review – as I mentioned in my comment Jackery’s Power Station, my wife is a direct seller. Part of selling at craft fairs, church fairs and holiday fairs is making sure everything she sells is properly labelled. Ideally, each label should contain my wife’s name, product type, price, and a QR code for my wife’s website. While she can do it by hand most of the time, I think the label maker can do the job faster and better. I hope the Marklife P11 label printer will be the right tool for the job.
What is it?
The Marklife P11 is a small portable thermal label printer that connects to your phone via Bluetooth and uses a free app to design labels. The app is available for iOS and Android, and the P11 comes with four different tab rolls. Marklife is a brand Shenzhen Yinxiaoqian Technology, a Chinese company. their mission It is “Innovative development of production technology to create high-quality products and solve your toughest labeling challenges”.
What’s in the box?
- Marklife P11 Labeling Machine
- Four roll labels
- manual
- USB charging cable
Hardware Specifications
- Printing width: 12-15mm
- Printing speed: 60 mm/sec
- Battery: 1200mAh rechargeable lithium battery
- Print Resolution: 203 dpi
- Weight: 5.1 oz
- Dimensions: 5.25 x 3 x 1.25 inches
- Tags: Laminated Plastic
- Colors: white, white and pink, blue
Design and Features
The Marklife P11 label maker is small, about the size of two iPhones stacked on top of each other. It is small in size, light in weight and very portable. The P11 is made entirely of plastic, but it doesn’t feel cheap or flimsy. The edges are rounded and the sides are recessed for easy grip, with minimal external interfaces. It’s a clean, simple, no-nonsense design that I love.
exist their amazon store, Marklife only sells the white P11 with a white or pink edge.My model is powder blue and is available at Marklife’s store.
installation and setup
The P11 comes in a sturdy blue box.
Inside, I found that everything was held in place with custom foam inserts. I appreciate Marklife’s attention to detail, ensuring the label maker and label roll are well protected.
Marklife includes four rolls of stickers, three in different colors and patterns, and one in white. The first thing I did was read through the manual. The English section is nine pages long and badly written; Marklife needs to hire a native English speaker to proofread its manual (and its website). To prepare the P11 for printing, I followed the steps outlined in the manual.
I slid the top release button up to reveal the inside of the Marklife P11 label printer, which contains the white labels. At this point, I could have swapped this roll for another, but I chose to keep it as is. I made sure the tabs were facing the right direction, pulled a small portion from the edge, and closed.
I hold the on/off button until it lights up green, about two seconds. Then I double click the on/off button, calibrate the P11 and print the QR code on the label. I need to do this calibration again every time I swap out one roll of labels for another; if I don’t, the print won’t be centered correctly on the labels. This process does waste a tab, so I need to think ahead to minimize swapping.
Then I went to Apple’s app store and searched for Marklife. I was very happy to find out that the app’s privacy policy states that they don’t collect any data; too many gadget makers collect a lot of personal data they don’t need. I installed the app on my iPhone 13.
When the app starts for the first time, I can choose to create an account and log in or use a guest account. I chose the latter. Then, I selected the unlink icon. On my device screen, I then clicked “click to connect” while making sure my iPhone was close to the P11 (must be on). When they are paired, the circle around the P11 icon turns green. I am now ready to create a label.
software performance
Let me go ahead and leave out the ugly part of this review: the user interface (UI) of this app sucks. It’s sloppy, cluttered, unintuitive, and has poor English. Marklife needed to hire an app design expert to redo the look and feel of the app. Having said that, the app isn’t so bad that it would prevent me from buying the P11; in other words, I’ve learned to focus on the parts of the app where I need to design labels and ignore the rest. The good news is that designing decent tabs with this app is not at all difficult.
After connecting the application to the P11, the first step is to click the “Create Label” button. The second step is to choose the size of the label. All four rolls of labels that came with the Marklife P11 label printer sent to me are 40x12mm. I can’t find a way to save it to the default size, so I have to remember to reselect it every time. The third step is to select the “Create” button.
The fourth step is to design the label using the various functions at the bottom of the screen, such as the “Text” and “Stickers” options. For text, I can choose font, size and alignment. I can reposition the words and have them flow down to the next line. It’s easy to use. With stickers, I select a category on the left, such as currency, and then select the actual sticker I want, such as a dollar sign. The stickers are uneven and sometimes hard to find, but there are plenty of options. I tested most of these functions and most of them work fine. I’m especially excited to see how easy it is to create QR codes.
Once I’ve finished designing the label, the fifth step is to print it. I click the “Print Label” button, click the “Print” button, and watch the spinning icon as the label prints, which only takes a few seconds. Note that I can set up the P11 to print multiple copies of the same label.
When the tag is complete, I go back to the Tag Editing screen, where I can choose to save the tag, which is a handy feature if I want to use it again later. To do this, I click the “Save” button, enter a title for the label, and click “OK”. The result save will appear on the home page.
Like I said, it’s not too hard to use, I can create simple labels in a minute.You can watch the whole process in this helpful video Marklife on YouTube.
hardware performance
Printing is not bad. The resolution is only 203 dpi, and if I look closely, the letters do have noticeable jagged edges. Even so, they are clear enough for labels. Outputs like stickers and QR codes are also very readable.I’m happy with the output, glad I’m starting to label various things around my home office, including Backup drive for OWC I recently viewed.
Marklife claims its stickers are water, oil and tear resistant. I admit I was skeptical of this claim, so I tested all of them and I found them absolutely true. The thermally printed labels didn’t smudge when I rubbed my fingers on them, even with water, oil, or soap. Since the label is made of laminated plastic, I can’t tear it in half. Still, it’s easy to pull up from glass, metal, and plastic surfaces. I really like these labels.
Once I got the hang of printing, I gave the labeler to my wife and she started labeling her products. It works great and allows her to fit everything she needs with each item.
My wife loves this label maker so much – the app’s quirks don’t bother her that much – and she started labeling everything, including her journal and her daily plan.
Extra features
When I connect the app to the P11, a small icon shows the remaining battery life. Mine got to 90% charged, and after all the tests I’ve done, it’s still over 80%.Whenever it goes low, I just connect the included USB cable to the bottom of the P11 and plug it into a charger like my trusty SoundCore wake up. The light on the P11 turns red when charging, then returns to green when fully charged.
Each 12×40 roll has 150 labels, so I received a total of 600 labels in the box.If I run out of labels, I can buy more from Amazon, including white, transparent, or colored. There is even a Label cable.
what do I like
- Lightweight and portable
- Flexible label design options
- Quick and easy printing
- Durable Labels
what would i change
final thoughts
The Marklife P11 is Marklife’s lightweight, battery-operated label printer that can be taken anywhere. It pairs with an app on your iPhone or Android phone for designing labels. While the app’s interface is terrible, it’s fully functional, allowing users to quickly create labels with text, icons, QR codes, and other images. The labels are sturdy and smudge resistant and can be applied and pulled back easily. I hope this gadget helps my wife as she labels the products she sells, and the P11 didn’t disappoint. I recommend it to you.
price: $35.99
where to buy: Amazon or Mark Life Online Store
source: Samples for this review provided by Mark life.
