Full Pages From a Slim Bar, Courtesy of the ETIKEZ D90E Inkless Travel Printer

Most compact printers still trap you on receipt rolls or force a desk machine into a suitcase. ETIKEZ sized the D90E, priced at $64.59 (was $80), like a thick ruler that spans a letter page: about 10.4 inches wide, 2.3 inches deep, and 1.3 inches tall, so a sheet of 8.5 by 11 thermal paper feeds straight through a body that slides into a backpack or briefcase. Listings put the printer itself near a pound, and the kit adds a soft travel case plus a short stack of starter sheets. Heat does the work. No cartridges, toner, or ribbons sit in the bag, and the only consumable is coated thermal paper made for this machine. Ordinary copy paper will not print.

Heat sensitive stock is about the only thing that truly limits you. You can feed US letter sheets sold for the D90E, or matching A4 packs in other markets, and the 203 dpi thermal head lays down black text fine enough for contracts, notes, invoices, receipts, and even handing out class presentations, which reviews applaud. Photos and fine details, on the other hand, appear slightly softer than those produced by a laser printer, which is to be expected at this resolution and pricing. Some kits will also accept fanfold packs, continuous rolls, and temporary tattoo transfer sheets. When you tear the sheet, it just offers you a clean finish. You still buy the paper in 100-sheet packs, but you don’t have to worry about running out of ink.

You can connect phones to it via Bluetooth using the free Labelnize software on iOS 13 and later, Android, and iPad, or for Windows and Mac, use a USB connection and a driver from the Labelnize website or the included USB stick. If you own a Chromebook, you’re out of luck. To pair it, press and hold the power button for a few seconds until a steady light appears, then connect and send over a pdf or one of the app’s templates. It comes with a USB-C cable, which you can just plug into any old 5 volt 2 amp brick you have laying around the home. As for how long it lasts, claims range from roughly 50 minutes of continuous use to over a hundred pages on a larger battery, so consider a single charge as a work session rather than a week of printing. When it emits a solid green light, you know everything is in order; blue indicates that Bluetooth is operational, and any red light indicates that something has gone wrong, such as an open cover, empty tray, or low battery.


Students, teachers, notaries, truckers, and anyone who signs papers away from a copier are the obvious audience. A hotel room, a campus library table, a cab of a truck, or a kitchen counter can produce a readable letter-size page without hunting a business center. Getting it set up from the box to the first print is really simple, as long as you load the coated side exactly as the instructions instructs and ensure the sheet is square in the slot. Automatic feed so it pulls the page out for you, and a fast touch on the power button to bring it back in, and if you run a lot of prints in a row, there’s an overheat safeguard that just pauses the head and waits for it to cool down before resuming.