CL-S4000 Ticket Printer Review
By: Sergio - 8/7/2015

During a trade show event I met with Citizen at their booth showing off some of their printers. This is routine for me, manufacturers like showing off their new products to resellers with enthusiasm (sometimes exaggeration) and somewhat convincing ideas how they will revolutionize the world. There were some familiar models and a couple redesigns. One product that caught my eye specifically was the [Citizen CL-S4000DT][1].

![Citizen CL-S4000DT][2][][]

First thing I noticed about this printer was its simple fresh design, which after looking at it for a few seconds makes me rethink everything I knew about label printers. The printer is an open element design with a drop down print head, while the label roll is mounted externally on roll holder. You simply place the label through the media guide notches, drop down the print head and you’re ready to rock. This open design allows standard sized tickets or black mark labels to be used but also allows for even bigger industrial sized rolls to be fed through the back.  You'll see this with movie theaters or stadiums that are moving thousands of tickets a night and can't spare a few minutes to reload tickets.

It took me about 30 minutes to print from the time I took it out of the box, until the first label came out properly the way I wanted it to. The bells and whistles of this printer seemed to complicate initial set up and is counter-intuitive to its simple design. It would seem there are notches and dials everywhere to adjust media width, thickness and so on. This is one printer you really have to read the manual in order to figure out how to actually print. My mistake was to dive right in and try to figure it out.  In addition to a few different knobs and sliders that needed to be adjusted you also have an LCD screen that provides some additional configurations like selecting if you will be using black marks or gaps with your labels.  The driver also has some settings that will need to be adjusted to ensure that the label you see on the screen matches what is being printed, the most important of those is the "offset" setting.  By default it is set to 0 and will skip the top edge of a label, but adding in some offset the full label can be printed to.

The model version I tested had about every connection I needed including USB, serial, Ethernet and WiFi. It also sported an LCD screen on top making adjusting print I decided initially to use the USB connection since it will be the most widely used. The driver installation was pretty simple and took no more than 4 minutes. I used [Seagull Bartender Basic][3] to print a test label. This process was also quick. You will also have to put in the label settings into the driver itself.  This isn't exactly intuitive having to put in label/ticket specifications into two different places, but if you don't do it it will be difficult to have what you see on the screen match what prints out.

It took me another 10-15 minutes before I could set the margins correctly from the software, printer properties and the printer itself using the dials for adjusting media width. I changed the paper rolls to a larger size and had to once again go through the routine of changing the label specific settings. As far as I can tell there is no auto calibration settings, so each label will need to be done manually.  Additionally we found out that black mark labels work best, labels with perforations also worked, but we couldn't get straight gapped labels to work. You will have to use [direct thermal labels][4].

You will see this printer used mostly for ticketing with a few white paper studies being done with a movie chain in Europe.  If you are printing the same ticket each time and not changing media then this printer would work.  It wouldn't be recommended for businesses doing multiple sizes and types of labels.

The printer prints up to 6 inches per second (ips) which is pretty good for a desktop ticket printer.  Direct Thermal Only (no ribbons).

It is available in Black only with a Warranty of 2 Years for the Printer 1 Year for Print Head, or optional Peeler and Cutter

Zebra and Datamax emulations if using those printing languages with your programs.

[Click Here for more information or to purchase the CL-S400DT Ticket Printer.][5]

[1]: https://posguys.com/barcode-printer_1/Citizen-CL-S400DT-Ticketing-Printer_2452/
  [2]: https://posguys.blob.core.windows.net/content/images/blog/33/CL-S400DT.jpg
  [3]: https://posguys.com/barcode-label-software_52/SeaGull-Bartender-Basic-Edition_63/
  [4]: https://posguys.com/barcode-label-stock_64/#desktop-barcode-printer-labels-direct-thermal
  [5]: https://posguys.com/barcode-printer_1/Citizen-CL-S400DT-Ticketing-Printer_2452/

CL-S4000 Ticket Printer Review By: Sergio - 8/7/2015

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CL-S4000 Ticket Printer Review
By: Sergio - 8/7/2015