As a small, lightweight, standalone label printer, the Dymo LetraTag Plus LT-100T ($29.99) has a lot in common with the closely competitive Brother P-touch PT-H100 and the Editors' Choice Brother P-touch PT-D200 . It runs on batteries, it's completely self-contained, and it doesn't print from PCs, even as an option. If you don't print a lot of labels and want the flexibility to use paper, plastic, iron-on fabric, or metallic label stock, this printer is worth considering.

Unlike the Brother PT-H100, which can fit in one hand while you enter text on the ABCD-style keyboard with the other, the LT-100T ($21.00 at Amazon) is built around essentially the same physical design as the Brother PT-D200, which is best held with both hands or rested on a surface while in use. Aside from some curved edges that help make it a bit more attractive, it's basically rectangular, at 6.7 by 5.7 inches at its widest and deepest, and ranges from 1 inch high in the front to 2.8 inches high in the back, tilting the QWERTY keyboard to make it easy to use.

The keyboard is too small for touch typing, but it works nicely for two-finger typing. The label printer is also light enough, at 1 pound 1 ounce with batteries, to hold in two hands and thumb-type, assuming your hands are large enough. I found it easy, but, then, my hands are too big to successfully thumb type on most cell phones.

Setup and Basics

To set up the LT-100T, you simply snap in the supplied tape cartridge plus four AA batteries, which you'll have to get elsewhere. Alternatively, you can substitute an optional AC power adapter ($26.99) for the batteries.

The types of labels available for the LT-100T overlap with the choices for the Epson and Brother models, but don't match. Dymo doesn't offer the equivalent of Epson's glow-in-the-dark labels, for example, or Brother's labels with acid-free adhesive for labeling photos without damaging them.

The choices for the LT-100T are plastic, paper, fabric iron-on, or metallic labels, all in 0.5-inch widths only. The colors are limited to black on white for paper and iron-on labels; black on silver, pink, or blue for metallic labels, and black on white, blue, red, yellow, teal green, gray, or transparent tape for plastic labels. Prices range from a low of $8.99 for single cartridges of most tape choices to a maximum of $22.99 for a three-pack of metallic tapes.

Creating and Printing Labels

Both creating labels and printing them is easy, thanks largely to self-explanatory control buttons and menu options. Most buttons are marked in clearly understandable text, and the few that use icons are obvious as well. A floppy disk icon, for example, designates the Save button, which will let you save up to nine labels in memory. Similarly, a folder with an arrow emerging from it indicates the Retrieve button, for picking a stored label to print.

To print a label, you simply type in some text (or retrieve a label from memory), hit the Print button, and then press the manual cutter. You can also choose the Format button before printing, and then use menu choices to change text size (with five settings from Extra Small to Extra Large) and style (Normal, Bold, Italic, Outline, Shadow, and Vertical), as well as add your choice of border. An Insert button lets you automatically put the current date in a label, add a second line, or add any of 195 symbols, including Greek characters and both trademark and copyright symbols.

One potential issue is that the 13-character LCD isn't backlit. However, the characters are large enough to be readable in most lighting conditions, and not having a backlight helps extend battery life. Also helping the battery life is an auto-off feature that kicks in two minutes after the last button press.

Speed and Other Issues

Dymo rates the LT-100T's print speed at 0.5 inches per second (ips). I timed a 3-inch label with the text "PCMag: Printer Test" at 11.9 seconds for both plastic and paper labels, not including the time for manual cutting. That works out to a little faster than 0.25ips. Speed isn't all that important if you're printing just a few labels at a time, but note that the Brother PT-H100 was about three times faster, at 0.74ips, and the Brother PT-D200 came in a close second, at 0.73ips.

If you prefer a printer you can hold in one hand while entering text and commands with the other, be sure to look at the Brother PT-H100. If you want a QWERTY keyboard, however, either the Dymo LetraTag LT-100T or the Editors' Choice Brother PT-D200 will be a better fit. The Brother model is faster, and it offers a row of number keys instead of an embedded numeric keypad for extra convenience. But for any of these printers, the key factor is whether it produces the kind of labels you need. And if you need paper labels, for file folders for example, as well as plastic labels, the Dymo LT-100T is one of the few printers that can do both.

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