Brother P-Touch PT-H110 Label Maker

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This is one of those little home gadgets that’s a must for those of us who like everything neat and organized (e.g. me!). I’ve been wanting to get one of these at a stationery store. Popular Bookstore has a couple of models from Dymo, Casio and Brother, all at varying price-points of $49.90 and upwards. I’m not running an asset inventory store at home, so figured I really didn’t want to spend much on this – so went with the cheapest handheld model: the Brother P-Touch PT-H110 (what a mouthful LOL).

Commented in the picture captions below.

The label maker, a sample cartridge, user guide, and also a tape accessory guide. The device powers up quickly, and is easy to operate – though you can always leaf through the foldout user guide to see if there are features you’ve missed after exploring the menus on your own.
The back plate is easily pried opened to reveal internals: cavities to hold the tape cartridge, and six AAA batteries. I wished the unit uses AA batteries since I have a lot more AA recharcgeables than I have for AAA ones. The unit can be powered using an AC adapter too, but one such isn’t supplied with the package.
The sample cartridge is the 12mm width type, and is of the black text on white laminate type. It’s sufficient to print perhaps 40-50 labels, and the sample type is great for labeling kitchen containers, computer accessories and cables, and boxes etc. but too large for stationery though. The label catalog lists many other types, including ones to paste on fabrics.
Punching in text to be printed. The key buttons are quite mushy, but you’re not going to be typing essays on this thing anyway. There is no caps lock on the device too, so if you like your labels to shout in all caps, you’ll have to depress the Shift key each time for a capital letter.
After you’ve entered text, the next screen allows you to set the number of copies to print. Press OK and the machine will silently churn the label out.
Pressing the large yellow-green lever on the top right corner will snip the label piece. The unit produces an unnecessarily long tape buffer though, which some reviewers have noted might be because of the cutting mechanism. Or in other words, the unit does waste quite a bit of tape. Part of this can be mitigated by reducing margins, but the wastage cannot be completely eliminated.
Hannah was fascinated with the whole thing, and acted as mommy’s little helper – jotting down everything in the kitchen that could use a label. You can also see the fairly large gap between labels.
A more organized fridge – maybe!

In all, it’s a decent and helpful machine, and cartridge replenishment is easily available at bookstores. The keypad is a little annoying, and the tape waste even more so. But it’s a cheap purchase on the overall still, so I can’t complain too much.