Brother P-Touch PT-P700 Desktop Label Printer, PC/Mac Connectable via USB, 180×360 dpi Thermal Transfer, Auto Cutter, Up to 0.94″ TZe Labels – Fast, Durable Labeling for Home & Office

When I was considering purchasing this printer I read several reviews with complaints about the waste generated by the printer, cutting off a one inch piece of tape before every label printed. While I did find this to be true out of the box, I’ve found a work-around that will reduce the waste to one print session, rather than each printed label. If you click on the check mark icon just to the right of the Print button and check the box for Chain Printing (see attached screenshot), the printer will take an initial cut for calibration (1″ unprinted piece) and then print all your labels except one, waiting to cut it until your next print command (see attached pic). You can then open or create your next label and print it without the calibration cut, cutting your final label from your last print command instead. Then, when you’re done with the final label, just push the scissors icon (cut) button in the P-touch toolbar or on the printer itself. I’m much happier with this printer, now that this issue is resolved and like the print quality much better than my previous handheld printer by a different popular brand. One other tip, install the printer driver before connecting the printer to your computer. I installed it after connecting the printer and my Windows 10 OS installed a generic driver and installing the driver on the CD didn’t fix it, initially. It took me several minutes trying to figure out why my PC couldn’t find the printer. It wasn’t in the Printers & Scanners list and when I tried to add it, the PC couldn’t find it. I finally found it in the Devices and Printers list under Unspecified Devices. After going to it’s properties and clicking Update Driver, if found the driver I installed from the CD and the PC then recognized it as a printer.

Damn thing works great. I upgraded from a P Touch handheld- it worked well, too, but I needed a lot of plant labels and got behind trying to produce them one at a time. What a difference just importing a spreadsheet of 37 at once! Print, cut, print, cut, one after the other. And the .94 size fits zinc metal plant stakes perfectly, vs 2 strips each time with the handheld model’s width limits. Exactly the convenient personal solution I needed. Worth every penny.

There are some reviews here that look at this thing as incredibly complicated or a pain to set up. It is neither of these, and was actually quite easy to set up. Using my Windows 10 machine, I first went to the Brother P-Touch website and downloaded the full software drivers and installation package. When I ran the setup, it instructed me to plug in the printer at the correct time it needed it. The setup went flawlessly. I ran the software updater tool which updated the firmware on my PT-700, including the express software on the included partition. Super easy. The P-Touch Editor 5.2 software is fairly straightforward to use. There’s a lot of options available. I would say it is not naturally intuitive. You can pick up any Brother P-Touch standalone label maker and understand how to use it fairly easily. The software here takes a little bit of time to learn. In the Express mode, you click on the paper settings to specify the tape width, length (or auto), margins, and orientation. You then click the large A to enter text mode, and a text box is automatically created on the label. Enter what you want, press Enter for new lines. The software will let you add infinite lines, but your practical limit based on printer resolution is really 7-10 lines at 3.5 pt font each. You can then select the Frame option, pick whatever frames you want (including specialty ones). You might have to go back and adjust label width if a frame doesn’t fit. You can also add clip art or images to your label. I took the profile picture of my significant other, made it into a label with hearts on it as a gift. The Layout option lets you change where object boxes line up on the screen. You have to click the frame of that object to get it to accept those commands. The benefit of an object box editor like this is that it makes things easier when you’re doing database connections. Brother has a good video detailing how to do this on their Youtube page. Basically, you can connect any database or CSV file and link fields on the form to specific object boxes, and line those up wherever is needed on the label. You could automate mailing address labels this way, or name and ID labels for sign in sheets or something. The possibilities are endless. Also, with this printer sitting on my desk, I have to say this is one of the sexiest office appliances I’ve owned yet. The white and black contrast looks great. The unit is weighted well so it doesn’t fall over. And you can add batteries which stabilize it even more and provide some backup power. The printer does spit out a 1 inch segment before printing to ensure that the tape is properly fed before printing. It’s an unavoidable part of the design, and only wastes like 3 cents. Not a big deal. The only problem I have with the printer is putting new cartridges in and out requires opening the side, like an old Walkman cassette player. But that’s an unavoidable problem considering the form factor. Overall, this is a great printer, and I have no regrets buying it for $30 used after someone returned it who hated it. Great buy!

I’m not aware of a better product and any sane price. The PT-P700 and PT-P750 are basically the same unit, the P750 just adds wireless. If you don’t need wireless, the P700 is about half the price. Generally a good unit, prints sharp labels, etc. Uses Brother TZe labels up to one inch (25mm) wide. There are lots of choices in colors widths, adhesives and even materials that will fit this printer. Things I Wish Brother Would Fix: While this is a good unit for the price, and I feel better than the competing units that I am aware of, there are a few places where Brother might focus their efforts. I often wish I could print on winder labels. Brother’s TZe family does include a wider 1.4” (36 mm) label size. Unfortunately, this unit will not take them. The P-touch Editor for the Mac is adequate. But not perfect. Every character in a block of text seems to have to be the same. As far as I can figure out (AFAICFO) you can’t mix character sizes, bold/plain/italic, fonts, etc in the same text block AFAICFO, there isn’t a pdf manual for the editor. And the built-in help often isn’t. AFAICFO, you cannot make small barcodes. The application seems to pick the size for you and you are stuck It isn’t as intuitive as one might light. But, with long term use, I have found how to do some things that I didn’t know. So maybe there are some hidden features that I haven’t yet figured out. I often find myself wishing that I could make the margin/border smaller instead of having to waste part of the label in a non-printable border. It would be nice if the Brother software would let one print to the very edge of the labels. And oddly, to get updates from the Brother web site, it seems you have to have registered the product and know the unit’s serial number. (Not sure why as I can’t imagine using the P-Touch Editor for writing letters or the like, so it would be pretty useless to someone who didn’t have a P-Touch. Sometimes the white on black labels could have more contrast (gray on black). And if it could sharply print smaller type, that might be nice too.

I have owned a number of handheld label makers over the years, and while I was reasonably satisfied with the output, they are always kind of a pain with their awful keyboards. Those days are over. While it seems a weird thing to get excited about, I love this printer, and I wish I’d bought it much sooner. The software is fairly intuitive, and the printer is fast. During a major household re-organization, I was banging out labels at a furious rate, which totally satisfied both my wife’s and my OCD demons. Plus, the fact that this has a permanent home on my desk makes it far less likely that I’ll misplace it – a thing that’s happened to me many times in the past.

I bought this PC USB connected label printer to replace a handheld brother label maker. The handheld unit worked nicely but I found the small display to be very difficult to read, and the operation to be a bit difficult. This PC version is so much easier to use, has more capability, uses the same excellent TZ style tape and can be battery powered for easy movement between computers. No software install is required, the device appears on the computer as a disk drive that contains the label making editor (lite version) program. Super easy, works really well, and making the labels on screen with a real keyboard is just so much easier than fussing with the handheld unit. If you want to make more complicated labels you have the option of installing the full version of the label editing software on your computer, but so far I have found the light version which requires no install to be perfectly adequate for my needs. This unit has made making labels fast and easy, and I recommend it highly.

I bought the PT-P700 for use with my Mac Mini, OS version “Lion”. I took a chance with the purchase despite the numerous reviews here that said that this product would not work on a Mac platform. My PT-P700 is working, but not without some help from Brother Tech Support. However, most importantly, everyone should know that the PT-P700 is capable of working just fine on the Mac. Don’t shy away from this product just because others have had a rough experience getting it to work with their Mac’s. Also, note that the button on the top, left side of the PT-P700 is for “P-Touch Lite”. If you intend to use the PT-P700 with your computer to take advantage of the all of the advanced features/options that the handhelds don’t have, make sure that the “P-Touch Lite” button is OFF (meaning not lit up)! Otherwise, the full version of “P-Touch”, which is what you really want to be using, will not work and also your PT-P700 will not be fully “visible” to your Mac and all of its settings. Make sure that only the power button (which is the third button to the right) is lit up. I’m giving this product 4-stars because although it’s working now, Brother made this way too difficult to set up. I would describe it as “inexcusable” actually. I spent an ungodly amount of time on the Brother website trying to figure out why this was not working right and wondering whether I had made a mistake. I needed to call Brother’s technical support, spending a 1/2 hour on hold first, in order to get the connection between the PT-P700 and my Mac to work. After the call, it was obvious to me that the Brother written instructions and manual for the PT-P700 were inadequate and now I understand why some reviewers claimed that this product did not even work with a Mac (which is not true in my case). Otherwise, the PT-P700 would earn 5 starts from me. Recommendation to Brother: Create an insert in your packaging just for Mac users. Explain the setup process is explicit, step-by-step detail with illustrations just for them, because they will need it!

Rapid delivery. A very versatile machine which works well for multiple labels from an Excel spreadsheet. I use windows 11 and up-to-date drivers are readily downloaded from the manufacturer’s website. Use it to make labels for my cactus collection