentation.

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Rating: - Forget printing POSTNET codes
The Brother editor program has a maximum of 11 digits for POSTNET code. Unfortunately, the full code needed for the Post Office is 11 digits PLUS a check digit, for a total of 12. So you can’t do it.