Brother P-touch® PT-80 Label Printer....Label This One "MUST HAVE!"

I was rewiring a home theater hookup recently and remembered how cumbersome it was tracing each of the 10-20 foot cables to their sources and destinations, moving about in a cramped space when the idea bulb went off. I would be well served having permanent labels on the ends of these cables so that I could quick- connect all my cabling, thus saving time.

It happens the wife had come home with the new Brother P-touch® PT-80 Label Printer she had brought home to label family photo boxes. Having never used a P-touch before I quickly navigated some of the controls and became familiar with it enough to start my labeling project. In a matter of 20 minutes, I had all my wiring labeled with black on white non laminated film labels! This was excellent; I wondered why I had relented using a P-touch labeler before. Prior to this experience I had only printed labels from my computer. This was a lot easier and less cumbersome. Okay, my curiosity was now peaked; I had to find out what else this baby could do!

A Closer Look

The Brother P-touch® PT-80 Label Printer is a handy tool that looks much like you would expect a portable QUERTY Keyboard to look like. Held in both hands much like a portable video game, you can key in your label with both hands, thumbs or place it on a flat surface and type in your selection (if you have tiny hands). Dual shift buttons border, Caps, Num, Symbol, Space, Accent & enter controls. Above the QUERTY layout are on/off, function, backspace, cursor and time/date keys. Right off I am impressed with the functional capability of this labeler!

You can produce:

• 1 or two line labels with any of 9 styles including Normal, Bold, Outline Shadow, Italic, Italic Bold, Italic Outline, Italic Shadow, Vertical print styles.
• Underlined text.
• Up to 9 copies of a label
• Labels of up to 12 inches in length
• Set width up to 2 inches –
• Time & date to your labels
• Labels from 5 preset formats VCR, VHS,, Mini DV, Audio, File Tab Divider, Cassette & case Spine

All this is the preamble to actually printing your label. You can preview your label on the 2.5 inch x .75 inch LCD screen. Once you are ready you simply depress the print control and voila, your label prints out of the left side and you simply press the cut tab and there you have it!

Closing Thoughts

The Brother P-touch® PT-80 Label Printer prints quality labels faster than you could with a pc and offers mobility to create labels wherever and whenever they are needed. At under $30.00 you cannot expect more from a labeler. The PT-80 delivers quality results; the labels are attractive and 26.2 feet of stock assures you can label for a while before refilling at roughly $10.00- $12.00 for a replacement ½” or 3/8” cartridge. It prints at 1.5 mm per sec @ 230 dpi. In addition there are 71 symbols you can add to your labels.

My only negative remarks about the Brother relate to the cost of refills; I would like to see $5.00 and under and finally the labels are not easier to separate from the leader, though it is not that troublesome, and I may be accused of being picky here.

When you think of all the things you can label, you really do see the benefit of a Brother P-touch labeler. There is, in my mind, no better life than one that is organized. The Brother P-touch® PT-80 Label Printer is a means to this end.