The Munbyn RealWriter 402B label maker delivers fast speed, suitable output quality for a thermal printer, paper handling for up to 4-by-6-inch shipping labels, and a relatively low price. (The list price is $169.99, but it's often available for less.) Its weakest point is its print app, which is harder to learn and use than it should be. On the plus side, the RW402B can print both from mobile devices and PCs, share labels you create via the online version of Munbyn Print, and connect by USB cable or Bluetooth. Most important, Munbyn's print drivers let you also print from virtually any program on your Windows or macOS PC. Our top pick for light-to-moderate-duty, 4-by-6-inch label printing in a small office remains the Rollo Wireless Printer X1040, but the RW402B is a reasonable alternative at a lower price.

Design: Labels on the Outside

Desktop printers for up to 4-by-6-inch labels fall into one of two design categories. Some, including the Arkscan 2054A-LAN, our top pick for heavy-duty printing in a small office, have room to mount a label roll inside the printer. Others, including both the Rollo and Munbyn models, leave the labels outside to give the printer a smaller size. The RW402B measures 3.5 by 7.9 by 3.1 inches (HWD), though the rounded corners and edges that add to its visual appeal make it seem a little smaller.

The lack of room for labels inside the printer means you must find room for them outside. One choice is to save at least another 7 inches behind the printer to put a stack of fanfold labels on your desk. Another is to get a label holder designed to sit behind or under the printer, depending on the design. For this review, Munbyn supplied a stand (a $39.99 extra) that measures roughly 6.6 by 6.7 by 5.75 inches (HWD). The printer goes on a tray on top, while either a stack of fanfold labels or a roll up to 4.7 inches in diameter fits below the tray. A spindle for rolls comes as part of the stand, which is pink and white.

(Credit: M. David Stone)

Physical setup is simple. Connect the power cord, optionally connect it to your PC by USB cable, and turn on the printer using the power switch on the back. Loading labels is easy, too, largely because the printer automatically determines the length of the label and adjusts the feed to match. The release for the top cover is on the right side as you face the printer. You only need to open it, thread the labels through the guides in the back (adjusting the guides to the right width as needed), pull the strip forward a bit, and close the top. The printer will feed the labels back and forth, looking for gaps between them, then pull the strip back to its final position.

In my tests, once I learned how far to pull the strip forward, the automatic paper setup perfectly positioned the first label for printing every time, then advanced the paper to match the label size for every print job and paper-feed command that followed. This automatic sensing of the label size with no labels wasted—a trick that many label printers can't manage—will be particularly welcome if you switch back and forth between different sizes very often.

(Credit: M. David Stone)

The RW402B comes with only a few 4-by-6-inch fanfold labels, making it a good idea to order some when you buy the printer. Munbyn offers a variety of types and sizes, including various colors and shapes—rectangular, circular, and heart-shaped among them. Sizes range from 1 by 2 inches to 4 by 6 inches, at prices that work out to as little as 1 cent or as much as 11 cents per label, depending on the type, size, and quantity. For 4-by-6-inch labels, for example, color choices are white, pink, blue, and brown, with per-label prices ranging from 4 to 8 cents. Also among the choices are the same polypropylene (PP) plastic labels and specialized labels for bakers that I discussed in more detail in our review of the Munbyn FM226.

Munbyn also says that the RW402B can use other companies' labels as well, as long as the width of the carrier paper is between 1.57 and 4.3 inches. It also prints on continuous receipt paper, and for label rolls without gaps between labels, you can set the feed length manually.

Testing the RealWriter 402B: Good Speed and Output Quality

The RW402B can connect to Windows and macOS PCs via USB cable and to Windows PCs, as well as both Android and iOS mobile devices, using Bluetooth. I printed from a Samsung Galaxy S20FE phone and a USB-connected Windows PC for my tests. The Munbyn Print app pairs a phone print app with an online component that stores more than 2,000 templates and 3,500 pieces of clip art. (Munbyn calls them pre-made elements.)

As I discussed in more detail in the FM226 review, I found the mobile app easy to use for simple tasks, like picking a template to print, but it was difficult to learn, with some settings and other commands hard to find (and almost as hard to remember where they were once I found them). In the additional testing I did for this review, I also found that some controls worked differently in the online version than in the Android version, creating another hurdle to learning how to use both apps.

(Credit: M. David Stone)

A key difference between the FM226 and RW402B is how they let you use the online Munbyn Editor (where all those templates and clip art elements are stored, and where you can also optionally store any labels you create). The FM226 lets you log into the editor using a PC browser to create, modify, and save labels online. To print, however, you must download them to a mobile device via the Munbyn app. The RW402B adds the ability to print the labels from your PC, thanks to Munbyn offering a standard print driver for it.

Drivers are available for both Windows and macOS. Once installed, they let you print from virtually any other program on your system. For our performance tests, for example, I was able to run our standard label speed test, which uses Adobe Acrobat Reader to print PDF files.

(Credit: M. David Stone)

Munbyn rates the RW402B's maximum speed at 150mm per second (mm/sec), or 6 inches per second (ips), and its default speed, as tested, at 100mm/sec, or 3.9ips. Using 4-by-6-inch labels and printing our standard PDF test files via a USB connection, I timed it at 4.2 seconds for a single label, 21.5 seconds for 10 labels, and 98.2 seconds for 50 labels, which works out to 3.2ips for 50 labels. In comparison, the Rollo X1040 came in at 7.1 seconds for a single label and 90.8 seconds for 50 labels, or 3.8ips. The Arkscan 2054A-LAN was tested using an earlier-generation test protocol with different label content (which can affect speed), so we can't make a reliable performance comparison between it and the other two models.

The 203dpi resolution is common for label printers. Output quality was suitably dark and readable to make it easily good enough for most purposes, from shipping labels to text and line graphics. This is particularly true when using the plastic label stock, which, in addition to being a bright white for higher contrast, offers a high-density thermal coating to further enhance quality, according to Munbyn.

(Credit: M. David Stone)

The company also says that the RW402B uses the same algorithms for boosting print quality as the FM226, which we found particularly impressive on this score. In our tests, however, the RW402B came out slightly lower on the quality scale. Some particularly thin lines that barely held in the FM226 output were visibly broken in the RW402B's output, for example, and the same photo lost more shadow detail. Munbyn suggested this could be because the RW402B offers faster speed than the FM226, and speed can affect quality. That said, the RW402B delivered good quality overall in our tests compared with label printers in general. It just didn't match the FM226.

Verdict: Versatile Label Making from Your Preferred App

As we said about Munbyn's print app in the FM226 review, it's neither as easy to learn nor as easy to use as we'd like, but it's reasonably capable. The RW402B partially sidesteps those limitations, at least for printing from a PC, by adding a driver so you can print from any program you like.

If one of your primary needs for a label printer is printing 4-by-6-inch shipping labels, so you can't choose something smaller and less expensive like the FM226, be sure to consider the Rollo X1040, which is designed to work seamlessly with Rollo's online shipping manager as well as with Rollo's online Design program for other types of labels. You might also want to consider the Arkscan 2054A-LAN, which is a heavier-duty unit with faster print speed that can connect to your network by Ethernet. The Rollo and Arkscan models each earned our Editors' Choice award for their categories. However, both cost more than the RW402B. If you need to print a variety of labels, and your print needs are in the low-to-moderate-duty range, it can easily be the right choice.