Deep Dive: Zebra ZT411 and ZT421 series industrial printers: easy to use and designed to grow as your business grows

Zebra’s ZT400 series printers have an all-metal frame build and user-friendly bi-fold door that gives you a high-performing, versatile industrial-grade printer with easy access for operators

The ZT400 series printers have a touch-screen, full color display panels, easy-to-load media and easy-access printhead and platen rollers make it easy for operators to perform routine maintenance. Zebra has incorporated multiple, standard ports to connect multiple peripherals to suit your needs.

Full Color Touch-Screen Display

The ZT411 and ZT421 have a large, full color touch screen display. This is a considerable upgrade from the monochrome displays on the first-generation ZT410 and ZT420 models.

The touch screen makes printer set up much easier. The highly responsive touch screen responds well to gloved and ungloved hands along with a variety of stylus’ that are widely used with touch screens.

In addition, Zebra added setup wizards complete with animations that will walk operators through the process. This can get you into production faster without the need for Zebra tech support.

Easy-to-Load Media

The bi-fold door gives the operator easy access to the interior of the printer and Zebra has color coded the media stations so swapping out labels, ribbons and tag materials is a breeze.

These Zebra printers have an internal light that makes media changes and adjustments easy for operators who need to make adjustments for printers located on the ground or operate in low light environments.

Easy-Access for Routine Maintenance

The ZT400 series printers have a tool-less design to change out printhead assemblies and platen rollers.

This gives your operators increased uptime and higher production efficiency as they can changeover these consumables virtually on the fly.

Zebra also introduced a printhead element failure warning with the ZT411 and ZT421 models. Over time, imaging elements within the printheads fail any operators would need to be vigilant with barcode grade declines to identify performance drop offs. This new feature alerts the operators ahead of time when elements fail during use.

Expandable to Meet Your Changing Business Needs

The ZT411 and ZT421 models have two USB sockets added in the front that allows for easy connectivity of barcode scanners, USB drives or other peripherals like a keyboard.

The printers have standard USB, serial and ethernet ports in the back of the printer like the earlier ZT410 and ZT420 printers had.

Zebra also added room for expansion with two available expansion ports for futures incorporation of parallel, ethernet, applicator interace cards and more.

The ZT400 series printers give you considerable amount of flexibility as your business needs change in the future.

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ZT411 (4” width) & ZT421 (6” width) Standard Features

• Thermal transfer and direct thermal printing
• Thin film printhead with E3™ Element Energy™ Equalizer for superior print quality
• 203 dpi print resolution (8 dots / mm)
• Print speed per second up to 14″ (356 mm / second)
• USB 2.0, high speed
• RS-232 Serial (RS-232C with DB9F connector; Configurable baud rate (2400 – 115,200kB), parity, and data bits. Stop bits at 1 or 2; Software (XON/XOFF), hardware (DTR/DSR or RTS/CTS) communication handshake protocols)
• 10/100 Ethernet: Supports networks internally integrated option that enables the use of Webview and Alert features
• Bluetooth® 4.1 (including Apple®)
• Dual USB Host
• 4.3-inch color touch display with intuitive menu for quick operation and settings management
• Bi-colored status LEDs for quick printer status
• ARM Cortex A7 processor
• 256 MB RAM memory (8 MB User Available)
• 512 MB Flash memory (64 MB User Available)
• Print Touch™ application
• Link-OS®-enabled
• Auto-switching 100-240V power supply
• ENERGY STAR® qualified
• Printhead element out detection
• Dual media sensors — transmissive and reflective
• 3” media supply hanger
• Auto calibration when printer is turned on or when printhead is closed
• Easy, side-loading metal print mechanism
• Tool-less printhead and platen replacement
• Metal media cover with enlarged clear viewing window
• Robust-gold user touch points indicating key adjustments
• Bi-fold media door decreasing overall operating space by 35%
• Resident ZPL®, ZPL II® and EPL™ programming languages, selectable through software or front panel
• XML-Enabled Printing — allows XML communications for barcode label printing eliminating license fees and printer server hardware while lowering customization and programming costs

ZT411 (4” width) & ZT421 (6” width) Optional Features

• Printhead 300 dpi (12 dots / mm)
• Printhead 600 dpi (24 dots / mm) – available only with ZT411 (4” width)
• Parallel (Bi-directional interface)
• Wireless dual radio with 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.1
• 10/100 Ethernet
• Applicator interface
• Asian and other international scalable and smooth bitmapped fonts
• RFID Capability – Fully integrated ThingMagic® UHF EPC Gen 2 V2.0/ISO 18000-63 RFID Reader / Encoder, Prints and encodes tags with a minimum pitch of 0.6″ / 16 mm, Adaptive Encoding Technology simplifies RFID setup and eliminates complex RFID placement guidelines, Field-installable on-metal RFID kit available for 203 and 300 dpi

Industries Served

• Aerospace
• Healthcare
• Manufacturing
• Retail
• Transportation & Logistics

Printing Specifications

• Print Speed:
  • 2.4 ips through 14 ips – 203 dpi models
  • 2.4 ips through 10 ips – 300 dpi models
  • 1.5 ips through 4 ips – 600 dpi (ZT411 only)i
• Print Method: Direct Thermal, Thermal Transfer
• Maximum Print Width:
  • 4.09” (104mm) – ZT411
  • 6.60” (168mm) – ZT421
• Maximum Continuous Media Print Length: 
  • ZT411 – 157” (3,988mm) at 203 dpi resolution, 73” (1,857mm) at 300 dpi resolution and 39” (991mm) at 600 dpi resolution
  • ZT421 – 102” (2,591mm) at 203 dpi resolution and 45” (1,143mm) at 300 dpi resolution

Read Aggregated Online Reviews of the Zebra ZT400 Series Printers

StickyPaper Company searched the web to bring you reviews of Zebra’s ZT400 series printer models. Note, the specific reviews may cover a previous generation or model years of the printer.

The level of information and details provided by the reviewers vary greatly and are provided as a reference point for our readers.

The ribbon bunches up on the left side under the screw. This causes poor label quality that is not scannable. We have 2 of these expensive printers and they both have this defect. Customer service is lacking and we have not gotten any solutions.

Richard Karr’s 2020 review of ZT410 (monochrome display and predecessor to ZT411 with color display) on amazon.com (1 out of 5)

This is a no brainer if you’re printing your own address labels in bulk. We’re printing about 25,000 a month. We have this printer set to about half speed and it’s all we can do to keep up with it. It’s industrial quality, it’s very fast, and we have AccuZip feeding it like a champ.

Z. Scott’s 2017 review of ZT410 (monochrome display and predecessor to ZT411 with color display) on amazon.com (5 out of 5)

Love this printer as we run several different size labels on it throughout our workday several times per day and it easily handles the workload

Hector O.’s 2021 review on zpsstore.com (5 out of 5)

Touchscreen is sticking a little and unresponsive at times.

James S. 2021 review on CDW.com (4 out of 5)

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Product images and spec details listed for the ZT411 and ZT421 series printers in this article are courtesy of Zebra Technologies.

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