I run a small business and every product that leaves here has a label on it: a name, a price, a flavor, a size. I’ve bought two Nelko label printers to do that work — the P21 pocket printer in February 2024 and the larger PM220 that September — so I’ve done the awkward part of this decision with my own money. If you’re a small seller trying to work out how much label maker you actually need, here’s what I’d tell you.
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Quick verdict
For most small businesses, the cheap pocket printer wins. The Nelko P21 handles product labels, price tags and jar stickers for very little money, prints in black on whatever color tape you load, and lives in a drawer until you need it. It takes about five minutes to set up and there’s no ink to buy. The case against it is narrow but real: it’s phone-only and its label lengths are fixed, so if you need to print from a laptop or you want large address labels, the 2-inch PM220 is the model I’d point you at instead. check current price on Amazon
Why I bought it
Handwritten stickers. That was the honest starting point. They’re free and they made products I’d worked hard on look like a school project, and once you’re shipping regularly the customer sees that label before they open anything. I wanted something that looked deliberate without hiring a print shop or buying a desktop labeling system.
The P21 solved it for under the price of a takeaway dinner. I picked that model over fancier options because it’s small, it runs off a rechargeable battery, and it needs nothing but my phone. The app is where the design happens — the listing says it ships with thousands of icons, borders, materials and templates, plus support for barcodes, QR codes and images — and I use maybe a fraction of that.
When I later needed larger labels, I bought the second Nelko, the PM220. The listing title describes it as a 2-inch portable thermal printer for small business, addresses, logos, clothing and stickers, and it works with phones and a PC. That’s the honest distinction between the two: same idea, different label size and a PC option.
What it’s like to use
Charge it, install the app, pair over Bluetooth, load a roll, type, print. The label comes out of the top, you peel it and stick it on. There are no rollers to adjust and no ink to prime, and because the tape comes on rolls you can print four labels for one order without wasting a sheet.
Black text on colored tape is where the cheap printer stops looking cheap. The P21 can’t print in color, so the color comes from the tape — blue and yellow for my two main product lines, pink for samples. Customers noticed that before they noticed anything else I’d changed, and I now sort stock by tape color rather than reading every label. I wrote a full Nelko P21 label maker tape review of the three-roll color pack, and a separate Nelko P21 label maker review, if you want the detail on either half.
Two limits you should know about before buying, because both caught me. The label length is set by the tape size, not by how much you type, so a long product name shrinks or wraps instead of making a longer label. And the P21 is phone-only — the listing states it doesn’t work with computers — which is exactly the gap the PM220 fills for me.
What has kept both printers on my bench is how boring they’ve been. Neither has failed mid-order, neither needs a consumable besides tape, and printing a single sticker to fix a mistake takes seconds. For a small operation, that reliability matters more than any feature list.
Key specs
| Model | Nelko P21 label maker |
|---|---|
| Print type | Direct thermal, monochrome — black text only, no ink or toner |
| Resolution | 203 DPI |
| Control | Nelko app over Bluetooth, iOS and Android |
| Computer support | None — phone only |
| Label sizes | Fixed lengths including 14x40mm, 14x50mm, 14x75mm; no continuous tape |
| Battery | Built-in rechargeable; charging adapter not included |
| Known issue | Not compatible with Google phones running Android 14 |
| App content | 3,600+ icons, 700+ borders, 750+ templates, 29 languages |
| Larger option | Nelko PM220, 2-inch portable thermal printer, phones and PC |
The PM220 exists because the P21’s fixed small-label sizes are the one thing it can’t do. If your products wear price-tag sized labels, you don’t need it. check current price on Amazon
Who should skip it
Skip the P21 if you need to print from a computer, because it doesn’t work with one. Skip it if your labels need to be bigger than the fixed 14x40mm, 14x50mm and 14x75mm sizes, and look at the PM220 class instead. And if your labeling is shipping boxes all day, neither pocket printer is the right tool — that’s a 4×6 shipping label printer.
FAQ
Do you need an expensive label maker to label products for a small business?
No, and I’d argue you don’t want one at the start. The work is short product names, prices and tags, which a cheap thermal pocket printer handles without ink or software. Spend the difference on colored tape instead — it changes how the label looks more than a more expensive machine would have.
Can a small business label maker print in color?
Most thermal label makers, including the Nelko P21, print black only. Color comes from the label tape: load Blue, Yellow or Pink and you get black print on that color. That’s genuinely all most small sellers need, and it’s why buying rolls of colored tape is the cheapest upgrade you can make.
Should I buy a label maker or a shipping label printer?
They do different jobs. A pocket label maker like the P21 is for product labels, price tags and jars — small, fixed-size stickers. A 4×6 shipping label printer is for carrier labels on boxes, where speed and full-page size matter. Most small sellers who ship regularly end up with both, but only one is urgent at first.
Bottom line
After two printers and a couple of years of using them on real orders, my answer for a small business is the cheap one: the Nelko P21 does product and price labels properly, pairs with colored tape so the result looks intentional, and costs so little that upgrading later isn’t painful. Only reach for a bigger machine when you have a specific reason — computer printing or bigger labels. check current price on Amazon