Brother QL-1110NWB Review - Review 2022

The flagship model of Brother's QL series of portable, pro-grade label printers, the QL-1110NWB ($279.99) is a pace up from the Editors' Choice QL-820NWB. These two label printers have very similar characteristic lists and capacities, except that the QL-1110NWB tin can print to wider labels (4 inches wide, versus 2.four inches). However, the smaller version offers the pick for an internal bombardment (making it truly portable) and a few other features missing on the QL-1110NWB—enough to keep this latest QL model from taking the place of the QL-820NWB equally a PCMag tiptop choice. That said, if your piece of work routine calls for wider labels than the QL-820NWB can produce, the QL-1110NWB will serve as an excellent, networkable label printer for your home office, modest office, or warehouse.

Play It Again, Blood brother

Alongside the QL-1110NWB, Brother rolled out a QL-1100 model, too, a not-networkable version of substantially the same broad-format label printer. (It lists for $100 less than the networkable model; striking the link for a review.) They both measure half-dozen.7 by 5.9 past 8.7 inches (HWD) and weigh merely under four pounds (three.9, to be exact). That makes the QL-1110NWB and its wide-format sibling a couple of inches wider than the QL-820NWB ($174.98 at Amazon) and about 2 pounds lighter.

The 3.five-inch Leitz Icon Smart Labeling System, reviewed a few years ago, is i of but a few low-price, broad-format directly competitors to the QL-1110NWB that I know of, and it is similar in size and weight. Zebra, mainly a maker of enterprise-level label printers, offers the pricier Zebra GC420d Direct Thermal Printer, another professional person-form, wide-format label maker. Information technology's a little heftier and bigger than our Brother review unit, but given that Zebra rates it for a 500-label daily duty cycle, it probably needs a little more mass.

If wider, longer labels are what you're afterwards, the QL-1110NWB is a terrific solution. It supports die-cutting and continuous-label media upwardly to 4.09 inches wide (with a 4-inch printing area), and it tin print banners upwardly to 9.8 anxiety long. That compares to the QL-820NWB's 2.4-inch-wide max label width and banner-length support upwardly to 3 feet. You can print labels at resolutions ranging from 100 to 600 dots per inch (dpi), and a built-in cutter at the end of the paper path slices continuous paper labels, with no endeavor from y'all. (According to Brother, the cutter is skillful for about 300,000 snips.)

The QL-1110NWB, like its smaller QL-820NWB sibling, has the widest range of connectivity options I've seen on a consumer-grade label printer. It supports Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Directly, and Bluetooth. The various options allow you to design and impress labels from computers on your network, or from Apple iOS and Android mobile devices.

Brother QL-1110NWB left

Equally for the printer itself, its design is simple. On the rear of the device, you'll find several ports and jacks, for power, Ethernet, USB, and USB Host (the last for connecting an external difficult bulldoze or some other USB peripheral). On each side of the printer is a lever for opening the lid that covers the paper-cartridge compartment. To replace or change cartridges, you simply slip the existing one out and drop in the new one. The cartridges are keyed so that they ever load correctly, and to allow the software to identify which type and size of cartridge has been loaded in the printer.

Brother QL-1110NWB paper

The front of the machine is where all the activity is, though—if yous can phone call information technology that. From left to right the front face has six buttons: Power, Feed, Cutter, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and WPS. Almost are self-explanatory. Feed advances the newspaper roll, and WPS stands for Wi-Fi Protected Setup, which is a protocol for connecting the printer to a wireless router with the touch of a button on each device, without having to enter a password.

Brother QL-1110NWB front

Equally mentioned, Brother's smaller QL-820NWB supports an optional bombardment that, when combined with Wi-Fi, allows y'all to apply the printer without a power source, using a direct connection to a computing device running Brother's P-touch Editor label-design and -printing software (Windows) or iPrint&Label (iOS and Android). The QL-820NWB takes all this a pace further with a monochrome screen; navigation arrows allow you lot to roll through and print pre-defined labels without a PC or mobile device involved at all. In other words, the QL-820NWB, with the battery installed, can operate as a standalone label maker/printer. The QL-1110NWB lacks both the bombardment selection and a screen.

Brother QL-1110NWB mobile

Savvy Label Software

Brother'south P-touch Editor is a relatively full-featured WYSIWYG folio-design plan complete with its ain font, border, and clip-fine art collections for sprucing up your labels. You also become P-touch Update Software and P-touch Address Book, the latter beingness a database program for storing contacts and creating and press mailing labels.

When y'all launch P-bear on Editor, it queries the printer for the current label ringlet installed, then presents yous with diverse label templates based on that media. If you lot change the label blazon in the printer, the current label or labels you have been working on reconfigure to fit your content on the new label size. Information technology's all very easy, and you can import your ain images and graphics. Just keep in listen that, despite the machine'south touted loftier-resolution printing, the print engineering science's grayscale and gradient nuances are limited.

Brother QL-1110NWB app

iPrint&Label works much like P-touch editor, except that it works over a wireless network protocol (Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Straight, or Bluetooth) from your mobile device. Though information technology's not equally robust an editor every bit P-impact, you tin can import content from your smartphone'southward address book, equally well as graphics and photos.

A Label Per 2nd

Like it does the QL-1100, Brother rates the QL-1110NWB at 69 labels per minute (lpm), when printing standard address labels of 2.four by 3.5 inches. I clocked it at a close 67lpm, which was 2lpm faster than the QL-1100 and almost 35lpm slower than the QL-820NWB. The Leitz Icon's score of 116lpm beat all iii of the Blood brother machines, but its print quality wasn't as good.

Keep in mind that these numbers don't include the lag time between when the computer processes and initiates the impress task, because that time is mostly dependent on the speed of the PC or mobile device existence used, or the network, not the printer. I ran my tests over Ethernet on our standard Intel Cadre i5-equipped testbed PC running Windows x Professional. The to a higher place print times besides don't include cutting, which deals a considerable setback—of about lxxx percent—to label-per-minute time. When I printed these same labels from different types of computing devices (an Android-based Samsung Galaxy smartphone, and an Apple iPad), the times varied significantly, with the PC continued via Ethernet being the fastest.

Besides, larger, more complex labels containing clip art or special effects take longer to procedure and print, of course. But almost everything I printed, except a 4-inch-by-5-foot banner, printed in well under a infinitesimal.

How It Prints, What It Costs

As I said well-nigh the QL-1100 in my review, near label applications, within reason, don't require pristine print quality. My inspection of the QL-1110NWB'south output showed it to exist at least as tight-looking as any of the other characterization makers mentioned here, and in some cases a piddling better. I saw no fuzziness, streaks, or other flaws that detracted from the clean look of the QL-1110NWB's labels.

Similar all of Brother's QL-series label printers, the QL-1110NWB uses the company's DK-series label rolls. For this printer, which touts the widest print path in the series, that means you can choose amidst nigh forty label types and/or sizes, ranging from nigh half an inch in width up to 4 inches. Continuous-length rolls run between 50 and 100 feet, while die-cut labels are measured by how many are on the scroll. Well-nigh labels print black-on-white, with a few printing black on clear stock. While scrolling through the label-stock list, I as well saw at to the lowest degree one 2.4-inch-by-100-pes roll that allowed for black-on-yellowish.

The DK-serial labels are readily bachelor online and in office-supply superstores, and the price per roll varies widely from outlet to outlet. Where yous can observe them in multi-curl bundles, you can often salve considerably. To come up with the following per-characterization price calculations, I used the prices at Brother Mall.

If you print a lot of shipping labels, you'll most likely want the 4-by-6-inch die-cut size, which sells for $51.49 for 200 labels, or around 28 cents per label. A 300-pack of standard die-cut mailing labels (ii.4-by-iii.9-inch) runs almost 9 cents per label. I'm certain that if yous store around, though, you volition find them for less than this.

The thing to carry in heed, as well, is that these labels are thermal newspaper; the printer has no ink cartridges. The applied science is the aforementioned used in old-school fax machines. That means your cost of press is simply the cost of the rolls.

Piece of cake, Dependable Wide-Format Labels

If you demand to print labels upwardly to iv inches broad over a wireless or wired network, or from mobile devices, the QL-1110NWB is an excellent choice. That said, I'd like it even better if it had a battery option for using in locations without a route to Air-conditioning power. Also handy would take been the ability to print pre-configured labels from a panel on the printer, as you can from the narrower-estimate QL-820NWB.

We like that earlier model a bit better overall because information technology has those ii features. Just if your dwelling house, pocket-sized office, or warehouse needs the wide-stock support, your all-time 2 choices are the QL-1100 and QL-1110NWB. The latter'southward extensive connectivity options—if y'all demand them—make that printer the better value of the two.

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