Review: Seiko Instruments Smart Label Printer 450

The latest addition to the Seiko Smart Label Printer range, the SLP 450 features a new 300dpi thermal printing mechanism able to churn out a new label every one to two seconds. It can also print barcodes and be shared on a network.

Because it uses thermal printing technology, the SLP 450 doesn’t need ribbons, toner or ink cartridges – just special labels, which come in a variety of formats from plain address tags to labels for floppy disk, name-badges and jewellery.

Coloured and themed labels are also available, and you can to add your own graphics using the software provided.

Labels come on a roll and sit in a feeder on top. A USB or serial cable is then used to connect to the printer with software provided for use on both Windows PCs and Apple Macs.

A Wysiwyg editor allows labels to be typed directly or captured from applications such as Word, Outlook, Act and Goldmine with automatic sizing of the text to suit the label template used.

Alternatively you can manage the appearance of the text directly, add graphics, barcodes and so on and save the resulting layout in a template of your own.

It’s pretty straightforward, although if we had one big criticism it would be the lack of documentation, especially when it comes to integration with other applications, which is limited solely to address capture.

Quality is excellent and with labels printed one at a time there’s no wastage.

However, the thermal labels aren’t cheap. A roll of 220 large white shipping labels will, for example, cost around £9.99 ex VAT, which works out at just over 4.5p per label.

The cost is worth it if you’re a trader needing to mail out lots of parcels, or if you’ve any application that requires professional-looking labels at the touch of a button.