The printer is the least interesting part of a visitor system and the part most likely to stop it working. Receptions choose one on price, discover the stock costs more than the machine over a year, and then find that the morning it runs out is the morning a school inspection arrives. It is worth ten minutes of thought at purchase and almost none afterwards.
Label printers, not card printers
Almost every reception wants an adhesive label a visitor sticks to a jacket, not a plastic card. Label printers are cheaper, faster, use no ribbons and need no encoding. Card printers belong where the badge is also an access credential, which is a different project with a different budget. If a vendor quotes a card printer for an office lobby, ask why.
Stock is the running cost
A roll of labels is the recurring expense, and at a busy desk it is not trivial: a site signing in eighteen people a day gets through several thousand labels a year. Buy stock the printer's manufacturer supports, keep a spare roll where the desk can reach it, and check the price per label rather than the price per roll when you compare.
What the badge software has to handle
Print from the sign-in without a second action; put the visitor's name large enough to read across a corridor; carry the date visibly; reprint when a badge is lost without creating a second visit record; and fail gracefully when the printer is offline, so that sign-in completes and the badge is flagged rather than the whole arrival stopping.
The failure that matters
Out of stock, mid-morning, with a queue. Everything about how a printer is chosen should be judged against that moment: how quickly a roll goes in, whether the desk has one, and whether the sign-in keeps working without it. A product that blocks the visitor when the printer is empty has made a bad trade on your behalf.
Questions people ask about visitor badge printer
What does a visitor badge printer cost to run?
The machine is the small number; the labels are the real cost. Work it out per label against your arrivals a year rather than per roll.
Can we print badges from an ordinary office printer?
You can print a sheet, and some sites do. It is slower, it wastes paper and the result is worse to wear, which is why label printers exist.
What happens if the printer fails?
The sign-in should still record the visit. Ask a vendor to show you that behaviour before you buy, because implementations differ.