If you're a small-volume user, a label printer might not have a good payback time - but it avoids throwing away an entire page of labels when you want a single label.
If you're labelling things in medium volume, like items in data centre racks, then changing the paper in the office printer is a hassle, and making sure no-one else prints on your labels by mistake is a hassle, and getting the text to align with the labels can be a hassle too. None of those is impossible, but hand-writing a label will be a lot easier. If you want to have professional-looking printed labels, a label printer is the right tool for the job.
If you're running a higher throughput operation like ebay order fulfilment, printing labels one at a time can simplify your processes - a worker who only has one order and one label can't get things crossed over. At the same time, serious label printers can offer thermal printing (no toner or ink to replace), huge reels of labels, automatic removal of backing material, and so on.
> If you're a small-volume user, a label printer might not have a good payback time - but it avoids throwing away an entire page of labels when you want a single label.
And if you are a nano-volume user like me (I label external HDDS/SSDs mostly), you can do well with a low-tech solution i.e. a fully mechanical label printer [0]. I use it twice a month and for that frequency it's absolutely perfect.
If you're labelling things in medium volume, like items in data centre racks, then changing the paper in the office printer is a hassle, and making sure no-one else prints on your labels by mistake is a hassle, and getting the text to align with the labels can be a hassle too. None of those is impossible, but hand-writing a label will be a lot easier. If you want to have professional-looking printed labels, a label printer is the right tool for the job.
If you're running a higher throughput operation like ebay order fulfilment, printing labels one at a time can simplify your processes - a worker who only has one order and one label can't get things crossed over. At the same time, serious label printers can offer thermal printing (no toner or ink to replace), huge reels of labels, automatic removal of backing material, and so on.