I have a Dymo LabelWriter and it works great. It's an older model "330 USB" still going strong at about 16 years old.
I only use genuine labels. They do a translucent plastic film type which is very robust. It's good enough for equipment labels.
I have had Brother ones of that ilk for 20+ odd years and use them regularly. I recently replaced the old one for driver compatibility reasons. The old one still works fine, its drivers just don't want to play nicely with the more recent versions of MacOS.
It's not the quality of the labels that's a issue, it's convenience and suitability for the job in hand. They're OK when you're doing a very few labels, but printing off a batch of 20, finding the next label you want to apply in the pile of 20 bits of cut tape and fiddling to get the backing peeled off is a PITA. A single printed length of 20 paper labels spat out by a commercial industrial/POS type thermal label printer is just a lot easier to take to a set of bags or drawers or whatever and apply.
With the tape label makers you're limited to the widest tape you can get (which for the Brother ones is 24mm) which can limit what information you can present. For component storage I've found that a problem if you want to put more than minimal information on the label
e.g. value, voltage, tolerance, and footprint type will fit just about comfortably - adding manufacturer and part number as well is too much. Plus a reel of 1000 off 50x76mm paper labels will cost under £10, a reel of 8m x 24mm third party tape for the Brother is about £5 - that's about a factor of 10 per unit area cheaper for the reel of paper labels.
It'a a question of horses for courses. I use the Brother label printer with laminated tape for reagent jars, solvent bottles, cable tags, mains plugs (oh, how much easier life is when the plugs on a distribution board have a label) and all those permanent things. I'd use a paper thermal printer principally for poly/mylar bags of components (required label lifetime perhaps years in a closed box), but also for the odd address label and other sundry uses where something only has to last days in the rough and tumble world.
If I need REALLY BIG durable labels, I have a vinyl cutter:
I have labels made that way on the wheelie bins, and they've survived years of rough handling by rough bin men.
The vinyl cutter is also good for slightly more creative labels on equipment. All the labelling on this is cut black vinyl: