Portable Printers

For people that have to work while on the road or even while on vacation, there is often a need to record and print business dealings. If you have no power source to plug in a printer or are away from the office, then a portable printer is the perfect solution. Battery-powered portable printers normally weigh under four pounds and are compact enough to fit into an overnight bag or even a briefcase. The four technologies of portable printers are thermal transfer, dye sublimation, direct thermal and inkjet. Direct and thermal transfer units are very lightweight and small, but require heat sensitive paper, while dye sublimation units are more limited but give wonderful photo quality prints. Inkjet portable printers are normally the most versatile and fastest, featuring good text quality and photo-quality color.

Uses

There is a large range of portable printers available for commercial purposes as well as industrial, retail and personal use. Many retailers use specialized mobile units for things such as returns labeling, mobile points of sale, shelf-price auditing and vendor management. For commercial and industrial purposes, there are specialized portable printers which create receipts, invoices, tickets, encode magnetic-stripe cards, create shipping labels, process credit card payments, receive print jobs by e-mail, conduct price audits and connect to wireless networks, just to name a few. For individuals, portable printers are able to record and print documents such as contracts, appointments and sales, on the spot, which is fast and convenient.

Different Types

Another type of portable printer is a label printer, which allows you to label items wherever necessary and often requires no electricity. Other portable printers require electricity to work and have an internal battery, charged and powered by electricity. Heavy-duty, rugged, industrial portable label printers often have an assortment of color label tapes, while the cartridge-based printers are hand held and print such things as self-laminating labels, sleeves and die cut labels. Some are capable of making continuous pipe markers and tapes. With today’s technology, specialized portable printers are capable of printing under almost any conditions, such as underwater and are able to print labels over two inches wide. Some portable label printers are capable of high-resolution barcode printing with crack and peel labels, which lets you apply them to almost any surface.

Compact portable photo printers are easy to use and make small format photographs. Many are tiny enough to carry and connect to your camera, so you are able to print your photos whenever you want or need them. This does away with the need for a computer to print photos. There are portable printers that meet almost everyone’s conditions or needs and the internet is a great way to search for one that meets your special requirements.