Recently, full color thermal printing on plastic cards requires more diverse imagery capability and faster print speeds. The ID card printer application is one of several applications impacted by these requirements. High speed print with a thermal printhead may result in print quality degradation caused by excess power consumption in the common bus and heat accumulation interpretation. These two critical factors need to be controlled to achieve high speed printing.The purpose of this paper is to introduce a unique printhead construction that realizes improved print image quality under high speed printing conditions. An optimized electrode pattern designed for high current conditions reduces common power consumption without changing the printhead size significantly, Additionally, enhancement of printhead temperature detection is achieved by increasing the temperature feedback speed to the control board. These changes will result in high speed print output with improved print quality.