Printing business labels—file-folder labels, mailing labels, return-address labels, and the like—has the feel of a serious task. The Brother QL-570 Professional Label Printer ($100 street) manages to turn a boring chore into—well, maybe not your idea of fun, but a much easier job than it could be. The QL-570 has a distinctly gadgety feel to it, with graceful lines and a handsome, two-tone design: silver and dark gray. It delivers great speed, a wide assortment of labels to print on, and the easiest approach I've yet seen to changing from one type of label to another.

The QL-570 is Brother's second-generation office label printer for labels up to just over 2.4 inches wide. Earlier models combined an impressive piece of hardware with less-than-impressive software. The QL-570 retains everything good about the previous hardware (most notably, the ease of switching between different rolls of labels); improves some hardware features, like speed and size; and brings the software almost up to same level as the hardware, putting it within shooting distance of "impressive."

The first-generation Brother label printers—the QL-500 and QL-550—were noticeably larger than their direct competitors from DYMO and Seiko Instruments, making them more obtrusive on an office desk. The QL-570 is still a bit larger than the competition, but not by as much as its predecessors, with a 4.9-by-7-inch footprint compared with the typical 4 by 6 inches. Not so incidentally, the only difference between the QL-500 and QL-550 was an automatic cutter in the QL-550. The QL-570 also comes with an automatic cutter, but matches the QL-500's price.

Another plus is that Brother sells an unusually wide variety of labels for the QL-570: both paper and film, and both precut labels and continuous rolls. According to Brother, the four most popular formats are standard address labels (1.2 by 3.5 inches), file-folder labels (0.7 by 3.4 inches), shipping labels (2.4 by 4 inches), and the 2.4-inch-wide, white-paper continuous roll.

The full range of choices includes ten precut labels, with seven rectangular formats ranging from 0.7 by 2.1 inches to 2.4 by 4 inches; two round formats at 0.5- and 1-inch diameters; plus disc labels with a 2.3-inch diameter. Other choices include 100-foot-long paper and 50-foot-long film, and continuous rolls at widths from 0.5 to 2.4 inches. Some of the film rolls are available in white, clear, or yellow. There is also a removable paper label roll with a weaker adhesive, available in both white and yellow.

Street prices for the rolls range from $12.60 (for file-folder labels) to $95 (for the wide, yellow-film continuous roll). For standard address labels, the cost works out to 3.6 cents per label.

With most label printers, the benefits of having a variety of labels to choose from are undercut by the difficulty of switching back and forth between different rolls. This is such an annoyance, in fact, that the DYMO LabelWriter Twin Turbo earned an Editors' Choice by essentially providing two printers in one, so that you can load two different label formats and print on either.

One of the more impressive features of the QL-570 is how easy it is to swap label rolls. Brother's rolls come mounted on spools that you just snap into place in the printer, then feed through a slot. Switching rolls is fast and simple, so you can easily take advantage of different label formats.

The QL-570's print speed is another strong point. Brother claims a 68-label-per-minute speed for standard address labels. Using a three-line address, I printed 68 3.5-inch-long labels in 1 minute 4 seconds—a hair slower than the claim but still faster than most other office label printers. This may not save much time when you're printing a single address label. But with other printers, I've been left feeling like I'm waiting for a label, even if just for a second or two. That won't happen with the QL-570.

The QL-570's software, vastly improved over the version I reviewed with the QL-500, is reasonably easy to learn and use and offers a number of welcome features, most notably a Snap mode that works like an image-capture program. Choosing Snap hides the Brother software from view—except for a small Snap mode text box. You can either select an area on screen and insert it into a label as a graphic, or select text and drag it to the text box to insert the selection as text.

The software still misses some important tricks. One thing I found particularly bothersome was the way it handles Postnet codes—the bar codes that the Post Office uses for mailing addresses. I expect label programs to find the ZIP code automatically in an address and format the Postnet code to match. Brother's software makes you type the ZIP code manually, a mildly annoying chore.

Another drawback is that the Help file and manual assume that you know what a Postnet code is. If you don't, you can't look up how to add it. Brother says it plans to address this with instructions on its Web site, but that won't help people who don't think to look on the site. Another problem with having to enter the ZIP code manually for the Postnet code is that it means you can't use Postnet codes with the program's mail-merge feature. That function reads data from an assortment of standard formats, including Access, Excel, and comma-separated variable formats.

That matter aside, I'm not too concerned about shortcomings in the software, since the printer also comes with a standard driver, so you can print labels directly from other programs. You can, for example, use Word's mail-merge feature to print labels and let Word insert the Postnet codes automatically. Impressive hardware, plus pretty good software, plus a driver to let you use the printer with any other program you like, is enough to put the QL-570 in the top tier of office label printers, and make it an easy pick for Editors' Choice.

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