Star Thermal Printer: A POS printer that isn’t a POS

POS
For the record, POS stands for Point of Sale in this review, not the more commonly used Piece of Stuff (where Stuff is actually a word inappropriate for this review). I do reserve the right in future reviews of other items to use this abbreviation for its more commonly accepted meaning. However, beyond the title of this review, POS will only mean Point of Sale for the sake of avoiding confusion.

Printers
I’ve been dealing with POS printers for more than 20 years. The first thing that I can tell you is they’ve gotten a lot easier to deal with, more reliable and even cheaper over that time period. I’d rank Star and Epson as the standards on the market today. Yep, there are some other brands out there, but they have to live up to these two brands that dominate the market.

I’ve used many of these printers in extremely harsh environments—food service. Most notably was the pair of Star printers that I used in my coffee shop for several years. True, a coffee shop doesn’t sound like the worst environment for a printer: a greasy fast food joint would certainly have more ill effects in most cases. However, in my shop the register ergonomics were less than ideal.

The printers sat partially under the shelves to which the POS touch screens were mounted. The problem here was that small things which were put on this shelf often ended up in the printers. I pulled a pennies, whole coffee beans, rubber bands and paper clips out of the printer on various occasions. Each time my clue to look for something was the fact that the printer wasn’t printing. One paper clip had even worked its way between the feed gears on the printer and took almost thirty minutes to remove. Each time the printer fired right up once the obstruction was removed.

The specifics
The TSP643E is a thermal printer. This is one of the first things to consider when buying a printer. If it’s going in a kitchen, thermal isn’t always a good choice. The heat from grills and fryers can actually affect the paper. Ever leave a receipt in the car in summer and have it turn black? That’s the same concept. On the other hand, thermal printers are fast, quiet and easy to operate. The other major choices on the market are inkjets and dot matrix. These are both capable of multi-color printing, while thermals only print in black on white.

Running a mobile business, I had concerns about running a thermal printer. I was worried that my paper would all turn black before I printed on it. I decided that I could keep it in the onboard refrigerator if I had problems. However, to date, I haven’t had any issues with the roll going bad even with some 100-degree plus days.

The printer will print graphics and text that is crisp. It also prints scanable bar codes on receipts. This is a nice feature for looking up a receipt in the system quickly. Printing is very fast and quiet.

Loading the printer is simplicity perfected. You simply open the cover and drop in a roll of paper. The only thing you need to do is make sure that some of the paper is sticking out when you close the lid and that you have it in the proper direction. Unlike older models there is no complicated mechanism through which the user has to feed paper.

The simplicity of the loading and paper feed system makes the printer highly resistant to paper jams. In the very unlikely event that there is a jam, it’s also pretty easy to clear. Simply open the lid, pull a little slack out of the roll and close the lid again.

Installation
The printer features a USB connection. This is a nice feature since many receipt printers are still running off a printer port. There are three connections to make for the ahrdware portion of the installation—the USB port connection, the cable to the cash drawer and the plug to the power supply. Pretty simple.

The software installation is just as simple. Pop the CD in the computer and follow the instructions. You click on Yes or OK a few times, plug the printer in when prompted and you are done. It took less than 5 minutes on my machine. From there you simply assign this as you would any other printer. Your POS program should take care of opening the cash drawer automatically.

Boring Stats
The TSP643 uses standard 3.25 inch thermal paper rolls (as does pretty much every other POS printer on the market today). As these are the standard for POS, they are easily found at just about any office supply store. They run about $2 a roll if you buy a dozen. You can get them cheaper in cases. For my purposes, a roll lasts me quite a while, so a case would just be silly. In high the high volume coffee shop I used about a roll a week though.

The unit is very small measuring approximately seven inches deep and five inches tall and wide. I didn't bother to weigh it since as you migh guess by the small dimensions it's pretty small. I would guess it weighs about a couple pounds though.

For power it uses an external A/C adaptor much like the one on a typical laptop. It draws less than 2 amps, so there really isn't much need to worry about blowing a circut unless you already have 12 other things plugged in to the same outlet.

Parting thoughts
The Star TSP643E is an efficient, effective and reliable printer. While the Star printers that I’ve used in the past took a beating and never failed, this one appears to be even better thus far. The design is simply the best I’ve seen to keep small items from falling in to cause damage. I’ve also used the printer in a very harsh range of temperatures from over 100 degrees to below 0. It has never once complained.

This is the printer that was included in my Quickbooks Point of Sale bundle. It’s a good sign that the printer comes in what is likely the most commonly used POS system on the market. If there were issues with the printer, Quickbooks would certainly switch to another printer.


© 2006 Scott Noble – All rights reserved. Unauthorized use prohibited.