ETEKJOY USB 3-Track Magnetic Stripe Card Reader POS Credit Card Reader Swiper MagStripe Swipe Card Reader

My work had a magtek, thing was always losing connection, and finally broke after a few years. This thing works perfect. Hopefully it lasts.

This is a great mag swipe reader, very simple and it works as advertised. I've recently gotten a lot more gift cards, and this device tremendously shortens the time needed to capture the gift card numbers. You just plug in the USB cord to your computer, swipe the card, and the data appears (make sure your computer cursor is in the excel file, or whatever gift card card parsing tool you are using). I'm using Mac OS High Sierra, and this worked fine. When I first connected the reader, the a screen came up telling me to press a specific letter on the keyboard but then didn't seem to register that I had pressed the key. But once I disconnected and reconnected the mag swipe reader, it was ready to go.

This was super easy to install, definitely just plug and play. I am using Windows 10. Plugged it into a USB port and bam, I'm swiping into my spreadsheet right away. Works fast, one swipe and the numbers are in the cell. (Obviously you need to parse them). Very small so good if you are on the road or doing the mobile office thing. I had been doing manual input before which is prone to error so this little reader is not only going to increase my efficiency, but also greatly reduce error.

Since the price of this card reader was competitive, I bought it with the intention of leaving it in my travel back to use on the road. After using it a few times it quickly became my daily card reader and I'm glad I made the purchase. With other readers I had about a 1-2% failure rate where they would not read the entire magnetic stripe on the card and would have to be re-swiped, but the Etekjoy has not given me that problem yet. Every swipe has worked. The USB cord is nice and flexible and not rigid like the others. This reader works so well that I am thinking about buying a second to keep in my travel bag in case I forget this one at home.

I bought this unit to replace an old PS-2 based reader that had gone kaput. I wanted a reader that could be easily reprogrammed such that my existing software (which I developed myself) would continue to parse the resulting information correctly. Fortunately, no changes were necessary. Because the unit is USB based, it is much faster than the PS-2 unit that I used previously (I had to slow down the read speed of the PS-2 unit in order to prevent character loss). I suspect that this unit is not suitable for industrial use (i.e., swiping hundreds of cards per day), but for personal or small business use, it should suffice. When reading driver licenses, it will occasionally miss one or more of the 3 tracks. If so, just swipe it again. If the issue continues, the culprit is most likely a damaged magstripe rather than the reader.