Thinking of choosing a mobile printer to create efficiencies within your organization? Understanding user needs and work processes are a big part of this important step. These needs tend to be quite different from those supported with stationary models. Mobile printers are typically used to create shipment labels, shelf labels, work orders, receipts, invoices and other materials on demand—many times while a customer is waiting or the worker is waiting to move to the next task.

Speed and Responsiveness

Responsive print output is a very valuable feature in a mobile printer. You can’t afford for print operations to keep customers waiting or slow down the work process. Inches per second (IPS) is the most widely used measure of print speed, though it’s not always thought of as the most important. A true indicator of how fast a mobile printer can work is its throughput, which includes the complete time it takes for a printer to complete a job after receiving the print command from the computer.

Throughput directly impacts the amount of time users spend waiting for the printer to actually print the needed receipts or labels. Because mobile printing happens on demand, the throughput to print the first receipt or level is crucial. Variables that may impact this element include the type of data streams the printer can process, the printer’s internal processor, whether or not the printer has enough memory to allow label formats and fonts to be stored internally, network bandwidth and supported interfaces—as well as ease of use.

Mobile Printer Support

Mobile printers are typically used far from available tech support, so how easily the user can perform basic maintenance and troubleshooting is important. If a mobile printer goes down, the breakdown needs to be resolved — fast. The Zebra ZQ500 has all of the features you’re looking for in a mobile printer.

For more information about how mobile printing technologies can benefit your organization, contact MSM Solutions today at 1-800-832-3170 or by email at info@msmsolutions.com. To view data sheets for our line of Zebra printers and other mobile printer or thermal printer options, check out our Downloads page.