The top of the desktop range, and the one that stops feeling like a desktop printer. A colour touch screen instead of three indicator lights, a dual-wall frame instead of a single one, and ribbons four times longer than the machines below it take. Everything the ZD421 does, on a machine built to be leaned on.
Four part numbers, which is two questions — and two of the four cost exactly the same for opposite reasons.
The four versions are every combination of ribbon-or-not and 203-or-300 dpi. Both middle options land on the same price, which makes the choice between them the interesting one on this page.
The same question that governs every printer we sell, and it is about how long the label has to survive rather than how it looks. Direct thermal fades with sunlight, heat and handling; thermal transfer does not. Weeks, and direct thermal is cheaper to run. Years, and it has to be thermal transfer.
203 dpi prints everything a scanner needs to read across a counter or a dock. 300 dpi is for small type, dense 2D codes, or a crowded label that has to stay legible — jewellery tags, pharmacy labels, compliance panels. On an ordinary shelf label it buys nothing anybody can see.
Direct thermal at 300 dpi and thermal transfer at 203 dpi are the same money. One buys detail on a label that fades; the other buys a label that lasts, printed at ordinary resolution. Almost nobody needs both, and which one is right is decided by the job rather than by the price — which is exactly why it is worth a phone call rather than a guess.
If the printer sits on one desk and nobody touches it, the ZD421 is the better buy. The ZD621 earns its extra where a person actually operates it — a touch screen that walks somebody through loading media instead of a blinking light, a frame that survives a stockroom, and a 300 m ribbon where the smaller machines take 74 m. Four times fewer ribbon changes is a real number on a bench that prints all day.
| Zebra part number | What is in the box | Price inc GST |
|---|---|---|
| ZD62142-D1PF00EZ | Zebra ZD621 - 203 dpi Direct Thermal printer - USB & Ethernet, Multi USB Cable Power supply & power cord |
$799 |
| ZD6A043-D0PF00EZ | Zebra ZD621 - 300 dpi Direct Thermal printer - USB & Ethernet, Multi USB Cable Power supply & power cord |
$899 |
| ZD6A042-30PF00EZ | Zebra ZD621 - 203 dpi Thermal Transfer printer - USB & Ethernet, Multi USB Cable Power supply & power cord |
$899 |
| ZD6A043-30PF00EZ | Zebra ZD621 - 300 dpi Thermal Transfer printer - USB & Ethernet, Multi USB Cable Power supply & power cord |
$999 |
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.