The desktop printer for somebody printing labels rather than running a production line. Sits beside a PC, takes a roll, and prints a four inch label. Two versions, and choosing between them is the only real decision here.
Both connect by USB and both print the same width. What separates them is whether there is a ribbon inside - which decides what you buy from us for the rest of the printer's life, so it is worth two minutes now.
This is the question the D and the T on the part number are answering, and it is the one most often got wrong when a printer is bought on price.
The heat goes straight onto heat-sensitive stock. Nothing to load, nothing to replace, and a lower running cost - but the print fades with sunlight, heat and friction. Right for a shipping label that has to survive a week. Wrong for anything still being read in a year.
That costs a consumable and a moment loading it, and in exchange the print does not fade. Right for asset tags, shelf and bin labels, anything laminated, and anything living outdoors or getting handled.
A ribbon against the wrong stock is the most common way a printhead dies early, and a printhead is the expensive part. We supply the labels and the ribbons as well as the printer, so the pairing is our problem rather than yours.
Worth knowing before you buy rather than after. On a printer at this price a replacement printhead is often around a third of what the whole machine cost, so when it goes, the arithmetic says replace rather than repair — and that is what we would tell you to do. Nobody repairs printers at this end of the range, ourselves included. That is not a criticism of it. A cheap printer that does a few hundred labels a day and gets replaced in a few years is a perfectly sensible purchase. It only becomes the wrong purchase when somebody expects it to be the other thing.
If the label has to last, you want the T. Direct thermal is cheaper to run and genuinely right for despatch, and we will sell you one happily. But a faded barcode is a barcode nobody can scan, and that is discovered at stocktake rather than at the printer. When it has to outlive the season, the answer is thermal transfer — or, if it has to outlive the asset, not a printed label at all.
And if you are printing more than a few hundred labels a day, buy the ZD421 instead. This is a low volume machine and it is priced like one. A thousand freight labels a day is the ZD421's job, not this one's, and a hundred dollars now is cheaper than a printer that stops in the middle of a shift.
| Zebra part number | What is in the box | Price inc GST |
|---|---|---|
| ZD22042-D06G00EZ | Zebra ZD220d - 203 dpi Direct Thermal printer - USB USB Cable Power supply & power cord |
$509 |
| ZD22042-T06G00EZ | Zebra ZD220t - 203 dpi Thermal Transfer printer - USB USB Cable Power supply & power cord |
$539 |
2 years, return to base — the unit comes back to us for repair or replacement rather than somebody coming out to you. Warranty runs by model rather than by price, so it is worth checking against whatever else you are comparing.
Our distributor does not publish a stock figure for this printer — it is one to check rather than assume. Ring or email and we will have an answer the same day, usually within the hour. We would far rather tell you it is three weeks away than take an order we cannot fill.
What is on this page is what you pay when it is available. Checking stock does not change the number, and it is not the opening of a negotiation.
That is genuinely all we need. You get a written quote back with freight worked out to your actual address, because a printer to Parramatta and one to Port Hedland are not the same delivery and we would rather not pretend otherwise. A new account pays before it ships, and the clock starts when the payment confirms.
If you have a written quote from somebody else on the same part number, we will match it. No haggling required, and no need to pretend you have not been looking.
Tell us what you are printing, and onto what. Thirty-five years of these conversations says the answer is usually simpler, and cheaper, than it looks from the inside.