If you are in the market for an 8-inch color label printer, you have probably come across the Afinia L701 and the Epson CW-C6500. Both printers offer great features, but which one is the best for your needs? Today, we will compare printing an 8"x4" color label on both printers. If you're buying an 8-inch label printer, you're probably going to want to print eight-inch labels most of the time, so we're focused on that size. We will look at print speed and print quality to help you decide which printer is right for you.

We're using an 8-inch-wide label because the Epson CW-C6500's print speed varies by width. It is much slower when printing an eight-inch-wide label than it is when printing a two- or four-inch-wide label. With the Afinia L701, label width doesn't matter because it uses a stationary printhead rather than a serial printhead that moves back and forth like the CW-C6500.

Before we get to our speed comparison, let's talk about print resolution. Of course, you can get a much faster print speed from the CW-C6500 if you lower the print resolution, but we're focused on print quality here. After all, you probably want your labels to look good, not just print quickly.

The Epson CW-C6500 can print at resolutions up to 1200 dpi, which is good. However, the Afinia L701 is even better with either 1600x800 dpi or 1600x1600 dpi. For our speed comparison, we will use the highest print resolution setting for each printer so that we can get the best possible print quality and mimic a real-world printing situation as closely as possible.

Now, let's get to our speed comparison. Watch the video below to see the two printers printing identical 8"x4" color labels at 1600x800 dpi (L701) and 1200dpi (CW-C6500) for 60 seconds.

As you can see, the Afinia L701 is multiple times faster than the Epson CW-C6500, printing 6 inches per second versus just 0.20 inches per second on the Epson. In one minute, the Afinia L701 printed 90 8"x4" labels while the Epson CW-C6500 printed just 3 8"x4" labels.

What does this mean in practice? If you're printing 1000 labels, the Afinia L701 will take about 12 minutes while the Epson CW-C6500 will take well over five hours.

If you will be printing a lot of labels, the Afinia L701 is the printer for you. It is much faster than the Epson CW-C6500, and its print quality is better, too.

In fact, we want you to see the print quality, too. Order a free label sample kit to see for yourself how the Afinia L701's print quality compares to the Epson CW-C6500. We will print your label design using both printers and mail label samples to you so you can see what 1200 and 1600 dpi look like on an eight-inch label. You'll also notice that the Afinia L701 produces more vivid colors than the CW-C6500, which is due to ink differences.

Order Your Free Label Sample Kit