I was recently lucky to be given the opportunity to get my hands on a DYMO LabelWriter 450. I’m not known to take products for review purposes, having turned down the last few because they didn’t interest me, but being the stationery and office supplies geek I am, I couldn’t pass up this great opportunity.

The package arrived recently, and when I unpacked it, I became a fan of the LabelWriter, just on aesthetics alone. The device looks straight out of a science fiction film; curvy and cool looking, a great item to have on your desk.

We own a small handheld label writer at home, and I was expecting something similar – was I wrong! This little DYMO beauty has all the features…

• Cross platform – both PC and Mac out of the box
• Print one to hundreds of labels (a whopping 51 labels a minute)
• Thermal printing – no ink/toner worries or mess
• 600 x 300 dpi print resolution
• Small desk footprint – doesn’t take up much room
• USB connection and power cord included

Keen to give it a go, I spent a few minutes working out how to load the labels and plug it all in without reading any of the provided instructions – once I had it all hooked up, I checked the manual to be sure, and voila – for someone who has never used a USB label printer before, I guessed right, it was intuitive to install.

Included is a DVD with software for both Mac and Windows, which was handy, because in the last few weeks, I’ve tried the LabelWriter 450 out with both. Installation is quick, and the designer in me was impressed with the range of standard design tools that are built into the DYMO software.

The LabelWriter 450 works well on both my office PC running Windows 7, as well as the Apple MacBook Pro at home. Its compact, lightweight design makes it easy to carry from one to the other, and doesn’t have that beige ugly look that other label printers and devices sometimes have.

I’m soon going to have everything at both home and the office nicely labelled – it’s a cinch to use. I must admit, I haven’t tried printing address labels yet, but with an inbuilt address book, and merging functionality, I can see great uses if you do short run mailing as well.

You can even print straight from Outlook, Word, Excel, all the usual suspects, without having to go back to the DYMO software, which is super handy too.

In summary, if you’ve got a stack of files, boxes or tape/CD media that needs sorting out, or regularly send mail to various contacts, the LabelWriter 450 will make those chores far easier, and perhaps even enjoyable.

I’m glad I did accept the opportunity to try out the LabelWriter 450 – it’s a great little device, and really handy for those organisational types such as myself.

More information can be found here on the DYMO website.

Disclaimer: I was provided a Dymo LabelWriter 450 for review. As always, I made it clear to the supplier that this does not mean that it buys a positive review. Any reviews I do are based on my actual experience and beliefs; which are not affected by offers of free product.

Tags: DYMO, labelwriter, review

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 4th, 2010 at 8:48 pm and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.