The printer is of a reasonable form factor for a desktop thermal printer. I inserted a roll of 4x6 direct thermal paper, installed the drivers and was able to do a test print easily. Printing directly to it using the system print dialog was easy enough as well. Print quality - even using the settings claimed on the provided sample - was not as good as the sample. Assuming the settings are accurate, either their label paper is significantly better, or they faked the samples on another printer. The sample is darker, has no directional smudging, and is generally clearer. Using the same settings (speed of 4, darkness of 8) generates lighter print, directional smear, and fuzzy edges. At 1/3rd the cost of a comparable Zebra printer, I definitely get the appeal. If you plan to use this in a commercial environment, I recommend spending extra for the Zebra. If you are doing small quantity or low-priority stuff at home, this might be a decent fit. Where I ran into issues was using the Zebra SDK to send print jobs directly to the printer. Ive used it with a variety of other printers via TCP and USB, however this printer by default uses a virtual printer connection and does not seem to be compatible either with the Zebra SDK or with a direct USB logic. I reached out to the manufacturers regarding this but never got a reply. Eventually I resolved it by running through the winspool.drv using C#. I know Im an outlier in designing a program to print to it, but the reason I bring this up is that it may not be compatible with some programs that need to print to it. If you print with the system dialog youll probably be fine, though.

UPDATE: I loved this printer and used it several times during the first 6-8 weeks that I had it. I went to use it last weekend, and its dead. It powers up and the LED shows purple which according to the manual means is formatting data and there it sits. Ive reset it, tried multiple cables and ports, deleted the driver, rebooted countless times, etc. I cant reinstall it because Windows no longer recognizes it as USB device when connected. I contacted Vrettis support on March 19, and, five days later, there has been no response. Extremely disappointing. I was looking for a dedicated printer to use for shipping labels via eBay, PirateShip, etc., and found this one. Its not quite fully plug-and-play as it does require a manual driver installation, but thats quick and easy and the driver is on the included thumb drive. It assembles quickly and easily, and feels solid, not necessarily lightweight and cheap. Loading the labels was a little fussy the first time, until I watched the tutorial video on the thumb drive. It wasnt clear how much of the roll to feed through to line it up, so I was convinced that I was going to have to spend a ton of time fussing with it, maybe calibrate it, etc., but it worked absolutely perfectly the first time. (All of my testing used 4x6 labels on a roll.) I like that the roll is entirely enclosed in the body of the printer. The print quality wont match a standard laser or inkjet, but it doesnt have to - text and especially barcodes are crisp and readable. While quality is perfectly adequate, the speed is unbelievable. This is hands down the fastest printer Ive ever had. It shoots out a fully printed label in less than a second. My only minor concern involved the warranty registration - a QR code is included that takes you to the manufacturers site, and prompts you to enter your name, email address, and order number to activate the warranty. My form was rejected and Im unable to register because their system rejected my order number. Not a big deal, but something they should address when they can. This printer adds a really nice level of convenience for anyone who does any amount of shipping from home.

The vretti Thermal Label Printer device is neither user friendly nor easy to use, at least not for me. I have multiple Dymo LabelWriters and setup has always been so simple with those. Unfortunately, I was expecting similar ease of use with the vretti and it fell short. The setup and install of the drivers was overly complicated and quite frankly burdensome. It took tech support from my companys IT department to get it up and running and even they struggled. The hassle alone in getting the install done was enough to make me want to give up on using it. The printer comes with a print sample which I assume demonstrates the quality of the print. No matter what settings I used, I could never achieve the same print quality. I tried multiple different labels, tweaked with the speed and darkness settings, but I was never able to get the same print quality. This was frustrating and the quality is subpar. At a fraction of the cost of competitor products, I really had high hopes here that fell short. Ultimately, I am choosing to fall back on my trusted Dymo for my label printing needs.

Once it gets going this Vretti label prints fast. That is by far its best feature. But first things first. The printer is 6 3/4 inches wide, 6 1/4 inches tall and 8 1/4 inches deep. It is definitely larger than I thought it would be, but that is for good reason as most of the volume allows a sizable roll of labels to be installed inside. It weighs in at a hefty 3 pounds without a roll of labels inside. Along with the printer, the box contains: ! External power brick. External power supplies are annoying. I would have preferred a label printer that is powered via USB and barring that one that has a built-in power supply to avoid having to deal with a sizable brick. ! 4 foot USB-A to USB-B cable. The printer is somewhat old school in that it has a USB-B port. A modern device should be USB-C based, IMO. I did not use this cable as I have a USB-C to USB-B cable on hand to use with my Mac. ! Instruction manual. The most important information in the manual related to function of the single button on top of the printer. ! Sample printed labels. The sample is useful for getting a quick understanding of the quality of the output, which IMO is quite high. I don’t know what the official DPI is but they look good and read well, that’s good enough for me. My complaint with the sample labels is that there are no additional unprinted sample labels included in the box. Unless you have labels on hand, you cannot put this printer to use right out of the box, even to test it. ! 1GB USB thumb drive. This drive contains the manual in PDF form, some guidance videos and printer drivers for Mac, Windows and Linux. That makes up only about 500MB of data on the 1GB drive! I appreciate that I can reformat and use this drive for other data now. Nice bonus. I do not have a roll of 4x6 labels on hand but I do have fanfold stock. Luckily this printer has a slot at the bock that allows external labels to be fed into it. With labels inserted as guided, holding down the feed button on the top of the printer initiate the calibration process that will result in the ejection of one or two unprinted, wasted labels. This is one area of complaint that I have. If you move the printer around with an external stack of labels, you will have to calibrate the printer each time, losing a label or two each time. If the printer is stationary or there is a roll of labels inside, recalibration is not necessary. IMO this printer works best with label rolls for this reason. I have a roll on order and will update this review if the experience is not as expected. The label guides allow labels up to a maximum width of 4.25 inches. Installing the driver for this printer is very straightforward using macOS Printers & Scanners settings page. On my Mac, with the driver installed the printer shows up as BARCODE 4B-2054L I do not have any professional shipping software installed on my Mac nor do I use a cloud host shipping applications. My process to print a label is not the most efficient but as I don’t print tons of labels that is fine. When I use a site like FedEx.com or UPS.com to generate a label, the label will inevitably be positioned for 8.5x11 paper and not in a 4x6 format. I preserve the label into PDF form and then screen capture the label into the macOS Preview app and print from there. Perhaps this printer integrates well into a shipping application workflow but I’m not able to test that. My use for the Vretti is 4x6 labels only. I am aware that this printer will work with labels of other sizes and widths. Once the printer gets printing, the label is spit out in a split second. I did not realize that a thermal printer of this nature can print so quickly so I am pleasantly surprised. Maybe that’s why it needs the external power source. One problem: I cannot get two labels to print in a row without the second label printing into the gap. The printer driver has a GapsHeight setting from 0 to 0.394 inches and while the actual labels have a 0.25 inch gap between them, setting GapsHeight even to 0.394 inches does not fix this issue. Perhaps if there was a larger setting like 0.5 inches I could get this to work right. Overall this is a decent label printer. My complaints are minor to not so minor, like the need for a power brick and wasting labels on calibration and inability to print two in a row without messing up the second one. I use this printer only occasionally and cannot verify if it can be a workhorse in a situation when shipping labels are constantly needed through the day. UPDATE: After printing just a few labels, I was temporarily not able to get it to work again. After turning it on, the LED blinks blue briefly, then blinks purple followed by rapid red and cycles with intermittent beeps thrown in. No matter what I did I could get the printer to reset. I left it off in frustration for a few minutes, turned it back on again and it went into ready state and I could print again. This is not confidence inspiring behavior. Docking another star for this.

Good

A big improvement over handwriting or single feeding a huge label thru a regular printer. The printer works well, prints clearly and works for all the shippers I use. I like that it is a thermal printer, so there will never be ink to worry about!

This is just what I needed. Helped to print the shipping label directly instead print on the plain paper and tape it on to the package. The print quality is OK, it depends on the label you used. Overall happy with it.

Im not taking stars away for my own mistake but this has not worked for what I was hoping to use it for. Otherwise this is a perfectly good shipping label printer as far as I can tell.

The first thing to know about this label printer is that it doesnt come with any trial labels - be sure to buy some in addition to this! There are many available on Amazon and Im using 4x6 labels. INITIAL SETUP This was relatively easy to setup. It comes with a nice flash drive with the drivers and manual on it, so you dont have to search online for it. Install on our Windows 11 machine went smoothly and there were no problems with our machine locating the printer. The 4x6 label roll that we purchased was easily placed into the hopper and the machine automatically aligned itself (it wasted 2 labels doing so, but labels arent expensive). INITIAL USE Theres a bit of trial and error to get the print size right. My first label had the label off center and the print was way too big for the label (or the label was too small, depending on how you look at it). I double-checked the label dimensions and made sure the printer options matched the label, and they did. Without taking you through everything I tried, my tip is to simply select 4x6 as your label size and then print at 90%. When I did that, it was perfect. IMPRESSIONS The label is LIGHTNING fast. Ive never seen such a fast printer. ZZTT, done. The quality seems higher than our home printer that I have been using for shipping labels (using default quality settings). I dont see dithering, smudging, etc. The darkness is spot on. The stickiness of the labels seems pretty good. TBH, Id give this 4.5 stars for the small alignment issues that caused some initial headaches, but Im rounding up because Im very pleased with the print quality and performance. I hope it stands the test of time.

Easy to setup. Works great.