Epson LabelWorks LW-C610PX

The LabelWorks LW-C610PX is the pricier one of the two label printers in Epson's line that the company recommends for home use—the other being the LW-C410PX, which we recently reviewed. That makes the LW-C610PX top-of-the-line, in some sense, and it has a higher price to match, at $89. While it does offer more than the LW-C410PX in some ways, it offers a little less in others. It can handle wider tapes, it adds the option for AC power, and it's a touch faster, but it also lacks any way to print labels from a PC. That last item could be a deal killer if you prefer a full-size keyboard and want to use Epson's Windows-based label program instead of the more limited mobile app. But if you live your digital life mostly on your phone, the LW-C610PX could easily be your preferred choice.

Tapes, Tapes, and More Tapes

The LW-C610PX looks similar to the LW-C410PX in shape, but it's a smidge bigger, at 5.8 by 2.2 by 5.2 inches (HWD). The bigger housing makes room for a wider maximum tape width of 0.94 inch, compared with the LW-410PX's 0.71 inch. Essentially, it's a single-pound, two-tone beige box with rounded corners, an output slot on the front, a power button on the top, and a power connector on the back. The Epson name is emblazoned on one side, which lifts off so you can load and remove label cartridges as well as remove the battery-compartment cover.

You can power the LW-C610PX using either six AA batteries or an optional AC adapter, but neither is included. Make sure you're stocked up on batteries before ordering, or add the $59.95 adapter to your cart.

With either choice for power, setup is straightforward. Insert the supplied label tape cartridge and insert the batteries, or plug in the AC adapter. Then download the label app to your mobile device, connect by Bluetooth, and you're ready to create and print labels.

As discussed in a bit more detail in the LW-C410PX review, Epson introduced the LW-C610PX at the same time as the LW-C410PX and seven new categories of tape cartridges aimed specifically at home use, including for scrapbooking, crafting, and home DIY projects. The new categories—designer matte, pearlized and special color, metallic, gold imprint, printable ribbon, fluorescent, and soft color—each offer a choice of cartridges (from just two for metallic to 36 for designer matte). The variations within each category offer an assortment of color combinations and widths.

The LW-C610PX can accept any of the total of 61 cartridges available for home use. In addition, it can use almost all of the cartridges with up to 0.94-inch-wide tape that Epson lists for work use—roughly 115 more—which gives you 176 label cartridges to choose from. The tape types for work add 10 categories: standard industrial plastic tapes, matte tapes, strong adhesive, removable adhesive, shrink tube (for cables), wire wrap (also for cables), vinyl, nylon, magnetic (similar to refrigerator magnets), and fluorescent (in different tape lengths than the home category).

Along with differences in types among the home and work cartridges, the tape length and price also vary. More than half of the tapes in the work category at this writing cost $22.10 or $26.34, depending on their width, and are 30 feet long. The majority in the home category are $15 and 26 feet long. On a per-inch basis, the cost for the work types comes out to 6.1 or 7.3 cents per inch and the cost for the home types is 4.8 cents per inch. All of these are continuous rolls, so the cost per label will vary depending on the label length.

Testing the LabelWorks LW-C410PX: A Reasonably Capable Label App

Epson's Label Editor Mobile app is available for Android and iOS devices. I tested it (using version 1.1.0) with a Samsung Galaxy S20 FE phone. As mentioned in the LW-C410PX review, I found the app easy to use even the first time I saw it. It doesn't offer all the features of Epson's label editor for Windows, but it offers a solid set of editing features for a phone app. Among other options, you can add images (from your phone's gallery, for example) and symbols from any of 12 categories, including Food and Kitchen, Clothes, Craft and Decorative, and Vehicles. You can also add shapes (squares, rectangles, and lines), bar codes, and QR codes. You can also create a series of labels that automatically increment their ID numbers, among other options.

Creating and printing labels using the LW-C610PX was generally easy enough, but the process could be improved. For example, it shares the same issue mentioned in the LW-C410PX review when you're using the printable ribbon cartridge (as opposed to ordinary label stock). The LW-C610PX has a built-in label cutter, but you won't want to use that with ribbon. Miss the warning to use scissors to cut the ribbon—which is printed in small type on the cartridge—and you can wind up with ragged cuts, partial cuts, or even a jammed ribbon and a ruined cartridge.

Once you get past that problem, you'll also find that you need to add an extra inch to the label size when printing on the ribbon for it to advance enough to let you cut it with scissors. The good news is that once you've learned to turn off the cutter and add the extra inch, both problems are easy to avoid. Epson says it is looking at ways to address the issue, but until it does, you might want to add your own label to each ribbon cartridge you get to remind you to manually turn off the cutter.

Epson rates the LW-C610PX at 0.47 inch per second (ips). In my tests, it was significantly slower, probably in part because it had to send the data via Bluetooth. For a single label, not including cutting time, it averaged just 0.22ips, which translates to more than 4.5 seconds per inch, or about 18.7 seconds for a four-inch label. For a set of 10 labels, including the time for automatic cutting after each, it averaged 0.23ips. The two timings together, one without cutting for a single label and one including the cutting time for 10 labels, suggests that the actual print time is faster, but the throughput is slowed down for a single label by taking significant time to send the data to the printer, and slowed for multiple labels by the added time for cutting them.

In comparison, the LW-C410PX came in at 0.2ips for both the single-label and 10-label tests, while the Epson LW-PX300, which has similar capability to the LW-C410PX and is our top pick for a standalone label printer for labels up to 0.71 inch wide, was a touch faster for a single label at 0.23ips. (It has a manual cutter, so we couldn't run the second test on it.) The somewhat-more-expensive Epson LW-PX400, one of our top picks for printing at up to 0.94 inch wide, came in at a slightly faster 0.27ips for a single label, but it really showed off its faster speed for multiple labels, at 0.48ips complete with the auto cutting time.

Output quality is rarely a problem for label printers, both because of the technology and the sort of output they're generally called on to print. However, it's worth highlighting that the LW-C610PX offers an unusually high resolution for its price, at 360dpi. In my tests, it printed highly readable text at sizes as small as 5 points (the smallest the app allowed), and it held details in line graphics better than most label printers can manage.

Verdict: A Good Light-Duty Label Printer for Phones

If you need a light-duty label printer for plastic labels for home use, or even for work use, the LW-C610PX can be a good fit if you're most comfortable using a phone or tablet for creating as well as printing them. And note that as with all Epson LabelWorks printers, it comes with a lifetime warranty, which is always a welcome extra. However, if you want a printer you can connect to a PC as well as a mobile device, so you can use Epson's more robust label program for Windows, consider the LW-C410PX. It doesn't offer as high a resolution, an option for using AC power, or the ability to print on tapes larger than 0.71 inch, but it will let you take advantage of a full-size keyboard for typing label text.

You might also want to consider the LW-PX300, which offers roughly the same labeling capability as the LW-C410PX, but is a standalone printer. As a matter of taste, if you need the portability, you may prefer entering label text and giving commands with its built-in keyboard rather than having to use a phone-size touch screen. Also consider stepping up in price to the LW-PX400, especially if you need more than just a few labels at a time. In addition to its faster speed, it will let you connect to a PC by USB to create and print labels, it supports mobile printing via Bluetooth, and as with all of these printers, it can also print using Epson's home cartridges. All that said, the LW-C610PX is the only one of these models with 360dpi resolution, and if you prefer to print from your phone or tablet, it can easily be the label maker you want.