When it comes to high-quality label printing and ease of use, Dymo printers are big winners, and now three models—the LabelWriter 400 Turbo, LabelWriter Duo, and the one I tested, the LabelWriter Twin Turbo—come with the attractive benefit of free postage printing. I tried out a pay service that allows you to print postage with the ( ) a while back, and I was intrigued to find out what the Dymo LabelWriter Twin Turbo with Dymo Stamps software had to offer Mac users. The Twin Turbo printer lets you put two label rolls in the side-by-side spools, and it’s easy to switch label types. You use the Dymo Label software to print and design labels, and version 7.5.0.6 worked fairly well for me, except for some quirkiness I encountered when modifying text formatting and indicating in the main window’s drop-down menu which spool I wanted to print from (I had to do that by drilling down in the Print dialog box). The label-printing speed is impressive, at about one label per second, or 55 labels per minute, and the print quality stays high even when printing numerous labels. The quality of the printed labels is lower than that of a laser printer, but it’s good enough for printing shipping labels and other office labels. The Dymo Stamps application, which lets you print stamps for a few common postage classes, is a stripped-down version of Endicia’s $16-per-month postage service.
DYMO Label v.8 must be installed for each user account that will use the software. For example if you install the software as Administrator and then login to a different account, you must install DYMO Label v.8 on that account.
As you might imagine, the pay service offers many more features than this free service. The only items in the printer that need to be replaced are new labels, at an average of $13 per roll for common label types, or about six cents per label. Replacement stamp labels cost about eight cents per stamp label, so the premium on postage is fairly high. But I’d take the convenience of this sturdy, nifty label printer any day. A Dymo Stamps Dashboard widget is also available, which provides you with three stamp choices.
The printer spit out stamps faster than it took me to even contemplate a trip to the post office, and I saved money by weighing my letters and printing only the postage I needed. Depending on your own habits, this may make up for the premium on the stamp labels. Macworld’s buying advice The Dymo LabelWriter Twin Turbo with Dymo Stamps software is the only postage-and-label-printer combination for the Mac, and it’s a high-quality one at that. If you need to print labels on demand as well as postage, it will pay for itself quickly. Another plus is that the printer uses a thermal printing process that doesn’t use ink or toner. Jennifer Berger is a former Macworld editor, now an editor and writer in San Francisco, who has a very organized and clearly labeled set of file cabinets.
We got tired of handwriting addresses, etc. For our small business, so we bought a Labelwriter 400. I didn't expect much-most inexpensive printers come with buggy, hard to use software and drivers, are slow, jam, etc. Not so with this product. We have been using it on both Mac and PC and it is startlingly easy to use and quick on both. Integrates perfectly with Quickbooks 2007 for PC.
Addresses automatically print with the postal codes which is very cool. I almost never give any product five stars, but feel that this one deserves them because for us, it has exceeded our expectations in every way. I can't think of a single aspect of it that has disappointed us. We are now using it to label everything. A great little office tool that beats my lousy handwriting and makes everything look professional. We got tired of handwriting addresses, etc.
For our small business, so we bought a Labelwriter 400. I didn't expect much-most inexpensive printers come with buggy, hard to use software and drivers, are slow, jam, etc. Not so with this product. We have been using it on both Mac and PC and it is startlingly easy to use and quick on both. Integrates perfectly with Quickbooks 2007 for PC. Addresses automatically print with the postal codes which is very cool. I almost never give any product five stars, but feel that this one deserves them because for us, it has exceeded our expectations in every way.
I can't think of a single aspect of it that has disappointed us. We are now using it to label everything. A great little office tool that beats my lousy handwriting and makes everything look professional.
The price on these things is a bit out there for such a small printer, but once I broke down and bought it I can't believe I wasted so much time fighting with my stupid regular printer attempting to create labels.or printing them by hand. This thing is awesome. By the time you reach from the computer to the printer, the label is already done. (I just have the 400, not the turbo.) Another nice feature is NO INK! No smudges or drying time. No outrageously priced cartridges. The labels come out looking professional, don't smudge - even if they get wet, and stick far better than the regular sheet labels.
I always ended up taping over those so they wouldn't fall off in transit. Love the thing. We purchased this LW 400 to replace a LW 330 that gave out on us after years of faithful service. The 400 is even faster and seems to be designed a little better. Otherwise works much the same as our older models. This is a solid mature product and I would recommend to anyone who needs it. Install and use is very easy and user friendly.
BTW, you can do some fairly advanced stuff with these printers if you desire. I've written some Office code that integrates the printer into an Access database so we can print labels directly from Access.
Only warning I have is that once one person gets a LW on their desk everyone else seems to want one too! Robert Network Admin. I have a Twin Turbo, and that is a gem. But what do you do if you print stamps, return address labels and also 1st class & priority labels. Well you need a third and this was a wise choice.
It will save on the cost of toner as well as time if you used to trim down 8x11 labels. The only issue that I have is that if both printers are turned on, there can be some confusion between were the print job is going.
Not sure, but I think that a second twin turbo might have cause a conflict. I think they now make one that prints a thirn label, but it's a much thinner label.
I'm happy with mine. I purchased 8 of these for my company to give to all of our sales reps and office admins. Before, they had to feed labels into printers, and I swear I lost a fortune in labor for each label.
After researching all of the alternatives and models, I bought them through amazon, and got the 400. It prints so quickly, I can't even imagine the need for the turbo. It took about 5 minutes to set up, has a small footprint and is stylish, and is amazingly easy to operate. From a word document (think a letter to somebody), just highlight the address, and click on the little mini dymo icon right next to your printer icon.
The software opens with the label in case you want to modify or put an automatic barcode, and you click print, and 3 seconds later or less, you tear off your label and put it on the envelope. I only wish I had bought these for our office years ago. I think it's going to pay for itself in about 3-6 months. I purchased this printer primarily to print postage with my. account, having grown tired of trying to keep various sizes and types of labels at hand. Works very well, quick, quiet, and a very small footprint. Labels are easy to change if I wish to print something other than postage.
Included software is more than adequate for that task and is easy and intuitive to use. Installation was a snap. My only gripe is the printer does not have an 'off/on' switch. That would be nice as I like to turn off my various peripherals to cut down on energy consumption.
So I unplug it. Not that hard to do. Overall a great device! I bought the printer for one reason: to create shipping labels for my eBay items. I'd previously been using Avery inkjet labels with my inkjet printer, which worked but it was an annoyance to have to print only one or two labels at a time. THE GOOD: Absolutely no problems with the printer, getting it to work, etc. It has a very small footprint which I like, and it's very quiet when printing.
It even comes with a roll of address labels. THE BAD: None significant, although the address labels are useless to me since I'll be doing nothing but shipping labels with it.
The included software on the CD was old (updates available on the Dymo web site) but that holds true for pretty much everything in the computer industry. The software has some good features (mailing lists, and the ability to use the OS X Address Book database), but otherwise it's pretty minimal and limited, particularly in its design capabilities.
This would have gotten five stars if it wasn't for the software, which feels like a hurried afterthought rather than a finished OS X application. (PS: Dymo has an OS X Intel-native version of the LabelWriter software that is available for download, but is NOT on the CD.). This label printer looks and feels great, but the software is absolutely pathetic. It is bare bones software that is completely below my expectations and your expectations. I didn't expect the software to do anything fancy, but this software is of the 1980's quality. More importantly, the specs indicate you can do a mail merge with MS-Outlook.that's a complete misrepresentation because you can't.
What you can do with MS-Outlook is this - export you contacts database and import into the Dymo software. I was able to do it because I'm savvy with this sort of stuff, but 9 out 10 people won't be able to.
So, if you're buying this with the intent of printing labels from your MS-Outlook address book, then don't buy it. If you're buying this with an open mind and willingness to go through a little bit of pain, make the purchase.