From my testing, I like to share with you what I found, both the
positives and negatives, to help you decide if this color label printer is for
you. From the time that the printer
arrived, I felt the out-of-the-box experience was great.
When opening up the boxes, I found the printer well package and
protected;
And easy to setup. I did find
the labeling of the ink a bit odd as you can see easily the HP label behind the
VIP label.
Not
only the packaging was positive, but I found the setup instructions on line
easily; and easy to follow.
In the entire process, the only issue I had was setting up the
unwinder. I was not confident that I had
the printer setting in the alignment plate holes correctly.
VIP Tech support suggested I use my finger to gauge the distance on
each side of the printer; which made me feel a more confident about the
unwinder set up. Overall, the
out-of-the-box experience was very positive.
Once setup, I had my second positive experience; the print quality was
great, enabling me to print full-bleed easily.
Below is a 4” x 3” matte paper label printed full bleed. Looked great.
.jpg "Full Bleed Label Printing")
To get the labels to print correctly on some materials, I did have to
change the settings from matte to gloss.
It seems the matte laid down too much ink on both the matte paper and
Kimdura. Once the gloss was selected the
print looked good. Also, I had to
contact tech support to find the setting for continuous media.
After printing on paper, I printed on Kimdura to test the durability of
the ink/media. While testing this
combination of label and ink, I found the third important aspect of the VIP
495; the labels printed with the VIP 495 are very durable, withstanding water
as well as alcohol, hand sanitizer and acetone.
After selling dye based printers, I believe this durability is a key
requirement for most every application.
Yes; certain manufacturers may be able to use labels made with dye based
inks; but labels that run with some water or a common chemical are a real problem. Personally, I’ve wasted a lot of time with
printers that use dye based inks.
Also while printing, I found the fourth positive aspect of the VIP
printer; the menu was easy to follow and use.
It seemed a bit “old school” with the button pushes, but was very
intuitive.
Fifth positive aspect was the driver; created by Seagull. As I use BarTender frequently, the fact the
driver was developed by Seagull made it very intuitive. I immediately printed using BarTender; very
simple to do. Although I did not use it,
the VIP 495 comes with an “Ultra Lite” version of BarTender.
Overall these 5 aspects of the VIP495 were very positive. But I found two key negatives with the
printer.
First, time to first print is a problem. On this relatively small size PDF (249 KB)
and connected via USB to my computer, time to first print and eject was
between 2 minutes 52 seconds and 2 minutes and 56 seconds. VIP printed the same label and found
different results; 49 seconds plus the time to eject the label. I can imagine the delay would be longer or may
time-out when connected to a network. I
printed this same image via our office network in less than 10 seconds using a
TM-C3500. Larger batch runs may make
this delay seem less onerous, but would still seem to be a problem in a manufacturing
environment.
In addition to time to first print, I found the second issue with the
VIP 495 to be the ink cost. To print the
PDF above, the ink cost was estimated between $0.061 and $0.074:
This ink cost does not include the cost of printheads. As I understand, you need to replace the
printheads approximately every 36 cartridges.
At $125 per printhead, this price raises the cost of an ink cartridge by
$3.47.
As a comparison, I found the ink cost of this label using the TM-C3500
to be $0.022:
However, the print quality on the C3500 for full bleed, prime labels may not be sufficient.
According to
Mark Lewis, Director of Sales and Marketing for VIP Printers, "The VP495
prints high resolution images (1200 x 1200 dpi) producing beautiful labels with
durability suitable to GHS, outdoor or chemical applications. The printer
prints up to 8.5" web width on continuous, fan-fold & roll media.
It also meets the stringent BS 5609 maritime conditions for
durability."
With costs in the range of $0.06 to $.07 for a 4” x 6” with only limited
coverage, consumable printheads and a MSRP of $3,500, the VIP 495 appears to be
an expensive option for on-demand color label printing.
With the VIP 495, the overall summary seems to be the tradeoff between
high print quality versus the cost of the ink.
If you need high print quality for your on-demand color labels, the VIP
495 is an option to consider. Contact us
to discuss your color label printing needs.
Guy Mikel
855-962-7670
#colorlabels
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