Customer Reviews

Dymo LabelWriter 400 Label Printer (69100)

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

Works great. I never used the included software though. I got sick of waiting in line at the post office so I bought this to print out postage. I use a software from my postage provider and can print out postage for any type of package. I just wish that Dymo offered a label for printing just the postage and not the postage with an address. I've figured that each postage and address label costs me 10 cents total (for both). Not bad really.

Another great thing about this is that it doesn't require ribbons or ink! It's not super fast at printing, but printing out a dozen labels doesn't take much time at all. Not fast, but certainly not slow.

I bought the printer for one reason: to create shipping labels for my eBay items. I'd previously been using Avery inkjet labels with my inkjet printer, which worked but it was an annoyance to have to print only one or two labels at a time. THE GOOD: Absolutely no problems with the printer, getting it to work, etc. It has a very small footprint which I like, and it's very quiet when printing. It even comes with a roll of address labels. THE BAD: None significant, although the address labels are useless to me since I'll be doing nothing but shipping labels with it. The included software on the CD was old (updates available on the Dymo web site) but that holds true for pretty much everything in the computer industry. The software has some good features (mailing lists, and the ability to use the OS X Address Book database), but otherwise it's pretty minimal and limited, particularly in its design capabilities. This would have gotten five stars if it wasn't for the software, which feels like a hurried afterthought rather than a finished OS X application. (PS: Dymo has an OS X Intel-native version of the LabelWriter software that is available for download, but is NOT on the CD.)

The software for the labelwriter is truly awful and some of it damages other applications. If you use Microsoft Word with other applications that share startup manipulation of the Tools menu, you will find that the DYMO startup file, DYMOWordAddin.dot, will destroy all the other starup commands of applications such as Adobe pdfwriter, Endnote, and others. These applications will no longer appear in the menu, but the DYMO application will. This is doubly insulting because the DYMO addon is itself dysfunctional. The only safe way to create labels is to use the DYMO label application, which works reasonably well, although it too is unable to position graphics and writing with the necessary flexibility.

If you run into problems after installation, find the word startup folder and remove any addins with DYMO in them. This is a cross platform problem that involves Win XP and Mac OSX. Once the DYMO files are removed, Word returns to proper function.

The software is terrible, but the hardware is excellent. Although the labels are rather expensive, the printing is clear and crisp and one has access to all of the fonts on your computer. If is hoped that DYMO will put a greater effort into the software in the future so that their total product is as good as the hardware they sell.

Just got this little gem yesterday and, though I haven't mastered some of the subtleties of the software, the learning curve for making basic address labels was fast enough so that by the end of the first hour I'd made all the labels I needed, and proceeded to print out all the ones my co-worker had agreed to do, just because it was so easy to help her out. The reviewer who said it is slow to print a single label must be experiencing technical problems; I found it almost instantaneous. I did have one problem which was due to not securing the roll of labels tightly enough, and was pleased to learn that the Dymo technical support number was helpful and required no more than 30 seconds on hold to get through. This machine has some amazing features I haven't mastered yet (for instance, it will automatically check the accuracy of your address against a database over the internet). Love this gadget & can't wait to learn more about it!

I have owned about 5 Dymo printers over the last 10 years or so. Why so many? Because after about 2 years or so they ALL stopped working suddenly and inexplicably. Our company bought the 400 turbo about 20 months ago to replace another Dymo printer. After working for that time, it suddenly malfunctioned - like all the others before it. This really bothered me and caused me to wonder if there was a defect.

This time I called customer service and spoke to a very unfriendly sounding person who asked, when was the last time I cleaned the unit. Never, I responded, should I have? She explained that there is a cleaning card in the unit and you need to run it through the machine frequently - evidently the rollers collect dust and debris quickly and that clogs up the mechanism. Okay fine. I asked how often does it need to be cleaned, she told me every month or it will cause damage to the unit and that to fix it we would have to send it in and pay for the repair and damages caused by our neglect. Our neglect? I explained that there are no directions on when or how to clean the unit included in the box. This is when she got really hostile and said that it is assumed you will be doing the maintenance and upkeep or pay for the damage. When I questioned her about this policy and she promptly hung up on me. Great customer service Dymo...keep it up!

So I tried to clean the unit but the cleaner card would not feed through the rollers. I think the these Dymo label printers are just too cheap to last very long.

We just bought the Brother QL570. It looks a lot better made and so far it performs great. Hopefully it will last longer than the Dymo junk.

A winner! This little machine just blew me away with its simplicity and speed. Some of the reviews talk about it being slow, but when I sent it a file from FileMaker Pro, it had a four-inch label printed about three seconds after I hit the return key. The quality of print is outstanding; very crisp and deep black on bright white. And the adhesive! I have never seen a label that sticks so tenaciously--you'd better make sure you have it positioned the way you want it first!

I've been creating dozens of audio CDs from MP3 podcasts. I've used full size labels from sheets, but I was looking for an easier and more convenient solution. I decided to buy the LabelWriter 400 for this purpose.

The DYMO software is great. I wish it had a couple more features for precision placement of objects, but it seems to be pretty solid and functional. The software apparently works with any DYMO label that will work with the printer.

The CD labels work well. They adhere to the disk well, but it is possible to peel them off without leaving a lot of residue. These are small labels (2.5 inches O.D.), so they don't cover the whole disk. I wonder about how printed labels will hold up to sunlight. I think I'll test this and come back here to share the results.

I have 20 years of experience with PCs and software. I provide technical support and administer networks for a living. (In case that information helps you understand my perspective.)

PS. I raised a question concerning how the CD labels would hold up to sunlight exposure. I'm sure most people have some experience with thermal printing technology that produces persihable text. The supermarket I frequent uses thermal printers in their cash registers, and the receipts they issue fade with exposure to light. Though most recent thermal printing systems use materials that produce stable images, not all do.

I left a CD with a DYMO label on my dashboard of my car for a week. I can report that while the label may have faded very slightly, it is still readable. So I am confident that the DYMO LabelWriter 400 and CD labels are a practical and reliable combination.

This is a fantastic product. It handles multiple types of labels, works well with Microsoft Word via the macros on the disk, and tucks in nicely alongside a monitor or near your speakers. While the software enclosed is not glamorous, it handles a variety of needs, and speeds the job of labeling packages or envelopes alike through multiple formats once you get the hang of the system, which took only a few tries to understand. Well worth the money.

We have business that provides payment choices for merchants. We were trying to print labels from the large sheets when we just needed a few. We ended up with wasted labels and jams in the printer.
Bought this Dymo label printer and wish I had bought the Dual printer to have the address labels and postage labels loaded at the same time!

After reading numerous reviews on this product here, it seems to be a fine label printer for the home user. I would like to add some of the drawbacks for this product in corporate use.

My company uses these label writers in each of its boutique-sized stores. It gets used daily, sometimes hundreds of labels at a time.

I am dissatisfied that it does not operate in the background. The same computer that prints the label also is used to ring up clients. It seems the software is limited in this capacity because you cannot have the labels print in the background while ringing up clients. Not so great if you need to get some labels printed during business hours. It could cost you sales with impatient clients.

The last label in a roll regularly jams up. It wraps itself around the roller and gets stuck. The design of the printer doesn't allow for easy opening to fix this, and as a result, many printers have had to be replaced. If there were a way to open and clean it out, it would be a great improvement to its design! I find I waste a lot of labels by proactively changing the roll if I don't think there's enough labels to do the specific print job.