Brother VC-500WCR Design/Craft Thermal Printer VC500WCRZU1

When I say ‘toy’ I mean that it’s not a professional label printer that you would choose for a work setting. It’s very slow and the labels are eye-wateringly expensive. It’s designed for the hobbyist and for occasional use, but in that role it’s delightful.It’s s thermal printer, which means that no inks are involved. Rather cleverly the label material is impregnated with chemicals that produce a different colours, based upon the temperature that’s applied to any particular pixel. So the print head delivers heat to areas of the label at different temperatures as dictated by the image that the you have used in your design. This does, however, mean that printing is slow. It also accounts for the high cost of the label rolls.But you can produce labels with full colour images, but don’t expect high-resolution pictures of the quality you’d get from a photo printer.The smartphone app has a library of clip art and a respectable selection of fonts, together with a range of background patterns that you can apply. You can also use your own photos, which you can select from your picture library on your phone. Theoretically you can also use GIFs with transparent backgrounds so that you can create your own clip art, but I have found this to be hit and miss. Some GIFs I have created in Photoshop overlay perfectly with transparent backgrounds and others (frustratingly) come in with white backgrounds even though they’re created in exactly the same way.The app itself is pretty good (I’m using the IoS version) but it lacks a couple of a features that are pretty basic.Some missing features are:o The ability to flip a clipart item horizontally so that you can place them at either end of an image to make a ‘bookend’ layout.o The ability to import your own art into the library so that you can reuse it easily.o The ability to create custom folders into which you can place your saved labels.The colours, in particular with photographs, are acceptable but not very accurate. Browns, in particular, appear to be muted, but again anyone trying to produce proper photos on this is going to be disappointed. There are videos on YouTube showing uses that this printer can be put to, such as producing components for art projects. I am using it for several purposes and am finding it rewarding and fun to use.If Brother put some more effort into making the app more fully-featured that would be a great improvement, but it’s by no means bad as it is. But overall the app is very useable. It uses your home WiFi to connect your smart device to the printer, and you can also connect it to your Windows PC or Mac via a USB cable and then use Brother’s P Touch application to produce your content.Overall I like this system very much and am having too much fun with it for my wife’s liking. I think she’s worried she’ll come downstairs one morning and see labels like ‘Kettle’, ‘Toaster’, etc on the household appliances.

I was so happy to receive this colour label printer, especially since you could design and print pictures etc. I got busy printing, designing. I noticed that the colours were flat and nothing like the colours used in the design. I thought well, at least it’s colour! But, after installing the labels printed outside, just one night of rain and all the labels were destroyed!! Not waterproof!!!! My other label printers are waterproof so one would assume this would be! Basically, I feel this printer is way overpriced and fairly useless! Stay away and just buy a cheaper label printer and forget about colour!!

I purchased this printer a couple of weeks back - I used 3WM Office Supplies and for those considering making a purchase I would highly recommend using 3WM. I have owned a VC-500W before, sadly it was broken during an office accident but was very happy with it. I have a new product being launched and as per the past this printer was great for launch items which fit the size parameters this printer works to, which I believe is 50mm (H) - I also used both 26mm and 19mm iirc. Sadly upon receiving the printer and changing the label sizing slightly it did not look as expected, so I had to return it. The vendor 3WM were extremely professional at all times - I also have the Brother PT P900W which I purchased from 3WM over a year ago which I am very happy with - and when dealing with the return and refund, were very quick in all communication and dealt with return and refund promptly and efficiently.This printer is tiny in physical form, yes it may appear expensive but it is a reliable bit of kit and you will, if using for work purposes, get a return back in time. Excellent print quality - do not expect the quality of a professional printers, but for small batch runs, product start ups, it is superb. Hopefully if you do use it for products you are newly launching, that they sell very well, at which point you will likely need the use of a professional printers, by then however the printer should have paid for itself.Overall great product, great vendor, shame the product, this time around, did not quite meet my requirements.