Zebra P120i Card Printer
March 28, 2006
Reviewer: Kevin
Category: Printers
It's not every day you have the need to print pvc cards, so it is a great pleasure that Zebra sent
us one of their ultra cool P120i card printers to try out. UpgradeAdvisor is a regular contributor to a local
gaming organization in Boise, Idaho called BoiseFragFest.com which offers services to the gaming
public. They provide the network and gamers come, plug in and start gaming. Thus, their slogan,
“Plug in and get your game on”! As a part of hosting these LAN parties, they track entrants as
they come and go. As a means of doing that, they print badge ID’s with the gamer's picture, nickname
and other information to facilitate the ability to track things pertinent to the event itself. So
with the past experience in being involved in this registration process, the P120i provided a great
opportunity to see how much the process of printing badges could be simplified with a card printer
to do all the work.
Company:
Zebra, www.zebra.com
Price:
$2,199.00 US at discounted.com
Ratings
Price: 
Install/Setup: 
Usability:
Cost to Operate:
Average Rating: 
Getting Started
There really isn’t much involved to get this card printer setup and running. Included in
the package, you’ll find a disk with a demo. You can watch the demo to get a preview of all
the steps that are involved to get this printer up and running. Really, all you need to do is
load the driver that comes with the printer and then start printing. Be sure to install the
software first and then plug in the printer. After doing this, windows will identify the new
printer and associate the correct driver to it. Your printer is then available to any program
that can see a printer.
Click on picture to enlarge image
Usability
For my testing, I used a piece of software that was already owned by BoiseFragFest.com to design and print
ID badges. Specifically they use, Print Studio 2E authored by jollytech.com. Bundled with the printer,
Zebra includes software to accomplish the same thing. But for our tests, I used what I was already comfortable
with.
The printer is advertised to be the perfect solution for employee ID’s, access cards, student and faculty
ID’s, membership cards, personalized loyalty and gift cards, or business cards. The printer is capable of
printing either single or double sided in full color or monochrome. I tested both and both were great quality.
As mentioned before, the printer is extremely straight forward to setup. It has a USB 1.1 interface to
hook up to your computer. In the driver installation, it provides the option to also set this up as a networked
device. The model we tested did not have a network port on it, but this would be extremely flexible to hook the
device up to your existing TCP/IP based network and to locate it wherever needed. The printer has the capacity
to hold up to 100 cards at one time and automatically feeds them, making it easy to print cards in bulk. In the
specifications, it says the printer is capable of printing doubles sided cards within 35 seconds. I found this
to be closer to about 1 minute per card. At less than 1 minute per card, this still provides a time savings as
opposed the manual procedure we have been using. That process involved printing a paper label and then placing
it on a pvc card.
In terms of quality, the P120i provided rich quality on almost all colors. We printed a wide range of cards
with different colors to try about every color we could. All were accurate. The only exception were images with
light colors, the printer would render whites sometime with a yellow or grey tint. This only occurred with lower
resolution images that were sent to the printer. So quality was great…the color difference was more attributed
to a poor image.
The P120i is priced in as a budget printer. At $2,199 this is very reasonable compared to other printers in
its same class. Ribbon replacements are reasonably priced. A color cartridge that will print about 200 cards
is about $80.
Specifications and Features
- Integrated card feeder and flipper
- Load-N-GoTM drop-in ribbon
cartridge
- 16-digit LCD display
- Zebra printer drivers for Windows® 2000 and Windows® XP
- One year printer warranty
- One year (unlimited passes) printhead warranty
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- Color dye sublimation or monochrome thermal transfer printing
- 30 seconds per card full-color single-sided (YMCKO)
- 35 seconds per card full-color dual-sided (YMCKOK)
- 300 dpi (11.8 dots/mm) print resolution
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- Code 39, Code 128 B & C with & without check digit
- 2 of 5 & 2 of 5 Interleaved
- UPC-A, EAN 8 & EAN 13
- PDF-417 2D bar code and other symbologies can be printed via
Windows drivers
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- Types: PVC, PVC Composite
- Card width/length: ISO CR-80-ISO 7810, 2.12" (54mm) x 3.38"
(86mm)
- Magnetic Stripe-ISO 7811
- Smart Card-ISO 7816
- Card thickness: 30 mil (.76mm)
- Card feeder capacity: 100 cards (30 mil)
- Card output hopper capacity: 45 cards (30 mil)
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- Load-N-GoTM ribbon cartridge with
integrated card-cleaning roller
- i Series ribbon information technology
- YMCKO: 200 cards/cartridge
- YMCKOK: 165 cards/cartridge
- Monochrome: 1000 cards/cartridge in black, blue, or white
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- Width: 7.9 in (201mm)
- Depth: 12.9 in (328mm)
- Height: 8.5 in (216mm)
- Weight: 9.5 lbs (4.3kg)
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- 110 ~ 240 Volts AC, 50 ~ 60 Hz (auto switching)
- 16MB image memory standard
- FCC Class B, CE, UL and CUL approved
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- Operating Temperature: 60°F to 86°F (15°C to 30°C)
- Operating Humidity: 20% to 65% non-condensing
- Storage Temperature: 23°F to 158°F (-5°C to 70°C)
- Storage Humidity: 20% to 70% non-condensing
- Ventilation: Free air
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- CardSenseTM single card-feed mode
- Magnetic encoder (30 mil cards only), 3 track HiCo/LoCo
(factory-installed)
- Starter Kit (200 - 30 mil PVC cards and 1YMCKOK ribbon)
- Cleaning Kit (4 print engine and 4 feeder cleaning cards)
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Pros:
- Quick setup
- Demos on CD are helpful
- Reasonably priced
Cons:
- Printer doesn't come with software for printing badges.
Adding It All Up
Although not an every day need, the Zebra P120i is a great printer when the job needs to
get done. In testing and comparing this to other printers in its class, the P120i is an
affordable alternative for making badges for whatever your need may be. It was fun testing
this little printer and simplifying an otherwise painful process. This little device will
definitely help get gamers in quicker so that they can focus on “getting their game on”! If
your organization prints ID’s of any kind UpgradeAdvisor.com recommends the P120i without any
reservations.
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