From practical labelling solutions to fun sticker creation, the VC500W Brother label printer is an easy-to-use piece of kit that is great for home use.
SQUIRREL_13152011
Summary
I really liked the small size and simple design of the Brother VC500w label printer, and the Brother Colour Label Editor 2 app makes it easy to quickly make custom labels from your phone or computer.
While the overall quality of prints is pretty impressive, I found that the colours produced by this thermal label printer didn’t always come out quite as vibrant as they looked on screen.
Overall, I think it’s a fun and useful piece of kit that is great for home and general office use, and would be perfect for scrapbooking. However, if you’re thinking of using it to print photo stickers for your small business, you might be disappointed by the colours not being completely acccurate.
- Buy now - SQUIRREL_TEXT_13152011
How we tested
I set up the Brother label printer as per the instructions included in the user guide – which is essentially a case of just plugging it in and inserting the roll cassette.
Once I had downloaded the Color Label Editor 2 app for my Android phone from the Google Play Store, the app guided me through how to connect wirelessly to the printer.
I printed a range of stickers to test out the colour and print quality, including text, image and photo stickers.
The results
Brother VC5000w colour label printer review
Key features
- Full colour printing
- No ink required thanks to ZINC®️Thermal printing technology
- Autocutting feature
- Free Colour Label Editor 2 app for Android/Apple
- Free Brother P-touch Editor software for Windows and Mac
- Wireless and USB connectivity
- 5 different label widths available (9, 12, 19, 25 and 50mm) supplied in 5m length cassettes
- 8mm per second print speed
- 113mm (W) x 116mm (D) x 96mm (H)
1. Setup and getting started 5/5
I personally found the setup of the Brother VC500W to be incredibly simple and straightforward. It’s basically just plug it in, insert the roll cassette which just slots in at the back (you can’t really get it wrong), and then you just need to download the app.
The Color Label Editor 2 app is free to download – just scan the QR code on the box or search the Apple or Google Play store. Once installed, it will take you through the process of connecting the printer by setting up a temporary wireless network.
I did have a couple of failed attempts at setting this up, but I do have an older model phone. However, this was immediately sorted when I turned off mobile data – wireless connectivity problems can often be due to wireless and mobile data conflicting with each other.
If you’re connecting to a Mac or PC, you can also do this wirelessly or via USB, and you can use the free Brother P-touch Editor software to prepare your designs.
2. Using the app 5/5
Once the app had connected me to the printer, I was able to start my first design. The Color Label 2 app comes with some pre-made templates to help you get started (photobooth, craft & events, makers and business templates), but you can also just get stuck straight in with making your own labels.
The app has a lot of nice features such as frames and backgrounds that you can add to your designs, or you can also add solid colours or your own custom images as backgrounds too.
There’s also a fair amount of fonts to choose from (30 at the time of writing), and you have full control of common text editing features such as controlling size, orientation and alignment, as well as bold, italics and various outline and style options.
You also get a decent array of pre-made clipart/emoji images to use in a mixed range of styles, from pretty flower illustrations to cute animal images and classic face emojis. There’s also the option of making a selection of common shapes, which is a handy feature for making sticker backgrounds.
I found the app really easy to use, and things such as repositioning text or scaling images were simple, even on a smartphone.
3. Quality 3/5
When it comes to quality, the Brother VC-500W Colour Label Printer left me feeling a bit conflicted.
On the positive side, it is capable of printing to a high definition on a small scale. Text comes out looking crisp, and even photos are clear which is impressive considering the small size. While you can see some slight pixellation if you look really closely, with the labels being so small this is realistically going to be imperceptible.
Unfortunately, I felt that the colour accuracy let this label printer down on the quality. Some colours appeared to be more contrasted than intended, and some images weren’t quite as vibrant as desired.
You are always going to get this to a degree (factors such as your screens brightness and colour profile will make a difference), however we found this to be quite significant with this Brother label printer.
For example, I printed one of the yellow emoji faces using the provided art images on the app. The image on the app appeared as a classic emoji-style lemon yellow on the screen, but when printed, came out as more of a mustard-orange yellow tone.
While a slight difference in colour realistically probably won’t bother most people who are just printing stickers or labels for fun, if you are wanting to use it for artwork or labelling your own products, this may prove to be an issue.
This is almost certainly due to it being a thermal label printer, meaning some colours may be more achievable than others. Another downside of thermal printers is that you can sometimes get subtle faint lines on your prints – this doesn’t always happen, but it is more obvious on solid colour prints.
One other thing of note is the cutting feature. While it is handy that the Brother VC-500W Colour Label Printer has an auto-cutting feature, it is only capable of cutting straight lines. There is an option to add cut lines in specific shapes, but this only adds a dotted line to the print for you to manually cut around after.
4. Aesthetics 5/5
The Brother VC-500W Colour Label Printer is a nice and compact product that will look perfectly at home on any desk. It has a really simple design with minimal buttons on the device itself.
The ability to connect wirelessly via your phone means you can easily store it anywhere (within reach of power) – the Gathered team had a lot of fun with the fact that we could each download the app and connect to the printer without needing to move or connect the printer via wires.
5. Value for money 3.5/5
What’s in the box:
- Label Printer
- Documentation
- USB Cable
- AC Adaptor & AC power cord
- CK-1000 50mm print head cleaning roll (2m)
- CZ-1004 25mm full colour continuous label roll (5m)
The Brother VC-500W Colour Label Printer is a fun and useful bit of kit, but it isn’t the cheapest. It has a RRP of £282.00 on the Brother website, which is frankly far too expensive in my eyes. It can be found for significantly cheaper from many online retailers, with prices ranging from £129 - £179, which is better… but still quite high.
And although you do get a generous 5 metres on each label cassette, with RRP’s ranging from £22.33 for the 9mm wide labels and £45.98 for the 50mm wide labels, they can’t exactly be called cheap. You can again find them at lower prices from other retailers, but even with 5 metres we imagine kids could get through that pretty quickly.
Our verdict: Should you buy the Brother VC-500W Colour Label Printer
For some individuals the Brother VC-500W Colour Label Printer may be an ideal solution, but others might be frustrated by the price and flaws. While it is a lot of fun and the ability to print full colour pictures without ink is handy, there are more affordable options available.
SQUIRREL_13152011
Looking for more sticker printers?
Find even more choices in our roundup of the best sticker printers.
