Brother RuggedJet 2" Portable Printer (RJ-2050) - Review 2022

The Brother RJ-2050 ($695) is a strictly business label maker, designed primarily for highly mobile on-demand applications. Every bit part of Brother'south RuggedJet series, it's built to a high set of durability standards. In many settings, such as your exhibit, warehouse, or gild fulfillment desk, staff tin carry it around with them, press receipts, markdown tags, society pickup tickets, so on, on the wing. These attributes combined with its multiple connectivity options make it a great pick for enterprises where printing and distributing a lot of labels on demand (and on the fly) is mission critical.

Petite and Powerful

A few of the consumer-grade labelers we've reviewed, such equally the Editors' Choice Brother QL-820NWB, come with—or have optional—batteries and provide wireless connectivity, allowing them some degree of autonomy. However, they can't match the RJ-2050 in a few critical areas, including its petite portable size, RuggedJet immovability, and high-volume ratings. It supports 2-inch label media, making it part of the RuggedJet 2" series (or Series 2). Brother offers 10 RuggedJet models: four Series 2, 4 3-inch Series iii machines, and two four-inch Series 4 models. The RJ-2050 is 2nd from the lesser in the Series 2 pecking gild, making it 1 of the less costly, with fewer features and lower capacity than some of the others in the family.

At two.2 by 4.viii past three.9 inches (HWD) and weighing only 1 pound, the RJ-2050 is less than half the size of the Brother QL-820NWB, which supports label rolls up to 2.4 inches wide. The QL-820NWB has an optional battery, only information technology's still a bit big and bulky to deport effectually as you piece of work. The RJ-2050, on the other hand, comes with a chugalug clip that allows you to comfortably print labels or receipts wherever y'all go. If you don't find the chugalug clip comfy, Brother also offers a shoulder strap for $25.

The RJ-2050 supports seven types of media, in both continuous and die-cut configurations up to 4 inches long. The four die cut label rolls take adhesive backs, and the iii continuous "receipt" paper rolls come up in Standard, Premium, and Fast Dry. You load the media rolls by simply dropping them in to a compartment at the back of the printer, and the motorcar does the rest, including communicating to the calculating device you're printing from which media type is available.

There is a set of controls on the front, and power and mini USB ports, equally well equally levers for opening the media and battery hatches, on the correct side. The command panel consists of Power, Card/downward-arrow, and Feed/OK buttons; an Active/Battery status indicator; and a small ii-line monochrome LCD for making connexion and other configuration changes.

Co-ordinate to Brother, the RJ-2050'south Li-ion bombardment is good for half dozen,400 labels earlier requiring a recharge, which takes about iii hours, however, both the AC charger and USB cable are sold separately.

Finally, the name "RuggedJet," of form, denotes toughness and immovability, which the RJ-2050 and its siblings alive up to with their IP54 (International Protection Mark, IEC standard 60529) rating, which means, amid other things, that it's h2o and dust proof and that it has been drop and tumble tested from 8.2 feet.

Connectivity and Software

The RJ-2050's connectivity features consist of USB, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, with support for Windows, Apple iOS, and Android via drivers you download from Blood brother's website (at that place's no installation media in the box). You lot tin impress labels directly from the Brother's P-Touch Editor software on your PC, or yous can operate the printer from your mobile device by downloading templates and databases. The fastest, most efficient solution, though, is to push your templates, databases, logos, graphics, and other content to the printer itself. You can so recall the template on your mobile device, supersede data equally required, then impress the completed label, receipt, pickup order, and so on.

The software bundle includes Printer Setting Tool, P-touch Template Setting Tool, P-bear upon Transfer Managing director, Transfer Express, and P-bear on Update Software. That terminal one keeps your P-bear upon Editor software and printer firmware up to date, while the others are the utilities required to push templates and other files to your mobile device and printer.

At beginning glance, using the software seemed a picayune complicated, just after closer inspection, the steps got clearer and it got more straightforward. It took me about an hour to create a few templates, a database, and other supporting files, and then download them to my smartphone and the printer. The expert news is that, unless you change your documents or add together new ones, you lot just need to practice this in one case, and, later on y'all have information technology all set up and configured for your devices, the process of downloading files is much more streamlined and automatic.

Fast Mobile Press

Blood brother rates the RJ-2050 at 6 inches per second (ips). Most of the characterization printers I've tested, except the professional-form Zebra GC420d Direct Thermal Printer, measure out performance in labels per infinitesimal, which makes direct comparisons between the RJ-2050 and these other machines difficult. In any case, I ran two tests: printing over USB using P-touch on Editor from our standard Intel Core i5-equipped testbed PC running Windows 10 Professional, and, after downloading the appropriate files to my phone and the printer, press over Wi-Fi from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

Printing from our testbed PC, the RJ-2050 churned out a batch of 1-by-2-inch mailing labels with a small border around them at the rate of well-nigh 1ips, which is quite slow. That score is more than than 75 percent behind the Zebra GC420d's stride of 4ips. When printing from my smartphone to the RJ-2050 with preconfigured templates and other supporting files resident in the printer's memory, nonetheless, print speeds improved significantly, to just less than 5ips. The larger and more circuitous the label, of class, the slower the impress speed.

Adequate Output

While monochrome thermal output is not every bit attractive equally inkjet impress quality, it'due south more than than good enough for the RJ-2050'southward intended applications. Many label printers, including those in Blood brother'due south QL-series, support resolutions up to 600dpi, whereas the RJ-2050 and its enterprise-form Zebra GC420 competitor both back up only 203dpi. Even then, everything I printed with the RuggedJet model looked fine, and I peculiarly liked that it was capable of printing borderless prints. Some types of labels wait much more than attractive with borderless, or "bleed," finishes. I have no complaints about the RJ-2050's print quality.

Price of Consumables

Depending on which of the characterization or receipt thermal newspaper types you cull and where you lot buy them, your running costs will vary some. I used the prices at Blood brother Mall to brand the following calculations, and each assumes that you purchase the more economical 12-roll packs, which, in the following scenarios, contain more than 5,000 labels or receipts.

If yous buy Brother's premium 2.25-by-1.25-inch dice cut label 12-pack at Blood brother Mall, yous're per-label price will be about ane.1 cent per label. And using the company's premium continuous 2-inch receipt paper, assuming receipts of 4 inches long, each print will run y'all virtually 0.8 cent. These numbers are slightly higher than the Zebra GC420's for similarly sized labels. Brother's consumer-class models, as well equally output from Dymo and Leitz make models, all cost several times as much, making the enterprise-grade models better values in the long run.

For the Long Haul

The Brother RJ-2050 comes at a premium price, but what yous get is a rugged, capable auto meant for heavy-duty use in less-than-optimal weather. You lot tin print many different types of labels and receipts at relatively low running costs, and information technology's easily toted effectually your warehouse or sales floor. It may require some administration to get optimal results, simply the RJ-2050 is built to perform in many types of loftier-volume, on-demand settings.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/printers/30163/brother-ruggedjet-2-portable-printer-rj-2050

Posted by: moultrieprestriall.blogspot.com

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