Hi, I'm Tara
Stivers, portfolio marketing manager with Zebra Technologies.
And I'm here today with Jonathan Marshall from our product management team
to talk about the news at 231 Industrial Printer.
He's going to help answer some questions about this printer
and our industrial printer portfolio.
So Jonathan,
where does the ZT231 fit in with the full industrial printer portfolio?
So we follow a good, better, best tiered strategy with our product portfolio.
And that means we've got
a wide range of products to suit a wide range of applications.
The ZT231 is going to fit into that good space
or the value space, and that really means it's going to be affordable
and it's going to appeal to a wide range of customers.
We're also going to be introducing a ZT111 model, which is a step below this one,
and that would really be the most basic industrial printer that we would offer.
Okay.
So how might this printer compare to, say, some of our higher end desktop printers?
Sure.
So the ZT231 would fit
into the space between our desktop class of products
and the midrange of our industrial printer line.
The 231 is a step up in many ways from the desktop class of printers.
It's going to have a faster print speed.
It's going to be a heck of a lot more rugged in terms of the full
metal frame and the metal enclosure.
Bifold door with the integrated window.
That's important because it also supports a larger role of media,
the eight inch outer diameter roll of media, and a 450 meter ribbon capacity.
That's important because
it allows you to do a lot more printing before you have to change the supplies.
The 231 fits in below the ZT400 series and ZT600 series.
Industrial printers that are the higher end
printers are going to be a lot faster print speed, and they're going to be used
for a much higher duty cycle application like manufacturing as an example.
24 seven Manufacturing, yeah, most customers
won't need that type of capability.
So the ZT231 is an excellent middle ground
between the desktop class and the industrial printer midrange class.
I see.
So what would you say are some of the key differences between
the ZT231 and its predecessor?
Well, let's start with some of the things we didn't change first,
the same general mechanical design, so same small footprint.
That's really important. We didn't want to make.
Customers have to relearn how to use the product or learn how to use a new product.
It's a tried and true design.
It's been tested and we wanted to keep that.
Some of the things we added to the new product is 231.
We have the color touch display along with the status led icons here.
This is really important from a usability standpoint.
It makes it simple to understand what's going on with the printer.
If there's an issue that needs to be corrected, you have a good amount
of detail on the screen how to get that printer back to
the state that you want it to be in quickly.
We've added onboard emulation
for some of the most popular competitive print programing languages.
and that's important because it makes it easy to put a ZT231
into where a competitive product had been previously.
We've added features like USB host,
which makes it simple for a standalone print application.
So you don't have to have a PC,
you can simply connect a USB connected keyboard or a scanner.
To start your printing. We've added BTL Wireless capabilities.
So for a tap to pair interaction with a mobile device,
you actually have an app on your phone that can control some of the features
of the printer, whether for setup or for troubleshooting.
One of the things that I'm most interested to report is we've added UHF,
RFID print and encode capabilities in this value class space.
We didn't have that previously.
It was only available on higher end models.
That's going to be really important as we see continued growth in RFID
applications in the vertical of retail, in health care and even in manufacturing.
So essentially we kept
all the good stuff and added what the market was asking for.
Yeah, that's right. Right.
So for those moving to this new printer, is it backward compatible with the ZT230?
The product certainly fits into the same mechanical footprint as before.
And from a label and ZPL language support perspective.
We spent a lot of time in test and in engineering,
making sure that the labels that come out of the ZT230,
the legacy model, look exactly the same as what they
they look like when they come out on this new model.
Technology has certainly improved over the course of the time
that we initially developed the ZT230.
And so there are things, let's say Wi-Fi as an example,
that wouldn't necessarily have been there on the previous model.
So we do have a new set of accessory kits both for connectivity,
say Wi-Fi or ethernet or for media handling options like peeler and cutter.
So tell me, what are some of the key applications for the ZT231?
We designed it to be easily used in a wide range of applications,
so you might see it in transportation and logistics in a warehouse as an example
for packing labels or shipping labels or cross docking that type of stuff.
You might see it in a retail application for back of house,
let's say price labeling or again for shipping labels,
or you might even see it in a health care space for high volume pharmacy
applications or asset tags,
that type of thing with thermal transfer.
So it sounds really flexible for a wide variety of applications then.
So, Jonathan, any final thoughts you'd like to share with us
today about the ZT231 or industrial printers in general?
Well, I would just say that the ZT231 is a really great value.
It's got a lot of features packed into a small space
and I think it's going to be very relevant for a lot of different customers,
and we'd like to have them take a look at it.
Alright, thank you Jonathan, so much for answering the questions today.
And for any of you out there who have additional questions,
you can reach out to your sales contact or account manager