The printer for the label that will not fit on a desktop machine. Six inches wide, a metal frame rather than a plastic one, and a media path built for a roll that lasts a shift instead of an afternoon. This is the machine the ZD220 and ZD421 pages send you to when the answer to "how wide" is more than four inches.
Four part numbers, which is two questions. One of them can be changed later and one of them cannot, so it is worth reading before ordering.
The four versions are every combination of two choices. The first is about the label. The second is about what happens to the label after it is printed — and that one is fitted at the factory.
203 dpi covers the great majority of warehouse work: carton labels, pallet labels, anything read by a scanner across a dock. 300 dpi is for small type and dense codes on a label that is already crowded — compliance labels, or a 2D code that has to hold a lot in a small square. Paying for 300 when 203 would do buys you nothing a scanner can see.
Standard, and the label comes out to be torn off. Peel with full rewind separates the label from its backing as it prints and winds the liner up inside, so an operator takes a label that is ready to apply rather than peeling it themselves. On a line where somebody labels a carton every few seconds, that is the difference.
Zebra fits peel and rewind at the factory only. Connectivity and RFID can be added to a ZT421 in the field; this cannot. So it is the one decision on this page worth being sure about, because changing your mind means changing the printer.
It runs both kinds of label, and that is not obvious from the price list. Every industrial printer does direct thermal and thermal transfer both — the ribbon is loaded or it is not, and the machine does not care. So this is not the commitment to buying ribbons forever that it looks like. Put ribbon-free stock in it for the despatch labels that get read once and thrown away, load a ribbon for the ones that have to last a year, and it is the same printer either way. The labels page is where that choice actually gets made.
Six inches is the whole reason to be on this page. If your labels are four inches or narrower, a ZD421 does the job for a fraction of this and we would rather sell you that. This printer earns the difference on width, on a metal frame that survives a warehouse, and on a media path that takes a 203 mm roll and a 450 m ribbon — an industrial printer makes its money by not stopping, and most of what stops a desktop machine is running out. Worth knowing before assuming wider is better: the four inch ZT411 is the faster of the two, and 600 dpi is available there and not here.
| Zebra part number | What is in the box | Price inc GST |
|---|---|---|
| ZT42162-T0P0000Z | Zebra ZT421 TT 6" 203DPI BT4.1 USB, 10/100 Ethernet, Multi, EZPL USB Cable Power cord |
$3,995 |
| ZT42163-T0P0000Z | Zebra ZT421 TT 6" 300DPI BT4.1 USB, 10/100 Ethernet, Multi, EZPL USB Cable Power cord |
$4,499 |
| ZT42162-T4P0000Z | Zebra ZT421 TT 6" 203DPI BT4.1 USB, 10/100 Ethernet, Multi, Peel with Full Rewind USB Cable Power cord |
$4,599 |
| ZT42163-T4P0000Z | Zebra ZT421 TT 6" 300DPI BT4.1 USB, 10/100 Ethernet, Multi, Peel with Full Rewind USB Cable Power cord |
$5,199 |
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.
Our distributor does not publish a stock figure for this printer — it is one to check rather than assume. Ring or email and we will have an answer the same day, usually within the hour. We would far rather tell you it is three weeks away than take an order we cannot fill.
What is on this page is what you pay when it is available. Checking stock does not change the number, and it is not the opening of a negotiation.
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 and we would rather not pretend otherwise. 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.