The Brother RuggedJet RJ-2150 ($995) is designed to churn out relatively high volumes of labels and receipts in mobile on-demand applications.
It's built to operate in environments—including warehouses, fulfillment desks, showrooms, and elsewhere—where dust, moisture, and other factors might damage more conventional label makers.
It's similar in many ways to its sibling, the RJ-2050.
Choosing between them comes down to how many labels you plan on printing: The RJ-2150 can use a higher-capacity label roll, making it somewhat larger and $300 more expensive than the RJ-2050.
Labels Your Way
While many of Brother's label printers, including the Editors' Choice QL-820NWB ($174.98 at Amazon) or the wide-format Brother QL-1110NWB, are designed for businesses, their low prices and limited functionality restrict them to basic applications like applying labels to objects to identify them or their content, or perhaps to print small warning signs or banners.
The RJ-2150 can do those things, but it's also suited to printing markdown tags, order-pickup tickets, receipts, and so on, on demand.
It measures 3.9 by 5.9 by 2.8 inches (HWD) and weighs about a pound, or 1.2 pounds with its rechargeable (and replaceable) battery installed.
That makes it about an inch longer and 0.2-pound heavier than the RJ-2050, about half the size of the QL-820NWB, which prints labels up to 2.4 inches wide, and about a third the size of the Brother QL-1110NWB ($314.99 at Amazon) and the Zebra GC420d, both of which print on media just larger than 4 inches wide.
Brother offers 10 RuggedJet models, in three different series named according to the label size: four Series 2 models, four 3-inch Series 3 machines, and two 4-inch Series 4 models.
The RJ-2150 is at the top of the Series 2 chain, making it the most expensive of the four, with the most features and support for wider label rolls than some of the others Series 2 models.
Like the RJ-2050, Brother offers seven types of media for the RJ-2150 in both continuous and die-cut configurations up to 4 inches long, and you can find many third-party label rolls at several online outlets.
The RJ-2150 can use thicker, higher-capacity rolls up to 2.36 inches compared with the RJ-2050's max of 1.57 inches, but both have the same maximum length rating of 1 meter, or just less than 40 inches.
That 0.4-inch in roll size may not seem like much, but it allows for about 20 percent more labels.
The four die cut label rolls are adhesive, and the continuous "receipt" paper rolls come in three types: Standard, Premium, and Fast Dry.
In addition, Brother (and several label roll vendors) will create custom label sizes.
Media rolls are keyed to ensure that you load them properly, which entails simply dropping them in to a compartment at the back of the printer, and the RJ-2150 does the rest, including communicating to the computer or mobile device you're printing from which media type is available.
Most configuration and printing options are controlled via software installed on a computer, tablet, or smartphone.
There are no installation media in the box, though; you must download drivers and other software from Brother's website.
The control panel consists of three buttons (Power, Menu/down-arrow, and Feed/OK buttons), an Active/Battery status indicator, and a small two-line monochrome LCD for making connection and other configuration changes The power and mini USB ports, as well as levers for opening the media and battery hatches, are located on the left side.
Mobile connectivity options are robust and include Apple AirPrint, Bluetooth, USB, Wi-Fi, and Wi-Fi Direct, as well as support for the Android, Apple iOS, Windows, and Windows Mobile platforms.
Brother says that the RJ-2150's Li-ion battery is good for 6,400 labels between charges, and full charging takes about three hours.
However, despite the RJ-2150's near-$1,000 purchase price, both the AC charger and USB cable are sold separately.
As I pointed out about the RJ-2050, the "RuggedJet" brand name suggests durability and, well, ruggedness.
To that end, the RJ-2150 and the rest of its RJ siblings are built to the IP54 (International Protection Marking, IEC standard 60529) rating.
That means that it's water- and dust-proof, that it has been drop- and tumble-tested from 8.2 feet, and that it has passed several other durability-assessment tests.
Software to Back You Up
The RJ-2150's software bundle includes Printer Setting Tool, P-touch Template Setting Tool, P-touch Transfer Manager, Transfer Express, and P-touch Update Software.
That last one keeps your P-touch Editor software and printer firmware up to date, while the others are the utilities required to push templates and other files to your mobile device and printer.
Brother's P-touch Editor software prints labels directly from your PC (MacOS is not supported), or you can download templates and databases from your PC to your mobile device and then print directly from it.
The fastest, most efficient method is to download your templates, bar codes, databases, logos, graphics, and other assets to the printer, and then call up the desired template on your smartphone or tablet, replace the placeholder data with your own, and then print the completed banner, label, receipt, or pickup order.
Out of the box, my first impression of the software was that it seemed difficult to use, but as I got into it, the steps for creating templates, a database, and other supporting files, and then downloading them to my smartphone and/or the printer was well documented and therefore straightforward.
I was up and printing predesigned labels or customizing my own within an hour or so.
Unless you change your label content or design or add new content or templates, you should need to do this only once, and, after it's configured on your computer or mobile device, the processes of downloading content and printing are much more efficient, sometimes a matter of selecting files and clicking OK.
Printing by the Inch
As I pointed out about the RJ-2050, most of the label printers I've tested, except the professional-grade Zebra GC420d, measure print speed by labels per minute (lpm), but Brother rates its RuggedJet printers in inches per second (ips), with the RJ-2150 rated at 6ips.
This, of course, makes comparing the speed of the RJ-2150 with most of the consumer-grade label printers in our database difficult.
But clocking the printer was educational enough to allow me to make some meaningful, if not empirical, observations about the RJ-2150's performance
I ran two tests: printing over USB using P-touch Editor from our standard Intel Core i5-equipped testbed PC running Windows 10 Professional, and, after downloading the appropriate files to my phone and the printer, printing over Wi-Fi from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
Printing from our testbed PC, the RJ-2150 churned out a batch of 2-by-1-inch mailing labels with a small border around them at the rate of about 1.5ips, which is quite slow.
That score is 60 percent behind the Zebra GC420d's pace of 4ips.
When printing from my smartphone to the RJ-2150 with preconfigured templates and other supporting assets resident in the printer's memory, however, print speeds improved significantly, to just faster than 5ips.
The larger and more complex the label, of course, the slower the print speed, and the more you'll benefit from using resident templates and other assets, such as fonts, logos, and bar codes.
Speed and economy are the desired attributes here, not stunning output.
Of course, you want it legible, without fuzzy or jagged edges, and the RJ-2150 easily accomplishes that.
Many of the more consumer-oriented label printers, including Brother's QL-series and Dymo LabelWriter models, support resolutions up to 600dpi, whereas the industrial-strength RJ-2150 and Zebra GC420d print at 203dpi.
Since resolution on thermal printers is determined primarily by the paper, the lower resolution, of course, allows for less-expensive media.
As I said about its RJ-2050 sibling, I've no complaints about the RJ-2150's output.
Low-Cost Output
As with the RJ-2050, the type, quantity, and where you buy your label or receipt thermal paper will cause your running costs to vary—sometimes significantly.
To make the following calculations, I used the prices at Brother Mall.
Each of the following numbers assumes that you purchase the more economical 12-roll packs (I found some non-Brother alternatives with 36 rolls), which, in the following situations, contain more than 5,000 labels or receipts.
Brother's premium 2.25-by-1.25-inch die cut label 12-pack will cost you about 1.1 cent per label, and, with the premium continuous 2-inch receipt paper, 4-inch-long receipts will run about 0.8 cent.
While these costs are a bit higher than the Zebra GC420's for similarly sized labels in like quantities, Brother's consumer-grade models, as well as Dymo and Leitz brand label printers, all cost several times as much to use, making the RJ-2150 (and other RuggedJet models) better values overall.
Labels on the Go
While you can use the RJ-2150's output for identifying and organizing, it's more suited to on-demand scenarios, such as improving the efficiency of your product- and material-flow in, say, warehouses, showrooms, and so on.
Unless you want to print a huge number of labels without refilling your roll, though, this model's support for higher-capacity media compared with its RJ-2050 sibling may not be worth the $300 price difference.
Otherwise, although it will require some initial tweaking to get optimal results, the RJ-2150 is built to perform on-the-go in many types of high-volume, less-than-ideal settings.
Brother RuggedJet RJ-2150
Pros
Relatively fast print speeds.
Good output quality.
PC, network, and mobile connectivity options.
Top-drawer label design, print software, and mobile apps.
Low running costs.
View More
The Bottom Line
The Brother RJ-2150 is a capable, if expensive, 2-inch portable label and receipt printer designed for heavy-duty, on-the-fly use.
The Brother RuggedJet RJ-2150 ($995) is designed to churn out relatively high volumes of labels and receipts in mobile on-demand applications.
It's built to operate in environments—including warehouses, fulfillment desks, showrooms, and elsewhere—where dust, moisture, and other factors might damage more conventional label makers.
It's similar in many ways to its sibling, the RJ-2050.
Choosing between them comes down to how many labels you plan on printing: The RJ-2150 can use a higher-capacity label roll, making it somewhat larger and $300 more expensive than the RJ-2050.
Labels Your Way
While many of Brother's label printers, including the Editors' Choice QL-820NWB ($174.98 at Amazon) or the wide-format Brother QL-1110NWB, are designed for businesses, their low prices and limited functionality restrict them to basic applications like applying labels to objects to identify them or their content, or perhaps to print small warning signs or banners.
The RJ-2150 can do those things, but it's also suited to printing markdown tags, order-pickup tickets, receipts, and so on, on demand.
It measures 3.9 by 5.9 by 2.8 inches (HWD) and weighs about a pound, or 1.2 pounds with its rechargeable (and replaceable) battery installed.
That makes it about an inch longer and 0.2-pound heavier than the RJ-2050, about half the size of the QL-820NWB, which prints labels up to 2.4 inches wide, and about a third the size of the Brother QL-1110NWB ($314.99 at Amazon) and the Zebra GC420d, both of which print on media just larger than 4 inches wide.
Brother offers 10 RuggedJet models, in three different series named according to the label size: four Series 2 models, four 3-inch Series 3 machines, and two 4-inch Series 4 models.
The RJ-2150 is at the top of the Series 2 chain, making it the most expensive of the four, with the most features and support for wider label rolls than some of the others Series 2 models.
Like the RJ-2050, Brother offers seven types of media for the RJ-2150 in both continuous and die-cut configurations up to 4 inches long, and you can find many third-party label rolls at several online outlets.
The RJ-2150 can use thicker, higher-capacity rolls up to 2.36 inches compared with the RJ-2050's max of 1.57 inches, but both have the same maximum length rating of 1 meter, or just less than 40 inches.
That 0.4-inch in roll size may not seem like much, but it allows for about 20 percent more labels.
The four die cut label rolls are adhesive, and the continuous "receipt" paper rolls come in three types: Standard, Premium, and Fast Dry.
In addition, Brother (and several label roll vendors) will create custom label sizes.
Media rolls are keyed to ensure that you load them properly, which entails simply dropping them in to a compartment at the back of the printer, and the RJ-2150 does the rest, including communicating to the computer or mobile device you're printing from which media type is available.
Most configuration and printing options are controlled via software installed on a computer, tablet, or smartphone.
There are no installation media in the box, though; you must download drivers and other software from Brother's website.
The control panel consists of three buttons (Power, Menu/down-arrow, and Feed/OK buttons), an Active/Battery status indicator, and a small two-line monochrome LCD for making connection and other configuration changes The power and mini USB ports, as well as levers for opening the media and battery hatches, are located on the left side.
Mobile connectivity options are robust and include Apple AirPrint, Bluetooth, USB, Wi-Fi, and Wi-Fi Direct, as well as support for the Android, Apple iOS, Windows, and Windows Mobile platforms.
Brother says that the RJ-2150's Li-ion battery is good for 6,400 labels between charges, and full charging takes about three hours.
However, despite the RJ-2150's near-$1,000 purchase price, both the AC charger and USB cable are sold separately.
As I pointed out about the RJ-2050, the "RuggedJet" brand name suggests durability and, well, ruggedness.
To that end, the RJ-2150 and the rest of its RJ siblings are built to the IP54 (International Protection Marking, IEC standard 60529) rating.
That means that it's water- and dust-proof, that it has been drop- and tumble-tested from 8.2 feet, and that it has passed several other durability-assessment tests.
Software to Back You Up
The RJ-2150's software bundle includes Printer Setting Tool, P-touch Template Setting Tool, P-touch Transfer Manager, Transfer Express, and P-touch Update Software.
That last one keeps your P-touch Editor software and printer firmware up to date, while the others are the utilities required to push templates and other files to your mobile device and printer.
Brother's P-touch Editor software prints labels directly from your PC (MacOS is not supported), or you can download templates and databases from your PC to your mobile device and then print directly from it.
The fastest, most efficient method is to download your templates, bar codes, databases, logos, graphics, and other assets to the printer, and then call up the desired template on your smartphone or tablet, replace the placeholder data with your own, and then print the completed banner, label, receipt, or pickup order.
Out of the box, my first impression of the software was that it seemed difficult to use, but as I got into it, the steps for creating templates, a database, and other supporting files, and then downloading them to my smartphone and/or the printer was well documented and therefore straightforward.
I was up and printing predesigned labels or customizing my own within an hour or so.
Unless you change your label content or design or add new content or templates, you should need to do this only once, and, after it's configured on your computer or mobile device, the processes of downloading content and printing are much more efficient, sometimes a matter of selecting files and clicking OK.
Printing by the Inch
As I pointed out about the RJ-2050, most of the label printers I've tested, except the professional-grade Zebra GC420d, measure print speed by labels per minute (lpm), but Brother rates its RuggedJet printers in inches per second (ips), with the RJ-2150 rated at 6ips.
This, of course, makes comparing the speed of the RJ-2150 with most of the consumer-grade label printers in our database difficult.
But clocking the printer was educational enough to allow me to make some meaningful, if not empirical, observations about the RJ-2150's performance
I ran two tests: printing over USB using P-touch Editor from our standard Intel Core i5-equipped testbed PC running Windows 10 Professional, and, after downloading the appropriate files to my phone and the printer, printing over Wi-Fi from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
Printing from our testbed PC, the RJ-2150 churned out a batch of 2-by-1-inch mailing labels with a small border around them at the rate of about 1.5ips, which is quite slow.
That score is 60 percent behind the Zebra GC420d's pace of 4ips.
When printing from my smartphone to the RJ-2150 with preconfigured templates and other supporting assets resident in the printer's memory, however, print speeds improved significantly, to just faster than 5ips.
The larger and more complex the label, of course, the slower the print speed, and the more you'll benefit from using resident templates and other assets, such as fonts, logos, and bar codes.
Speed and economy are the desired attributes here, not stunning output.
Of course, you want it legible, without fuzzy or jagged edges, and the RJ-2150 easily accomplishes that.
Many of the more consumer-oriented label printers, including Brother's QL-series and Dymo LabelWriter models, support resolutions up to 600dpi, whereas the industrial-strength RJ-2150 and Zebra GC420d print at 203dpi.
Since resolution on thermal printers is determined primarily by the paper, the lower resolution, of course, allows for less-expensive media.
As I said about its RJ-2050 sibling, I've no complaints about the RJ-2150's output.
Low-Cost Output
As with the RJ-2050, the type, quantity, and where you buy your label or receipt thermal paper will cause your running costs to vary—sometimes significantly.
To make the following calculations, I used the prices at Brother Mall.
Each of the following numbers assumes that you purchase the more economical 12-roll packs (I found some non-Brother alternatives with 36 rolls), which, in the following situations, contain more than 5,000 labels or receipts.
Brother's premium 2.25-by-1.25-inch die cut label 12-pack will cost you about 1.1 cent per label, and, with the premium continuous 2-inch receipt paper, 4-inch-long receipts will run about 0.8 cent.
While these costs are a bit higher than the Zebra GC420's for similarly sized labels in like quantities, Brother's consumer-grade models, as well as Dymo and Leitz brand label printers, all cost several times as much to use, making the RJ-2150 (and other RuggedJet models) better values overall.
Labels on the Go
While you can use the RJ-2150's output for identifying and organizing, it's more suited to on-demand scenarios, such as improving the efficiency of your product- and material-flow in, say, warehouses, showrooms, and so on.
Unless you want to print a huge number of labels without refilling your roll, though, this model's support for higher-capacity media compared with its RJ-2050 sibling may not be worth the $300 price difference.
Otherwise, although it will require some initial tweaking to get optimal results, the RJ-2150 is built to perform on-the-go in many types of high-volume, less-than-ideal settings.
Brother RuggedJet RJ-2150
Pros
Relatively fast print speeds.
Good output quality.
PC, network, and mobile connectivity options.
Top-drawer label design, print software, and mobile apps.
Low running costs.
View More
The Bottom Line
The Brother RJ-2150 is a capable, if expensive, 2-inch portable label and receipt printer designed for heavy-duty, on-the-fly use.
