Brother Handheld Label Maker

This product ruins the batteries. I have tried three different brands of batteries and the same thing happens every time. It will work with the brand new batteries when used. I found out quickly if I leave the batteries in it when I turn it off they are dead the next time I go to use it so I started taking the batteries out after I turned it off. When I replace them to use it again it will power on and then die before I can print a label. I have tried using a battery tester and all batteries are good but still will not work in this machine.

I found the ability to print two lines of text on the tape, using small size font to be very useful for labelling small laboratory samples. Occasional tape feed problem, but it may be due to a mistake on how I use it. The ability to store 10 label texts for future use is very helpful.

The worst manual and the device is not intuitive. How do you make the size bigger? Or so it fills out the label. Well its not on the manual in a clear way. Some setting got changed and the letters were coming out really small and I thought you would just go to Size, Larger, but this just made an already tiny size slightly bigger. The only way I was able to get the size back to normal large was reset the device. Again not intuitive. Is it then in the width? After you get to the width prompt then what do you do? Not written out clearly. I was on the phone/ customer service for at least an hour and no go. I am an IT/ tech person that can eventually figure stuff out. This device should be more intuitive.

I would like an on line tutorial. Seems like the PT-H100 has a nice printer but seems to waste a lot of tape for every label made as a blank area on either side of printed part can add up to not efficient use of tape, but means Brother sells more tape. I would say 20% of the tape coming out of machine is white space. I would like to change size but cannot figure out how to do that easily. Overall I like having convenience, just not sure how efficient it is with so much tape wasted.

The PT-H100 worked fine for a few months. Then inexplicably, it would drain the batteries and not work. I bought new batteries. It worked, but the next time I used it, it didn't. Tried this several times, each time with brand new batteries. Customer service implied that the batteries were at fault, not the device. Not true. It so happens this also happened with my last Brother label maker. It was out of warranty (by a month or so), so they referred me to an "authorized repair service" who advised it would be more expensive to repair the device than buy a new one. I thought then that perhaps it was a fluke and gave Brothers one more chance with the P-Touch H100. Obviously not the case. Am very dissatisfied.