As comparably equipped 8-inch color label printers, the Afinia L701 and Epson CW-C6500 (gloss) are both used to print color product labels. They use different technologies, different ink types, and differ in printing speed. The Afinia L701 color label printer is much faster than the Epson CW-C6500. This performance difference is dramatic and could be the deciding factor if your business prints a large volume of labels each month.

If you look at the advertised print speeds of each printer, you may not think there's a big difference. However, it's important to recognize the following:

You're not likely to use draft mode in production, so you should compare printing speeds at the highest print quality settings.

The Epson CW-C6500's printhead moves back and forth, so it's much slower when printing wider labels. Thus, you should compare printing speeds at the widest print width. Note: the Afinia L701 uses a stationary printhead so its print speed is unaffected by print width.

To show you how much faster the Afinia L701 color label printer is, we printed a batch of 8"x4" labels on each printer for 60 seconds at their highest resolutions (1600x1600 dpi for the Afinia L701 and 1200 dpi for the Epson CW-C6500). Watch the video below to see exactly how much faster the Afinia L701 is than the Epson CW-C6500.

The Epson CW-C6500 doesn't even come close. For the 8"x4" example label, it printed at a speed of 0.20” per second. In contrast, the Afinia L701 printed the example label at its highest resolution in 6 ips.

So, how much faster is the Afinia L701 than the Epson CW-C6500? About 5.8 inches per second faster when it matters the most, at high resolution for the widest label width.

Recommendations

If you operate a small home-based business and only need to print a few labels at a time, then the Epson CW-C6500 color label printer should be adequate for your needs. That said, if your business prints dozens or hundreds of labels at a time, then the time savings offered by the Afinia L701 is a significant advantage over the CW-C6500. Plus, the print quality of the L701 is much better.

We also recommend requesting free label samples so you can see the print quality from each label printer. Send us your design file and we’ll print label samples for you on both printers.