How to choose your mobile printer?

Compact, practical and easy to use, such are the mobile printers available at Etilux. No need for cables or fixed location, simplicity of entering data to be printed, ergonomics ... these printers are designed to simplify the user experience.

Increase the productivity, accuracy and precision of your employees: equip them with wireless mobile printers that are tailored to the way they work. Our mobile printers range from those that are ideal for casual use to rugged machines that feature a range of the latest connectivity options and robust features that keep you operating in even the most challenging situations.

But which mobile printer should you choose? An inkjet printer, a thermal printer?

Why opt for a mobile printer?

Their small size and weight allow them to fit perfectly into a briefcase or computer bag. This allows you to carry your printer to your customers, into a meeting room or even through your warehouse racks.

With a portable printer, you are able to print your documents from any location with an electrical outlet. If you're on your way to a meeting and realize you've forgotten important documents, nothing is lost, you can print them quickly. Are you a stock boy or a department manager in a supermarket and need to print barcodes? Your mobile printer allows you to do so without having to go back and forth between your department and your printer.

In addition, mobile printers are made of a more durable plastic material than standard size printers. So you move around a lot with your portable printer. They are designed to cope with higher risks of shocks than a fixed printer.

Finally, mobile printers are relatively inexpensive. A small investment for a maximization of the output and the working comfort of your staff.

Inkjet printers

Inkjet printers are an evolution of dot-matrix printers. They use hundreds of tiny guns to shoot drops of ink onto paper. The characters they print are therefore made up of tiny dots, barely visible to the naked eye.

Inkjet printers project the ink in various ways. In the Reiner printers, the ink is heated at the time of pumping, in order to be deposited towards the paper in bubbles. The Epson printers use an effect called piezoelectricity. Tiny crystals move back and forth to generate electrical micro-pulses that propel the ink dots. An inkjet printer head is a compact assembly of small ink jets (called nozzles) that propel millions of dots every second.

Thus, to print text, barcodes or images, the printer's software reproduces the pattern by mobilizing a series of key nozzles. The pattern is then printed in a series of small, closely spaced dots.

The liquid ink is stored in cartridges fixed in compartments which are dedicated to them in the ink jet printer. They are generally four in number, one for the black and the three others for the primary colors, namely cyan, magenta and yellow. This combination of colors allows four-color printing, otherwise known as CMYK.

Prefer portable inkjet printers if you want to make color prints, to print your logos or inscriptions in color. You can also generate dates, 1D and 2D barcodes and numbering sequences.

In addition, Reiner's portable inkjet printers are capable of printing directly onto a variety of different materials in a single color. So you won't need a label with Reiner printers.

Our mobile inkjet printers are ideal for use in the office, in stores and generally by professionals. Thanks to the application or the on-board interface you can easily create your own prints. A long-lasting battery guarantees optimal use on the go.

Thermal printers

Thermal portable printers use heat to mark the paper. The print head heats up and applies to the special thermal printing paper. This causes the inscription to appear in black on the paper.

The paper itself is coated with several chemicals that give it heat-sensitive properties that allow the paper to blacken without burning. There are two main types of thermal paper: topcoated and eco. The eco thermal paper is a paper coated with two layers, one for smoothing and the other for heat sensitivity. It is an inexpensive paper that is not made to last over time because the thermal layer is sensitive to light, heat and environmental conditions in general. The inscription will therefore tend to fade over time and the unprinted part will tend to blacken.

Topcoated thermal paper, on the other hand, has two layers of protective varnish on the front and back, in addition to the smoothing layer and the heat-sensitive layer. It is therefore a more expensive paper, but it gives resistant prints in the long term. The two additional layers protect the image against the aggression of substances such as water, alcohol, light, oil, silicone, solvents, or certain chemicals.

The main advantage of the thermal portable printers is their operating cost. Indeed, apart from the paper, this type of portable printer does not require any consumable to operate and the use of eco paper offers a relatively inexpensive solution.

On the other hand, thermal portable printers can only print in black color.

Which mobile printer to choose?

As we've seen, mobile printers are particularly useful for professions in which there is a lot of movement, such as logistics, retail, jobs that require travel to customers, and even some paramedical sectors.

If you need to print color logos, then your choice will inevitably be inkjet printers. Check out our mobile inkjet printers line for more information.

Also, if you want to mark your boxes or pallets directly and without labels, our range of Reiner printers will do the trick.

If you need to print black dates, article numbers or barcodes, in large quantities and to mark products that are not intended to last (e.g. fresh products), we recommend that you take a look at our mobile thermal printers.