iOS Bluetooth thermal receipt printers, which to support?

Question

I'm developing a POS application and would like to support some Bluetooth printers to print receipts. These will usually be thermal printers.

Googling for Bluetooth printers that work with iOS gave me a couple of models, but its difficult to determine the supported protocols. Currently we support ESC/POS, but apparently this protocol is not supported by many non-Epson printers. Our app can already print on WiFi/network printers using the ESC/POS protocol.

My questions:

1. Which iOS thermal receipt printers should we support (which are the most popular and/or the best, which do you support)?
2. Which print protocol(s)/languages can we best support in order to maximise the number of supported Bluetooth/network POS receipt printers?

Thank you for reading!

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These are the printers I've found that seemed support-worthy:

• Blue Bamboo P25i
  careful, the P25 series (without 'i') doesn't support iOS
  https://www.bluebamboo.com/other_file/P25i%20Datasheet%20(EN)%20v1.2%2025-Mar-2013.pdf

• STAR Micronics SM series (SM-T300i / WSP-i350, SM-T400i, SM-S220i).
  careful, the SM-T300 (without 'i') doesn't support iOS http://www.starmicronics.com/printer/portable_printers/sm-t300i

• Zebra iMZ220, iMZ320
  careful, the MZ series (without 'i') doesn't support iOS
  http://www.zebra.com/us/en/products-services/printers/printer-type/mobile/mz-series.html#mainpartabscontainer=overview

• Epson TM-P60II
  careful, not all models have iOS support
  https://pos.epson.com/download/?AssetPK=27589&File=Mobilink_P60II_iOS_DS_A.pdf

• Epson TM-T88V
  careful, not all models have iOS support
  https://pos.epson.com/products/TM-T88VwithBluetoothSupportforiOS

And these protocols:

• ESC/POS - Epson standard print protocol
• ZPL - Zebra Programming Language, for Zebra printers
• CPCL - A language for Zebra Mobile printers, like ZPL but older?
• P25 - Blue Bamboo P25 protocol (not sure about this one)

Answer 1

ESC POS is the de facto protocol for thermal printers. Even printers from other manufacturer like Star Micronics and Zebra that have their proprietary protocols can be used with the ESC POC protocol.

You can enable the ESC POS mode on a Star Micronics printer by connecting with USB to a Windows computer and using one of the setup utility program from the CD that came with printer. If you don't have the CD you can download the program from Star Micronics website

The same is probably true for Zebra and the other manufacturer with custom protocols.