BradyM210 Portable Label Printer - Labelling Device & Label Maker Handheld - Industrial Labelling Machine - incl. 1 Label Cartridge - replaces BMP21-PLUS

Great for marking cables. Love this thing.

When I first bought this, I had the intention to use decent NiMH rechargeable batteries. As shown, it took 6 of them all in series, which wasn't a problem. Used it a for awhile and realized the batteries didn't seem to last all that long. This was beside the fact that the "battery indicator" on the unit only had 2 segments to show the state of charge. So I looked into it further. I hooked the unit up to a programmable power supply and came up with the following:Battery state:< ~7.1V battery showed empty7.1V - 7.6V showed almost empty> 7.6V showed battery is fullPower consumption:On (no backlight) - ~8.8mAOn (with backlight) - ~24mAPrinting - ~380mA to 400mAOff - ~35uASo knowing that at about 1.2V per NiMH battery was about 50% left of charge, and with all 6 batteries in series this equals about 7.2V. Once the unit goes below 7.0V, it won't turn back on. The back light will flicker once when you hit the power button and that's all you get. This may be the way it done to help protect their lithium ion battery from getting too low. Either way, thought I would point it out. Besides that, here are some Pros and Cons for the unit:Pros:* Reliable printing. I have run a few tapes through and haven't had an issue with one yet.* The back light is nice and bright. Can see everything just fine in daylight as well.* Different printing types. You can choose from landscape, portrait, wire wrap, patch panel, fuse panel, as well as a few others.* Feels nice and solid. For the price, you definitely feel like you got a good bit of kit* Easy to cut the labels with either your left or right hand. Might be small, but some other units only have the cutter buttons on one side. With this, you don't have to shuffle the unit around just to cut. May be small, but I found it a nice feature to have.* The cartridge mechanism is very nice. It's easy to pop out the old cartridge, and throw in a new one.Cons:* The price of cartridges is expensive.* Some label modes have excessive white space at the edges, even when you try to specify very little to no white space.* Max label size is .75". Big enough for anything I need, but worth pointing out.* The battery life with NiMH. They should think about having a menu selection or something that would switch between battery types that are being used, so you could get more life out of them.* Can only print 4 lines. On some label types, there is a ton of white space left after the 4th line which is just unused real estate now.* Lithium ion battery and charger are sold separate and also expensive. On top of that, you have to remove the lithium ion battery from the unit to charge it. Not sure how that is practical, but that's how they say it must be done.* Very very slight drain on the batteries when the unit is off. At 30uA current draw when off, worst case, you could maybe expect 1mAh drained from the battery a day. With a decent NiMH battery having 1800mAh, it should take it awhile to get all batteries in series down to the 7.0V mark. This is of course ignoring batteries that tend to self discharge quicker than others.

I use this daily at work. 90% of the time, it works great. Every once in awhile it will just eat a label cartridge. Rather annoying when they cost $30 each.

Just what I needed for professional wiring. Very easy to learn functions and with the built in memory a great time saver.

OMG. This is so fun. I made a decision to buy this because of labeling for my media art work but I'm labeling all my stuff now. Really great one. There are several weird things though.#1. Minor bug. You can increase number for date or time up to 99 so you can put 78 for hour for example. But system ignore the number you put and set a time within 12 hours anyway. Why are they just set a limit for it?#2. No justification. Always center aligned even you see a left aligned graphic in LCD visually. I found that troubleshooting in manual says "The BMP21-PLUS/BMP21-LAB printer currently does not support left or right justification. All label text will be center justified only." Then I don't understand why there is a left aligned graphic for vial. I can see left aligned label in other page in the manual and also in a advertisement. They make me confused.I'm not sure if someone did this way but I did a trick to solve this problem. And it actually works well. You just need to do a simple math. Here is how.Let's say you have 3 lines like "HAPPY", "BIRTHDAY", "TO YOU". I will justify other two lines to the most short line.[ 1 ] Have the number of letters includes space in the most short line. In this example, "HAPPY" is the most short line and it counts 5. This will be the base line and the two other lines will be justified to "H"[ 2 ] Let's justify the second line. Count a number of letters in the second line. It's 8.[ 3 ] Do subtraction. 8 - 5 = 3.[ 4 ] Put three(3) spaces before the first letter of the second line like "_ _ _ BIRTHDAY" ( "_" means blank space. It doesn't mean a underbar symbol.)[ 5 ] Let's justify the last line. Count a number of letters in the last line and it's 6. Space included.[ 6 ] Subtract. 6 - 5 = 1.[ 7 ] Put one(1) space before the first letter of the last line like "_ TO YOU"Here is how it works.The first line counts 5. The second line counts 8. The last line counts 6.The second line has 3 more letters than the first line. If they are center justified like this machine does and you see the left side only, the second line has 1.5 (half of 3) more letters on the left side. So you need to indent 1.5 letters for the second line, then the second line will be justified to the first line.But then why did I put 3 spaces? As I tried, one(1) indent space equals half(0.5) letters in this Brady machine. So you should put doubled number of what it actually needs. For example, to indent 1.5 letters of space, you should put 3 spaces in this machine. That's why I just put a subtract number.That's it. You can change font size. It doesn't affect to justification.I tested this way in banner only but there should be no issue in other label types too.Sorry for my poor explanation but hope someone will get an idea and a help from this.