brother pocketjet 6 plus mobile thermal printer

To avoid this hassle, splurge on precut paper. You may also need scissors to slice completed print jobs off the roll. For example, to use the paper rolls, you'll need to carry along a clunky steel caddy, which costs $50 for a desk version or $99 for a car.

But as with mobile inkjets, the PocketJet 3 requires a lot of bits and pieces to run, and the case won't hold them all. This thermal Pentax printer requires no pricey inks, and you won't have to worry about spilling ink in your briefcase. Pentax guarantees your prints to last for 7 to 10 years under normal office filing conditions, but you'll have to wait a decade to verify that claim. Thermal paper emits a faint chemical smell and can darken over time, obscuring the printed image-especially if exposed to sunlight. It was tricky to distinguish the smoother printable side from the back side, so we frequently fed the roll backwards into the printer, wasting already expensive paper. A box of six 100-foot rolls goes for $42 and offers the equivalent of 660 pages, or 6.4 cents each a roll with perforations goes for $48. Pentax sells a box of 100 letter-size sheets for $11 at 11 cents a page, that's still less than what many inkjet prints run. The PocketJet 3 is a thermal printer, which means no thirsty ink tanks to refill, but you'll have to spring for pricey heat-sensitive paper-the kind you may remember from fax machines of yesteryear.

Pentax provides a cushioned case for the printer with a pocket to hold the supplied USB cable but not the power adapter. A spare lithium-ion battery costs $39, and a car cigarette-lighter adapter runs $19. The PocketJet 3 comes with an AC adapter and a battery specified to print 100 pages on one charge and to last 400 discharge cycles. You can hook up the printer to PCs, Macs, and several handhelds via USB or infrared connections. This Pentax printer can operate on AC power, a battery, or DC power from a car cigarette lighter. The PocketJet 3 measures 10 inches wide by 2.25 inches deep and 1.25 inches thick and weighs about a pound-a fraction of the size and the heft of a portable inkjet alternative such as the Canon Pixma iP90. We find this petite PocketJet, about the size of an elongated stapler, easier to carry around than a portable but boxy inkjet printer.

Brother pocketjet 6 plus mobile thermal printer