DYMO LabelWriter 450 Twin Turbo

I was impressed from when I received it shortly after my purchase on May 6, 2014 and then sitting there between uses it failed to run the next time I needed it a year to the day after the purchase. What timing! It wouldn't print, and it wouldn't advance labels even at the buttons on the machine which will still glowing (staring at me with a "so there"). My PC incidentally (maybe related) also reported an unknown USB device. The last time I had used it, it had worked fine, so no calamity, no jam, no smoke or noise, it just quit. These have a TWO YEAR WARRANTY! I called Dymo service 877-724-8324 and was quickly helped by technical support. All I needed to do was remove both labels, then remove the power and leave it removed until the lamps out front quit glowing (maybe 20-30 seconds). I then reinserted the power and those lights came on and flashed. I was instructed to reinsert the labels first left, then right, and as I did the motors grabbed the labels and finished feeding them until the electric end of label eye detected what it needed. At that point I could now manually feed labels. So I launched the software and printed a label, it worked fine. Technical support actually had one other trick (I didn't find out what it was because I didn't need it). Effectively what I had been walked through was a reset (reboot) of the instructions on the firmware of the Dymo Twin; I'll be able to help myself if this happened again. I don't know for certain, but I think Dymo's next trick would have been a delete-reinstall of the drivers in my PC to refresh that USB device and I had actually done that as a self-help attempt before calling them. If your machine just takes a coffee break like mine did, just do the sequence in the paragraph above; that may be all you need. If that doesn't do it for you then call Dymo before messing around they may save you some time. If that hadn't worked for me they would have given me a way to get the printer back to them and they would have repaired it or sent a replacement. Great service, and I don't mind the reboot, so far it's only needed one reboot in a year so Dymo is way ahead of Microsoft.

This printer is a lifesaver for my small business, just love it.. I keep one roll for shipping labels and another for barcodes, and it prints super fast and clear. No more swapping rolls! Easy to set up and very reliable. Worth every penny.

I own a small business. I have used DYMO printers for well more than a decade. They save a lot of time. I really like these printers. A couple of years ago I upgraded to the Twin Turbo even with my two single machine were still working well. It's an even greater time saver and it ran flawlessly. Then came V8 of the software. I “upgraded” about a year ago, maybe more. Since upgrading the program simply lost ALL of my labels. Just gone. Not even the label types show up. It's happened three times. CS Experience #1: The idiot on the phone basically said nothing can be done. Uninstall. Reinstall. Start over. CS Experience #2: This guy knew the software. There was a Windows 7 patch. He walked me through it. I could not recover my labels, he said, but the improved program worked. All was good until it wasn’t. This support visit took well over an hour. CS Experience #3: ALL of my labels disappeared for a third time. (Please believe that my system was running smoothly every time.) This Tech left the program alone, but she showed me how to find the database that stores my stuff. I can recover my labels one at a time. There is no way to recover multiples. If I hit "save as" the labels are easy to find. If I just hit "save” the program uses its own form of gibberish to name the label. Then finding a label is not worth the time. The printers have become virtually useless on some days. They have cost me more time than I can express. These days are spent fighting bugs myself; waiting 45 minutes or more on a CS telephone support line until a person answers, every time; and finally getting to speak with a tech person. Beware, quality varies a lot. Which brings me to today. The program will not launch. It sits open in my quick launch-bar. The Task Manager shows it as an open app. But the window will not open. I am so disgusted that I cannot call the CS line again. My first several sentences would be inappropriate. I will send them a copy of this review. Maybe this software runs perfectly on W10, but 1/3rd of us still use W7. DYMO forgot that when their crackerjack engineers wrote V10. UPDATE JULY 20, 2019: FOR THE FOURTH TIME IN AS MANY YEARS THIS SOFTWARE HAS DELETED MY ENTIRE STORE OF SAVED LABELS. EACH TIME HUNDREDS OF LABELS WERE DELETED. THERE IS NO WAY TO BACK UP YOUR DATA. LABELS CANNOT BE RESTORED EXCEPT INDIVIDUALLY FROM EXPLORE. SINCE THE SOFTWARE USES CRYPTIC LABEL NAMES, THERE IS NO WAY TO IDENTIFY THOSE EASILY THAT YOU WANT TO RESTORE. THIS HAS GONE ON FOR SEVERAL YEARS. DYMO CLEARLY HAS NO INTENT TO FIX THIS DAMAGING BUG. GREAT PRINTERS. HUGELY DAMAGING SOFTWARE. April 2023 update: I finally trashed my turbo 450 add my 450 jewel Dymo printers. They were in the closet for a very long time because the software didn't work on Windows 7 or Windows 10. In addition, the repetitive deletion of my stored labels with just an acceptable. I upgraded to a windows 11 machine recently and I decided to try my turbo 450. This version screws up the print settings embedded in Windows 11. I've had enough of these things. Both finally hit the trash bin

Cant really take points off for how someone else ships a product. The first printer that was delievered still had the test prints on both printers but the left printer was dead and flashing. I am assuming this was shipping damage. The replacement printer works exactly as one would expect. Good little printers.

I am studying alternative/holistic medicine and have been working towards starting my own small business. I was writing on index cards and taping them to bottles and containers with instructions--and my hand writing is difficult even for me to read. This label writer has been wonderful! I am able to make the things I give to people look so much more professional now. I've also been able to do things like put labels on all of my tinctures that include all of the properties of the herb. I've come up with dozens of other things to use it for once I saw what it could do. Be aware--the software does indeed leave a lot to be desired. That's the only down side--but it's not all that difficult to work around. Also--I am a real klutz when it comes to electronic equipment. I usually get really frustrated and end up having to call my significant other in to help me out. Within just a few minutes after I unpacked my machine, I had printed out a label all by myself. Instructions are clear and simple. And the label writer is so fast and quiet! It's like all you have to do is think about printing a label and there it is! It's also very easy to switch from one label to the the other (and allows you to have two different sized labels in the machine at once). I highly recommend this label writer.

Excellent printer, works well and is fast, but if you want to share it on a network, it’s going to take some additional hardware and software configuration. I have Dymo (and Brother) label printers that are still going strong after years of frequent use in an office environment. You may need to clean the rollers every few years depending on use. Some of the complaints I see in the reviews may have to do with networking this and not setting the print server to have a fixed IP address. (See details on that below.) Also, there are a lot of mistaken claims that you can’t print on much-less expensive generic non-OEM labels. Not true, see details below. CONSIDERATIONS BEFORE YOU BUY A LABEL PRINTER I have managed several networked/USB thermal label printers of various brands on corporate and home networks (Mac, PC, and Linux) for about 30 years, so here’s a bit of advice on how to get the most for your money with these things. If you do not need compatibility with postage software or network ability, any good USB Brother or Dymo label printer will do, check reviews on Amazon. If you have a home or business network and would like to share a label printer with several computers, Brother has good Mac and PC compatible label printers with networking built in, but generally the hardware will cost more than buying an inexpensive USB-only label printer and connecting it to your network with a USB print server. (The IOGear GPSU21 Print Server, for example, works well on Macs and PCs but documentation is a bit poor so configuring it can be a bit tricky for non-techies; tips on that for the Dymo LabelWriters to follow below.) I’ve found the Brother network label printers are more turnkey and just work without any fussy setup. YOU DON’T NEED THIS PRINTER TO PRINT ADDRESS LABELS AND STAMPS AT THE SAME TIME The ads for this printer make it look like a great way to print an address label and a stamp at the same time, and it is. But you can print an address label, return address label, and stamp all at the same time with any label printer that can use the Dymo 30383 label (or better yet, the MUCH cheaper compatible from House Labels). So you can either use a much cheaper printer to do that (and only that), or use those labels with this printer and have another type of label in the other slot. House Labels Dymo 30915 (700 Endicia stamps per roll) brings he cost of the stamp label to about 0.6 cents per stamp, as opposed to 10 cents each for Avery or Dymo laser labels. That adds 21% to the cost of a 47 cent stamp! CAVEATS WHEN PRINTING POSTAGE Before buying any label printer or labels, if you’re using or going to use postage software like Stamps.com or Endicia, check their compatibility not only with this printer, but also with the labels you’d like to use. For example, both Stamps.com (PC only) and Endicia (Mac and PC) both only print to certain labels, so check those services label compatibility for this printer. SAVE HUGE, USE COMPATIBLE LABELS, NOT OEM, BUT WATCH FOR A FEW CAVEATS You can also save a ton of money on labels by using generic compatible labels from manufacturers like House Labels. For example, their Endicia and Stamps.com stamps thermal roll labels are 1/10 the price of the Dymo or Avery laser labels (per label), and are generally significantly less and more convenient than even generic laser labels. So compare thermal and laser labels for your needs and buy generic compatible labels, they work just as well as name brand for a fraction of the cost. Also note, you can buy “removable” and “non-removable” labels. The removable will tend to peel off over time, so if you’re labeling, for example, parts bins, you’d probably want to use the non-removable labels. I’ve seen some people think that the labels were defective because they were the removable type and not appropriate for the application. In late 2012, DYMO/Endicia implemented a new security feature to force customers to buy their relatively expensive 30915 labels. They started printing activation codes on their 30915 labels. People using the FREE DYMO/Endicia stamp printing service will be prompted to enter an activation code every 200 labels. If you are using Endicia’s FREE service, you cannot use non-OEM DYMO 30915 compatible labels. All customers with DYMO/Endicia paid subscriptions are NOT IMPACTED by these security features. POSTAGE PRINTING TIPS FOR MAC AND PC These days it’s ridiculous to stand in line at the post office to ship stuff, even if you rarely ship things. You can print your postage or shipping labels to plain paper or labels (free from UPS and Fedex), so it’s beyond me why people would bother to stand in line. If your package(s) already have printed postage on them, you can drop off the packages at the post office counter without going through the line. For those who rarely ship, USPS.com is free, and for those who ship via USPS regularly, postage software makes the process much faster and easier. Printing postage from a web browser interface is generally significantly slower than using a desktop app, and issues with printer compatibility and formatting tend to be greater with a browser interface. So if you ship much via USPS, Stamps.com (PC only compatible), Endicia (Mac and PC compatible) are the most affordable way to go. (A little tip, Fedex and UPS free half-sheet laser labels also work with USPS shipping.) Pitney Bowes PB Smart Postage is clunky, generally more proprietary and expensive, but if you’re a high volume shipper, their hardware/software makes more sense. For higher volume shippers, ReadyCloud ReadyShipper (Mac and PC compatible) allows you to ship via USPS, Fedex, and UPS through one interface and get better pricing per shipment since they aggregate shipping. TIPS FOR CONFIGURING WITH A PRINT SERVER (Mac and PC) You do not need to buy the expensive Dymo print server to network this printer on Macs and PCs. I use the IOGear GPSU21 print server and it works fine, but the documentation is poor, so if you’re not a techie, here are some tips to get it working. Note for the instructions below, the print server should be connected to your network and powered on. The user manual doesn’t go into enough detail on how to properly configure. The print server uses DHCP (from your router or cable modem) to assign it a network IP address. The problem with this is, that address is not fixed and can change, and then your printing stops working. So you need to configure the server to have a static (fixed) IP address. To determine what address to set it to, once you have the print server connected to your network and powered on, your router or cable modem will assign it a random IP address. You can then check your router or modem configuration to find the assigned address; somewhere in the config settings you’ll find the IP address. (If this is too technical for you, get a techie to do this.) You can change the print server config to make that IP address fixed. On a PC this is fairly easy, you just follow the instructions for setting a fixed IP address during installation, an enter the device’s current IP address. On Macs, there is no IOGEar installer, so you must first configure the static IP address of the device in a browser by entering the device’s current IP address that you got from the router or modem config into a browser. That will bring up the print server’s config page. Click on the “TCP/IP” link and change the TCP/IP setting from “Automatic” to “Manual:” then you can then enter the fixed IP address. The subnet mask and gateway address should already be there, but if not, you can get it from your router or Mac OS network control panel (Apple Menu>System Preferences>Network). Click the Save button at the bottom of the screen to save the settings. Once you have the print server IP address set to fixed, you can then add the device as you would any printer via the Mac OS Printers & Scanners control panel. Go to Apple Menu>System Preferences>Printers & Scanners. Follow the instructions in the IOGear install instructions and enter the server’s fixed IP address in the “Address:” field as directed in the IOGear instructions. If you have a router or VPN modem, you may need to set port forwarding (port 631 and 9100 for this printer) to allow the printer’s data packets to travel across your network. If you have a router and don’t know what this means, get a techie to do so IF your printer doesn’t work after all other setup has been done.

I work at a library and my co-workers wanted to get a double label writer because we do so many different books that we had to keep changing out label. I looked at the website we use for our library supplies, Demco, it was $374.99 we couldn't justify the price, so it was placed on hold for months. I happen to search DYMO in the Amazon search bar and I saw it for $129.99. I was able to purchase all three of us one. I'm just now going on the DYMO site and it's $199.99. It's a lot cheaper then our library supplier but it was $70 higher then getting from Amazon. I saved $210 by getting it here. And of course it works well because it is the original product. Being able to just print on the label needed, and not have to take the time to change out different labels is a big time saver. I am so happy with this product. It was like Christmas for my co-workers we not longer have to spend unneeded time changing out the labels when we used the single label writer.

I truly like the ability to print labels and stamps from one printer without having to change rolls. I found the new version 8.5 software buggy and frustrating. Some parts of it simply don't work, period. Note that I am using this on Mac systems, so maybe this is not true for Windows. But, I wanted to move addresses from my Mac contacts list to a new Dymo list. The software manual says you can select multiple addresses, choose "Copy to Dymo Address Book," and you will get a Save As box and be able to save them to the Dymo book. Not so. It simply moves one label at a time over. It simply will NOT move multiple selections. Very frustrating. Other aspects that are annoying are how the selection features work in the editing screen. If you open up a new blank label, you cannot select and remove the original text box. Trying to click on it does not work. Adding an "address object" field still does not let you remove the original text square, and they print overlapping each other. So, if you want to do an address label, for example, you really have to open up one of the sample designs and modify it, there's no easy way to create your own from a blank slate. Annoying. I am personally not troubled by having to use Dymo brand stamp labels. The other major stamps by mail company, Stamps.com, wanted 15.95 a month and still required me to use their labels. I see this as the classic Gillette shaver marketing technique. Charge little for the razor/printer, sell the blades/stamp rolls. I do not have to pay any monthly fee with the Endicia service. Works for me. I just hope they sometime get all the bugs out of the software!