Brother QL-820NWB Professional, Ultra Flexible Label Printer with Multiple Connectivity options

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Network/Wireless but not both. In order to have the 720NW work as a Network Printer (works great) you need to set it up as a wired network unit. If you want it to work as a wireless printer, per Brother, you would have to reset the network card in the printer for wireless and then it will work, when you are ready to go back to wired, you will need to reset it again. I have owned the 500, 550 and now the 720NW, with small internal changes, all of these units operate about the same. User manual translation is OK, but you may have to re-read certain areas.

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Just got the label printer to replace my older QL-720 which was very hard to setup. The new 820 is a welcome addition. I setup the WiFi manually with no issues. I even turned on the Bluetooth which my phone could connect. No documentation was needed! I loaded Brothers iPrint/label app for both my iPad and my android phone from the app stores. I was able to print labels via wifi network and Bluetooth with no issues. I haven’t tried my computer yet but I expect it the work without a hitch using the P-touch editor software. My next purchase will be a battery and I will be totally wireless to print welcome labels at church. This is a great product over the 700 series!! Great job brother.

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This is a great little printer, but network setup on a Mac is poorly documented. In fact, Ive only been able to get mine to work via its USB port. While Im certain I will be able to access it via wired Ethernet or WiFi from my Mac, the setup wizard available from the Brother website does not work as advertised, and the OS X software on the CD that ships with the product does not work at all. For computer savvy types, the MAC addresses for wired and wireless connections are not listed on the unit itself, making things difficult to figure out, even with the aid of a network sniffer. The "whats in the box" contents listed on Amazon are also incorrect. There is no Black on White laminated "TZ" starter tape, a good thing since this printer isnt compatible with Brothers TZ tapes. There is no AC adapter, just a detachable AC power cord, (NEMA 1-15 to IEC 60320 C7 on my US model). This is also a good thing, no wall wart to clutter your power strip. There is no carry case. There is a USB standard A to USB standard B cable. There is a paper Quick Setup booklet, and additional documentation on a CD-ROM. The applications on the CD-ROM were worthless, clicking on Start Here OSX.app yeilds "This OS version is not supported." Mine came with a sample (partial) roll of 2.4" continuous tape (a full size roll is DZ 2205) and a sample (partial) roll of 1.1" x 3.5" standard address labels (a full size roll is DK 1201). Overall, I give it 4 out of 5 stars because it is a great machine. However the poor documentation and downlevel software could render this thing a paperweight for a non-tech savvy Mac user.

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I use this to print badges for conferences. We use the clear DK2113 clear labels which are very expensive compared to the white paper adhesive labels. This printer is VERY fast and the print quality is excellent. My only complaint is that this one particular machine will not cut between the labels when we print multiple badges at a time. I have another 820NWB (as well as QL800) which does cut between the labels. I have checked multiple times to ensure that auto cut is on and compared settings and they are set up the same so it must be this particular printer. Other than that it is a great printer.

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I have this set up to work wirelessly with my computer and Bluetooth with my iPhone. Works Great. I can easily make labels of icons I save to my phone. Im using the P-Touch label editor, which isnt great. I wish there was an easier, more productive app for this. So, Ive created a correct size print template for a mailing label and I copy and paste the info that I need for a mailing label... pretty easy.

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When I ordered I thought being able to print labels from my iPhone would be a gimmicky feature. But let me tell you, thats practically the only way I print labels now! Within a few clicks of the phone I can print a custom address label. The hardest part is making sure I put the right size label material in the printer. Which they had a better way to change labels in and out like my little handheld labeler with the P-Touch tapes.

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Brother generally makes pretty good products I have a networked laser printer and the QL-720NW from them. The QL-720NW is fairly easy to setup I used the ethernet connection as opposed to the wireless connection. Plug it in your DHCP router assigns it an IP my Mac picked up the printer as a Bonjour printer. Youll need to download 3 pieces of software from the Brother website: [...] - Stand alone drivers - Software updater which gives you firmware updates and more label templates for free - P-touch editor which is the software for printing labels. (Youll need the last 9 digits of the serial number for your printer which is located on the bottom of the printer) You need the drivers the software updater and P-touch software are optional but Ive never tried printing labels without P-touch. Theres also an iOS app from the App Store you can download on your iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch. Once youve installed the drivers if youre on a Mac you can install the printer under system preferences, theres one small catch. Make sure you select the CUPS driver instead of the AirPrint driver because P-touch wont work with that AirPrint driver, if you make a mistake just remove the printer and re-add it with the CUPS driver (both drivers are installed when install the driver package). The P-touch software isnt very user friendly and I wish Brother spent as much time documenting how to use P-touch for Mac as they do for Windows. One of the things you probably want to do with this label printer is print mailing labels, P-touch can use the address book on your Mac. Heres where it gets confusing, if you want to make custom formats for your labels for example selecting certain fields from your address book or even combing fields you need to select Address book as the database than click "Connect Fields". Connect Fields lets you combine fields together and add any necessary punctuation for example commas and spaces in your addresses. After youve created your custom layout, you need to click database "Merge into Layout" scroll to the bottom of the list and select your layout. Great so now you see your custom layout on the label size it to what you want. Youre probably wondering how you actually see a label with an address before you print it. The only way you can do this at least on a Mac is in print preview, the annoying thing is that you cant adjust any font sizes or resize anything in print preview you have to go back out and adjust it than print preview again until you get it right. BUT... you can in the iOS app, the downside to the iOS app is that there arent as many layout options and the editor isnt as full featured but ti does get the job done for mailing labels. Brother please give the Mac and iOS app more attention. The printer is fantastic its very fast.

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It really was a pain to get set up for printing eBay shipping labels. Their tech support isnt good. Once you get it working, it works great. For anyone looking to work with this for eBay shipping labels youll need to set up the formatting through a laptop first before you can print from a mobile device like a tablet. Once you have the formatting set up through a laptop you can print in the right format through mobile devices using the eBay app which is great!

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Docking one star for the size, this thing is huge. The OEM red-black labels are costly, but third-party black-only rolls are inexpensive. Unlike Dymo printers, swapping rolls is easy as the feed doesn’t grip the paper. The continuous rolls mean less waste, and you can make quite long banners if you want to. The software for iOS and MacOS takes some getting used to, but is functional and I love the QR code support.

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I love this networked printer so much that I purchased a USB version too. My boss and I share the networked version for printing address labels, and the USB version is attached to my PC only so I can print file folder labels. I bought two because swapping the tapes is a little bit of a PITA if you switch label sizes frequently.

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