Zebra's own words for it are light industrial, and that is the honest description. A metal frame and a 4.3 inch colour touch screen at four inch width, built for a packing bench or a despatch desk that runs all day rather than a line that runs all night. The step up from a desktop is not speed — it is the roll.
What it does not do matters as much as what it does here, because the machine above it is only two hundred dollars away.
At $2,279 it lands $200 under the base ZT411 and $1,020 under the ZT411 with wireless. A narrow gap and a wide one in the same sentence, so it is worth being plain about which side of it you are on.
It takes a 203 mm roll on a 76 mm core, inside the machine. A desktop does not — the ZD621 needs an external stand sitting behind it to feed a 3000-label roll on that core. Fewer roll changes a shift is the reason people move up, and it is the one reason you can see on the shelf rather than read on a spec sheet.
Same four inch width, 203 dpi standard, 300 dpi optional and no 600 dpi at all. Twelve inches per second against the ZT411's fourteen. If the job is a label every few seconds on a line, buy the ZT411. If it is a bench printing steadily all day, the difference never turns up.
Cutter, peeler, 802.11ac wireless, a second Ethernet port, an applicator port — all field-installable. On the ZT411 peel-and-rewind is fitted at the factory and cannot be added afterwards, so buying the plain one there closes a door. Here it does not.
USB, RS-232 serial, 10/100 Ethernet, USB host and Bluetooth Low Energy, on every one of them. The part number priced above is the wireless build, 802.11ac on top of all of that, which is why it is worth comparing against the $3,299 ZT411 rather than the $2,479 one.
It runs both kinds of label. Direct thermal and thermal transfer both — load a ribbon or do not, and the printer does not care. Ribbons go on a 25 mm core, up to 450 m long and 110 mm wide; labels from 19 mm to 114 mm. Which stock belongs in it is decided by how long the label has to survive, and that is settled on the labels page, not here.
It opens upwards less than you would expect. The media door is bi-fold, so it needs less headroom to open than its 279 mm height suggests — it will sit under a shelf and still be loadable. 432 mm deep by 241 mm wide on the bench, 9.1 kg.
The printhead comes out without tools, and the printer reports a failed element before the printing does. We carry the head: one 203 dpi part covers the ZT111, ZT211 and ZT231 between them.
| Zebra part number | What is in the box | Price inc GST |
|---|---|---|
| ZT23142-T0PC00FZ | Zebra ZT231, TT, 4", 203DPI, Midrange BTLE, USB, USB Host, Ethernet, Multi, WIFI, EZPL USB Cable Power Cord |
$2,279 |
1 year, return to base — the unit comes back to us for repair or replacement rather than somebody coming out to you. Warranty runs by model rather than by price, so it is worth checking against whatever else you are comparing.
Every printer on this site is held in an Australian warehouse rather than on a shelf in Sydney, and it goes from there to your door without stopping at our office. That saves a leg of freight and a day. Paid before 2pm on a business day and it generally leaves the same day.
Which is the honest half of the sentence above. A run on one model can mean a wait, and you will hear that from us when you ask rather than after you have paid.
That is genuinely all we need. You get a written quote back with freight worked out to your actual address, because a printer to Parramatta and one to Port Hedland are not the same delivery. On the items you can buy online the rate does not change with distance, and the figure is on the button before you click it — a bigger box costs more to send, so it is not the same figure on every item. A new account pays before it ships, and the clock starts when the payment confirms.
If you have a written quote from somebody else on the same part number, we will match it. No haggling required, and no need to pretend you have not been looking.
Tell us what you are printing, and onto what. Thirty-five years of these conversations says the answer is usually simpler, and cheaper, than it looks from the inside.