Zebra ZT610 4-Inch Industrial Thermal Transfer Label Printer 600 dpi Colour Touch Gigabit Ethernet ZT61046-T010100Z

Key Features

• 600 dpi resolution, the finest head Zebra offers on a four-inch industrial printer.
• At 600 dpi this printer runs 1 to 6 ips. The 14 ips headline belongs to the 203 dpi build and does not apply here.
• Maximum print length at 600 dpi is 30 inches, not the 150 inches of the 203 dpi build.
• 4.3-inch full-colour touch display, which is what the 1 in this part number buys.
• Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0, RS-232 serial and Bluetooth 4.1 all fitted.
• Two front-mounted USB host ports and a static NFC tag for setup from a phone.
• 1 GB of RAM and 2 GB of on-board Flash, the largest allocation in this range.
• Takes an 8-inch roll on a 3-inch core and 1,476 ft of ribbon.
• Reads media from 0.79 inches wide, and a micro-label variant goes to 0.47 inches.
• Tear-off on this part number, with rewind and cutter as separate part numbers.
• All-metal 24/7 build at 50 lb, the Xi4-class replacement in Zebra's range.

Key Specifications

• Print method: Thermal transfer and direct thermal
• Resolution: 600 dpi (24 dots per mm)
• Print speed: 1 to 6 ips (152 mm per second maximum) at 600 dpi
• Print width: 4.09 in (104 mm)
• Maximum print length: 30 in (762 mm) at 600 dpi
• Media: 0.79 to 4.5 in wide, 8.0 in OD on a 3 in core, 0.0023 to 0.010 in thick
• Ribbon: 1,476 ft (450 m), 0.79 to 4.33 in wide, 1.0 in core, 3.2 in maximum roll OD
• Media handling: Tear-off on this part number. Rewind and cutter are separate part numbers
• Connectivity: USB 2.0, RS-232 serial, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 4.1, two USB host ports, NFC tag
• Display: 4.3 in full-colour touch display
• Memory: 1 GB RAM, 2 GB on-board linear Flash
• Dimensions and weight: 15.58 x 10.56 x 19.88 in (395.7 x 268.2 x 505 mm), 50 lb (22.7 kg)

Six hundred dpi

This part number carries Zebra's 600 dpi printhead, the finest available on a four-inch industrial printer, and it exists for work that 203 and 300 dpi cannot do. Very small text on electronic components, dense 2D codes in a few millimetres square, laboratory and specimen labels, jewellery tags and anything that has to be read by a machine vision system rather than a handheld scanner. At 600 dpi a dot is a quarter the width of a 203 dpi dot, so a DataMatrix that would be marginal at standard resolution verifies cleanly. If the labels in question are shipping labels and Code 128, this resolution is unnecessary and a 203 dpi build is faster and cheaper.

Speed at this resolution

The ZT610 is marketed on 14 inches per second and that figure is real, but it belongs to the 203 dpi build. At 600 dpi this printer runs 1 to 6 ips, and maximum print length drops to 30 inches from the 150 inches the 203 dpi build manages. This is not a limitation of the machine so much as physics: four times the dots per inch means four times the data and four times the heating cycles per inch of label. Distributor feeds propagate the 14 ips figure against this part number regularly and it is wrong. Plan the line around 6 ips. Anyone who needs both 600 dpi and high speed needs two printers, not one.

Display and setup

The 1 in the trailing block of this part number is the display, and it buys a 4.3-inch full-colour touch screen; the 0 in that position is the alternative and it is a much plainer machine to live with. The touch display shows media and ribbon status, network settings and error conditions in plain words rather than as codes to look up, which on a printer this size is the difference between an operator clearing a fault and an operator calling someone. Two front-mounted USB host ports accept a memory stick for firmware and stored formats with no PC involved, and a static NFC tag lets a phone pull up the printer's details by touch.

Connections fitted

USB 2.0, RS-232 serial, Gigabit Ethernet and Bluetooth 4.1 are all fitted on this part number, which covers direct attachment, network queues, legacy serial devices and mobile configuration without an option card. Gigabit rather than 10/100 matters for firmware distribution and central management across a printer fleet more than it does for label data. Wireless is the notable absence: dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi exists for this printer but as a separate part number or a field card, so this unit as supplied has no Wi-Fi. Zebra's current literature also lists 802.11ax with Bluetooth 5.3 as an option on newer builds of the platform.

Media and ribbon

Media runs from 0.79 to 4.5 inches wide on an 8-inch outside-diameter roll with a 3-inch core, and from 0.0023 to 0.010 inches thick. A micro-label variant of the printer handles media down to 0.47 inches for very small parts. Ribbon capacity is 1,476 ft on a 1-inch core with a 3.2 inch maximum roll diameter and widths from 0.79 to 4.33 inches. Dual media sensors, transmissive and reflective, handle gap, notch, black mark and continuous stock. As on the ZT510, ribbon winding is worth confirming before committing to a supply: Zebra's guide states which coatings the printer accepts and a core kit is needed for the other.

Build and duty

This is Zebra's Xi4-class replacement and it is built accordingly: an all-metal chassis at 50 lb, designed for continuous 24/7 duty rather than for a shift here and there. The memory allocation follows from that, at 1 GB of RAM and 2 GB of on-board linear Flash, the largest in this range, which lets a site keep fonts, graphics, stored formats and ZBI programs resident on the printer so the host sends only variable data. Operating range is 40 to 104 F in thermal transfer and 32 to 104 F in direct thermal, with 20% to 85% non-condensing humidity. Zebra extended the industrial warranty on this platform to two years effective 1 January 2021.

Barcode Printer Shop supplies Zebra printers to US businesses, configuration by configuration rather than model by model, so the part number on the invoice is the one that fits the line. Contact us to learn more or secure this solution for your business today.