I can't give you reasons to buy the Square Register because I don't own one, I'd like to because It is very pretty, but here is my opinion on a Square Stand.
In our Retail Garden Center, we use 3 Square Stands with iPad Air 2s, 3 ethernet printers, and 3 cash drawers. We also have 2 iPad mini in L7 cases to hold the Square NFC chip card reader in one nice handheld unit to process people portably in line. We only have a crappy 1.5Mb DSL line coming in and everything works flawlessly. We process more than a million dollars thru Square each year and I couldn't be happier with the free POS software, the under 3-second chip card processing, and the drop-dead simple rate. I love the simplicity of the Square Stand and the freeing up of space on our checkout compared to our old cash register. People love the simplicity of me swinging the stand around 180º and them singing with their finger. The amount of data you will have from the free POS app will be staggering and can really help you tighten up your bottom line when you see what you sell when and for what price. The POS app isn't perfect and depending on what you are trying to do there are limitations and or workarounds you have to do, but the POS app is constantly being updated and tweaked, and features are added.
The one standout feature of the Square Register is the customer display, but I just don't see in my use case that it is worth $700 more than an iPad and stand per setup, and I don't like the fact of a proprietary hardware and if it goes bad I'm out $1,000 but if an iPad dies $250 and you're back up and running.
One thing I can say is DO NOT buy the plugin chip reader/swiper combo, between the poor battery life and the insane fragilness of the unit for the tamper detection to make the unit unusable I would avoid that completely. I've gone thru 7 units and all are garbage, I bought 4 and got 3 under warranty replacement and 2 of the 3 replacements were broken out of the box with the Tamper detection tripped. The NFC Chip card Bluetooth reader though is rock solid.
I can't give you reasons to buy the Square Register because I don't own one, I'd like to because It is very pretty, but here is my opinion on a Square Stand.
In our Retail Garden Center, we use 3 Square Stands with iPad Air 2s, 3 ethernet printers, and 3 cash drawers. We also have 2 iPad mini in L7 cases to hold the Square NFC chip card reader in one nice handheld unit to process people portably in line. We only have a crappy 1.5Mb DSL line coming in and everything works flawlessly. We process more than a million dollars thru Square each year and I couldn't be happier with the free POS software, the under 3-second chip card processing, and the drop-dead simple rate. I love the simplicity of the Square Stand and the freeing up of space on our checkout compared to our old cash register. People love the simplicity of me swinging the stand around 180º and them singing with their finger. The amount of data you will have from the free POS app will be staggering and can really help you tighten up your bottom line when you see what you sell when and for what price. The POS app isn't perfect and depending on what you are trying to do there are limitations and or workarounds you have to do, but the POS app is constantly being updated and tweaked, and features are added.
The one standout feature of the Square Register is the customer display, but I just don't see in my use case that it is worth $700 more than an iPad and stand per setup, and I don't like the fact of a proprietary hardware and if it goes bad I'm out $1,000 but if an iPad dies $250 and you're back up and running.
One thing I can say is DO NOT buy the plugin chip reader/swiper combo, between the poor battery life and the insane fragilness of the unit for the tamper detection to make the unit unusable I would avoid that completely. I've gone thru 7 units and all are garbage, I bought 4 and got 3 under warranty replacement and 2 of the 3 replacements were broken out of the box with the Tamper detection tripped. The NFC Chip card Bluetooth reader though is rock solid.
I went with the Square Register in my farm market for the front displays. It keeps a clean counter and lets the customer see what is happening. You never have to touch a customers credit card. The forward facing screen was the biggest reason to go with the register. It helps speeds up the check out because the customer checks the receipt as it is entered, and trust the transaction to be accurate
The square registers allow for a very efficient checkout process. On our busiest days of the year we routinely run up 80 transactions per hour per register.
We have only had a few issues with the square registers. Square was able to help us and quickly replace the defective parts. We had to replace the front screen/card reader on one of the registers because the chip reader quit working. We also replaced the power/usb interface on one of the register because all the USB ports quit working,
Unlike Ipads and tablets the square register do not have any battery. So we have an external battery backup under the counter, we can run for 2 days with no power.
One final note on Square Registers. You do not get to choose if/when you update. I would like to have control over updates in my busiest seasons because sometimes updates change a setting or work flow and cause a disruption.
In our "rural" location we do not have any high speed internet options. We run a Verizon Home connect to get internet from cell towers. The square registers automatically update themselves. It takes 4-6 Gigabytes of data per month to support the registers. For selling and using a square tablet and taking it home to update we used less than 100 megabytes a month
In areas (our outside entertainment) where it very simple transactions we use square stands because there is no reason for the expense of a register.
We use a omni directional scanner (Zebra DS9208) to help speed the checkout process. (this is not offically supported by square)
Cost of my setup - I share the printer between 2 registers.
| Scanner | Zebra DS9208 | $130 |
| Drawer | APG BL16-16 | $188 |
| Printer | Star Micronics TSP143IIILAN | $229 |
| Register | $999 | |
| Total | $1546 |
The square register are now $800. I purchased most items from Amazon as I could get a better price or they are not available from square. When I was running one square register I was able to run a much cheaper cash drawer ($80) that was printer driven. But when I upgraded to two register this drawer would open for every transaction because I share the printer between to Registers.
In 2018 when I setup my regsiter this was my projected cost for a tablet system
| Chip Reader | $ 49.00 | ||
| Dock | $ 29.00 | ||
| Stand 9.7 | $ 91.00 | ||
| Drawer | APG BL16-16 | $ 188.00 | |
| Tablet | Ipad 9.7 | $ 307.00 | |
| Scanner | Zebra DS9208 | $ 130.00 | |
| Printer | Ethernet Print | $ 228.99 | |
| $ 1,022.99 | |||
