Our guide will cover the best thermal label printers for your microgreen farm. Thermal printers work by burning text and images onto a white label. Using heat to thermally alter a white label is cost-effective because there’s no need for ink. The long-term cost of buying ink will dwarf the initial cost of buying the printer. Eliminating the ink will drastically reduce the cost of your labels. We’ll write a future article about the best ink-based or color printers.
As we mentioned, thermal printers are more cost-effective because there's no need for ink. The only consumable you'll need to restock is the blank label rolls. Before we discuss different brands of thermal printers, let's see just how affordable they can be. We use a Brother brand thermal printer and we buy blank rolls from Amazon. The labels for our packaging measure 2.4" x 2.4". We spend $38.00 on a ten-pack of 2.4" x 100' rolls, which means we can create 5,000 labels for $38.00. That comes out to $0.0076 per label! With a thermal printer, we're paying less than one penny per label.
Okay, now the drawbacks. The main drawback of not using ink is that you can only create black-and-white labels. There's nothing wrong with black and white labels, but they're not that exciting. Black and white doesn't stand out to the customer. You could have company colors, like blue and green, that you won't be able to include on your packaging. The way thermal printing works also means the text and images aren't super crisp. Thermal printing can appear like a DIY solution, which isn't as professional.
| Printer | Price | Print Width | Print Length | Print Speed | Cost/Label | Connectivity | Label Refills |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brother QL-1100 | $210 | Up to 4” | Variable/ Continuous | 60 Labels/ Min. | ~$0.02 | Wired / No Bluetooth | Refills |
| Rollo | $180 Wired, $260 Wireless | 4” | 6” | 60 Labels/ Min. | ~$0.04 | Wifi + USB | Refills |
| Zebra 2-inch / 4-inch | $130-$230 | 2” or 4” | Variable/ Continuous | 73 Labels/ Min. | ~$0.04-$0.15 | Wireless | Refills |
| Brother QL820 NWB | $210 | Up to 3” | Variable/ Continuous | 110 Labels/ Min. | <$0.01 | Bluetooth + USB | Refills |
Our pick for the best thermal printer is the Brother QL820 NWB. The primary drawback is that you can’t print labels wider than 3”. Yet, most microgreen packaging isn’t much wider than 3” along the main dimension. We like to leave a 1/2-1” of blank space between the edge of the label and the edge of the lid to showcase the product. You can buy label rolls of different widths. You can use Brother's editing software, P-Touch Editor, along with Canva, to make custom designs. The labels are by far the cheapest to print and the print speed is faster than the other machines. In short, the Brother QL820 NWB prints the fastest, costs the least per label, and offers Bluetooth and USB connectivity options.
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