Dymo Discpainter Review by Jim Poor for the Nature, Wildlife and Pet Photography Forum

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The Nature, Wildlife and Pet Photography Forum Presents:
The Dymo Discpainter - A Review by Jim Poor
Edited by James Morrissey

In the Spring of 2008, I attended a workshop with Moose Peterson. The workshop incorporated a lot of marketing information, including education on promotional material and such things as to how to "stand out." As a result of this workshop, I decided that I needed to be able to provide custom branded discs to customers and publishers alike. I tried everything from printed labels that you apply to the disc up to a Lightscribe burner.

None of those options really met my main requirements, which were:

1. It has to “just work.”

2. It must work intuitively without my reading a tome of an instruction manual.

3. It can’t waste time or materials.

The printed sticky labels managed to get bubbles or wrinkles in the label more often than not, and the Lightscribe, though pretty, was wasteful on several counts. With a label low in detail, my burn time was 16+ minutes per label. To make matters worse, about 25-30 percent of my discs were ruined due to problems with burning the labels that left blank spaces or concentric rings on the face of the disc like this:

© 2010; Jim Poor

Enter the Dymo Discpainter. Within five minutes of walking into my front door with one of these little things, I was walking back up stairs to show off a nicely printed label. So far, my first requirement seemed to have been met right away.

Over 300 discs later, I have yet to have a disc ruined by the printer. I’ve managed to ruin a couple by printing the wrong label on a disc. I have also ruined one by spinning it in my CD burner while wet, but I can’t blame that on anyone or anything but myself.

Some specifics:

The unit leaves a relatively small footprint, being equivalent in size to a decent sized toaster. It fits just about anywhere - which is really nice given the way my office generally looks.

The printer will cost you $279.95 direct from Dymo. There are better and worse prices out there. I got mine at Microcenter, which is right down the street.

Dymo advertises about 60 seconds to print a label, and with my full label and a marbled looking background I average right about that. Here is a screenshot of my label design from the Discus for Dymo software that comes with the printer.

© 2010; Jim Poor

Print quality is controlled by two settings that are accessible from both the Discus software as well as from the print dialog. This is handy if you want to print from another application such as Photoshop, but so far I’ve felt no need to do so.

The first setting is Print Quality, which has three stops: Draft, Normal and Best. I print all my disks at the “Normal” setting and they look great. The “Best” setting doesn’t seem to add that much to the final product, but doesn’t really add any significant printing time either.

The next setting is “Ink Density,” which has 10 levels. Levels 1-5 are labeled “Matte,” 6-8 are labeled “Glossy” and 9&10 are labeled “Color.” These refer to the finish of the discs used and does not mean that the printer itself has a gloss function or that the color setting is for color images. You can get printable discs with colored surfaces and that is where the 9&10 would be used. The higher the number in the second setting, the more ink is used. I’ve not printed on any colored discs, only white in both matte and glossy, but I’m happy with the amount of discs I get with one cartridge.

Drying time: So far I’ve only had one disk come out with a spot of wet ink on it and I typically grab the discs out right after the print completes. The one “wet disc” happened on a day with extremely high humidity. Dymo recommends burning first and then printing, but I’ve done it both ways with the exact same results other than the one wet disc, which ended up with streaks on it from spinning in my burner before the ink was dry.

Cost per disc:

The cost of the actual discs varies widely, but I’ve managed to get them for as low as $.24 each in bulk. Dymo estimates 100 discs per cartridge at the “normal” setting, but what I have read from others and my own experience thus far indicates that they are being very conservative. My first cartridge started showing signs of low ink at just over 250 discs, all with the label you see above with the only exception being a change in text based on the event. Each cartridge (there is only one) costs $40.00 just about everywhere I’ve seen them. So doing the math - 100 discs would make the ink cost per disc $.40 and 200 discs would make it $.20. Assuming that I am able to continue making about 250 discs per cartridge, the cost should be about $.16.

My settings:

For Matte discs, I use the settings “Normal” and “5-Matte." For Glossy discs, I use “Normal” and “6-Glossy.”

What I like best about the Dymo DiscPainter:

+ Quick and easy to set-up, learn, and print

+ Serves a single purpose in a small footprint (A single purpose piece of equipment might not be the answer for everyone, but it fits me perfectly).

+ No need to mess with printer profiles (though I suppose you could if you really wanted).

+ It just works and does what I expect without ruining discs.

What I don’t like:

Not much. My one and only complaint, and it is a small one, is that when my disc started running dry, the ink monitor showed 25% ink remaining. Not a big deal since I got well over double the advertised number of discs through on my first cartridge.

To learn more about the Dymo DiscPainter you can: click here.

To learn more about Jim's work, please check out his website: http://www.jimpoor.net.

If you have a review that you would like to write, or a story about your own photographic journey that you would like to share, please contact us.

Just a friendly reminder that the text shared within this article is copyright 2010 and the property of Jim Poor and James Morrissey of the The Nature, Wildlife and Pet Photography Forum. The photographic images contained in this article are the property of Jim Poor and have been licensed to the NWP Photo Forum. Neither the text nor photographic images may be re-distributed without explicit written permission.