The latest addition to Brother's family of label printers brings colour printing for the first time.
Brother's previous label printers such as the P-touch PT-P300BT and PT-P710BT were limited to printing in one colour. Depending on the tape selected, that could be black on white, black on yellow, black on gold, white on silver, or some other combination.
But the Brother VC-500W uses the Zink thermal photo-printing technology that allows full-colour printing on white tapes. The way it works is that microscopic crystals are embedded in the tape, and heating them to different temperatures reveals different colours.
The initial setup seemed easy, especially as the only physical connection is the brick-style power supply. The mains cable is on the short side at 0.5m, but the figure-of-eight connector means it could easily be replaced with a longer one if necessary. The captive low-voltage cable is just long enough to reach from the floor to the desk top.
Read the full review on the iTWire website here.