BeigeJournal

I bought a Brother P-Touch model 2300 label maker. On the whole I’m happy with it, though there are some unfortunate design decisions.

I paid $80 for mine. It comes with eight alkaline AA batteries and a black on white 12mm wide tape that is 5 rather than the usual 8 meters long. The model 2310 is identical but comes with a case and extra label tape.

The 2300 has a miniature rubber-button QWERTY keyboard. You are not going to touch-type on it, but QWERTY is a good choice since even Dvorak users like myself are usually somewhat familiar with it and can hunt and peck fairly easily. It is intended to be used set on a desk or perhaps the floor but it can be operated handheld. There is a tiny, very low resolution, non-backlit LCD that displays two very short lines. It is usable, and certainly cheaper and easier on the batteries than a good display would be. With such a minimal display no effort is made at WYSIWYG operation.

The 2300 can use type “TZ” label tape in widths of 6, 9, 12, 18, and 24 millimeters. The label tape comes in cassettes that drop in and pop out easily to change sizes or colors. There are a large variety of colors made, though the selection at your local office supply store will probably be limited. What you will most likely find locally are black on white and black on clear and maybe red on white or black on yellow. White on black, white on clear, white on blue, and some others exist, but you’ll have to mail order them. Tapes with extra-strength adhesive and with security adhesive are also made, as well as extra-flexible tape for wrapping around wires and the like. There is a cloth tape for iron-on labels and some sort of kit for making rubber-stamps, neither of which I’ve tried (or seen).

The label tape is quite clever, with a clear outer layer printed on the inside by thermal transfer from a ribbon that is taken up inside the cassette and never seen by the user. The printed clear layer is then stuck to the sticky backing layer, which has another adhesive layer and cover layer on its back. The machine comes with a little plastic stick with a slot that you can wrap the label around to help unstick that protective cover over the adhesive in order to apply the label. It sort of works, with practice. There is a storage slot for the tool under the cover of the tape compartment, which is a somewhat awkward place for it. I just know that I’m going to lose it.

Users are cautioned not to mess with the white plastic lever that protrudes from the mechanism when the cover is opened, but they are not warned not to try to print with the cover open. I suppose you can always print yourself a reminder label to stick on the machine after you learn that lesson.

Label tape comes in eight-meter lengths and depending on width and color retails for around $18 to $25. If you want to keep a few widths and colors on had you can quickly spend more on label tape than on the machine. Depending on your budget and point of view, that either argues for buying the cheapest machine to save money for supplies or buying a more expensive machine on the theory that you are still going to spend more on consumables than hardware. About 24mm separates the print head from the automatic powered cutter. It can leave this width on both sides of the label or can cut the extra off to leave shorter margins. In the no margin mode it begins printing immediately, cuts after 24mm, and advances just the 24mm at the end before cutting. Oddly, if you select an intermediate margin width it advances the full selected margin of blank tape, then starts printing, then cuts the full 24mm off the start, then finishes printing and advances the margin plus 24mm on the end before cutting. It would seem that a bit of tape could be saved at the start by more intelligent programming, though some waste is inevitable. 12mm of even the wider and costlier tape is only $0.04. You can turn off the cutter and print several labels together to be cut by hand later.

My subjective impression of how much label eight meters is is that if you print a label today and maybe one next week, it will last a long time, but if you have a labeling project, such as that pile of mystery boxes in the basement, you can use it up surprisingly quickly. Probably most home users will go through a frenzy of labeling with their new toy and then settle down to a fairly low usage rate.

Print resolution is adequate. You can certainly see the jaggies on sloping lines, but it looks good from a distance and is legible. It can print two (tiny) lines on the 6 and 9 mm tape, up to 3 on the 12 mm tape, and up to six on the 18 and 24 mm tape. There are four fonts in seven sizes and three widths. It has an automatic font size mode that will use the biggest font that will fit the required number of lines on the width of tape loaded. It has a number of pre-programmed label length setting that will print labels to neatly fit cassette tapes, floppy disks, DVD cases, video tapes, and the like. It can do outline, bold, italic, shadow, and italic bold, outline, and shadow effects. It can print rotated 90 degrees, which qualifies as its own style and cannot be combined, as far as I know, with italic, bold, etc. It can print in mirror image, which can be used on transparent-back label tape to make labels that can be placed on the inside of a window to read correctly on the outside.

It can print a “gray” background of dots, square or rounded boxes around the text, or several goofy-looking outlines, with “torn” edges and pointing hands and the like.

It can print a variety of accented letters. I assume the set was chosen with care to cover many popular languages, although I have not been able to find, for example, a language that uses E-with-tilde that doesn’t also use a great many other accented characters that it cannot print. But I’m sure there must be one that I don’t know about.

It lacks generalized superscript and subscript capability but can print 2 and 3 as superscripts and 2, 3, and 4 as subscripts. There is an eccentric assortment of other symbols that can be printed, including arrows, the inevitable pointing hands, a heart, a jack-o-lantern, a bat and ball, a Santa head, and a few more plausibly useful symbols like the skull and crossbones. It can print no Greek letters at all, not even the ubiquitous μ. The symbols +, -, ×, and = are available, as well as the ÷ symbol, used on calculator keys and by small children just learning about division.

Between the goofy icons and the goofy borders, it is the perfect label maker for nine-year-olds who can afford an eighty dollar machine and twenty-plus dollar label tapes. Given that it is a relatively expensive toy, I’d have preferred grown-up symbols to jack-o-lanterns. Brady advertises the LAB PAL for serious uses, and might be a better choice for laboratory use.

The P-Touch 2300 has a USB port and comes with software for Macintosh and several varieties of Microsoft Windows. Lacking a Macintosh or anything running Windows I have not looked at the software. Some of the labels shown in the photo on the box the unit comes in cannot be made by the unit by itself, and I do hope they can be made with the computer software. I have not found any Unix software, anything open-source, or for that matter any third-party software at all. I do not know if Brother has publicly documented the computer interface so that such software could be written.

There are probably applications where a PC-controlled label printer is ideal. For general purpose labeling of miscellaneous boxes and bins in the garage or attic or wherever a portable device that can be brought right to the site is very convenient.

Overall I’m happy with the P-Touch 2300. I now have lots of nice neat labels on formerly mysterious boxes. Note that although it lets you print neat labels, sticking them on straight is still up to you. The labels are nice and the machine seems to work well and is easy to use. It is compromised for some more serious uses by the lack of even common Greek letters and full subscript capability, yet it can print a variety of silly symbols and borders, which seems an odd trade off in a relatively expensive tool. It can connect to a PC by USB, but apparently is supported only by the proprietary Windows and Macintosh software. I know nothing about this software, and for general labeling of miscellaneous items “in the field” (or in the garage) a PC would be a nuisance. Whether it is worth the cost you have to decide for yourself.