Fujitsu Scansnap IX100 review | Pros and cons

What’s so special about it?

The Fujitsu ScanSnap IX100 is a compact portable document scanner that you can take everywhere with you. It’s actually an update to the 2014 IX100, but Fujitsu didn’t change the name. Now, they brought some updates to the software with new features being added. It can scan a page in just 5.2 seconds, this is a really good speed, even though there is no duplex option, so you have to run the paper twice through the scanner if it’s printed on both sides. The X100 document scanner is equipped with a single CIS sensor that outputs a good enough 600dpi resolution. It’s also capable of scanning documents directly to the cloud. So you can integrate it with Dropbox or Google Drive and you don’t need any kind of driver for that. It does have a feature called Dual Scan where you can scan 2 small documents side-by-side at the same time.

Fujitsu Scansnap IX100 Datasheet Explained

The Fujitsu ScanSnap ix100 has the ability to scan 11 images per minute. This scanner is really fast considering it doesn’t have duplex, however, most scanners for this price will offer a speed of 15 images per minute, so this scanner doesn’t shine in this category.

It can scan documents up to A4 (Letter in US system) and is equipped with a single CIS imaging sensor that can get up to 600dpi. Most of the time you will be using it at 300dpi for documents, 600 is good to be used when you are digitizing photos.

The IX100 also has a big advantage over other scanners: CONNECTIVITY. It comes with a direct connection via USB 2.0 and Wifi network 2.4 Ghz. For the USB connection, there is a USB cable included in the package and the USB port style is Micro USB, so you’ll always find a compatible cable if you lose it. The wireless connectivity is very welcome especially at this price where wireless scanning is more rare.

This scanner doesn’t come with TWAIN, as Fujitsu have already accustomed us to this phenomenon in the entire ScanSnap line. Here is a long and boring explanation as to why they don’t offer TWAIN, but instead the magical ScanSnap interface. Why are there no TWAIN drivers on Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner? The maximum width of the page that can be scanned in this Fujitsu scanner is 8.5 inches but you can scan extra-long documents up to 34 inches long. Also, the thickness of the media can range between 52-209 gsm. That should cover most of the paper out there. It’s probably not going to handle a credit card, but most business cards or receipts definitely. That’s why the software bundle also includes a license for Card Minder to help you digitize and organize business cards.

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Features for Productivity

As I mentioned before, this particular Fujitsu ScanSnap IX100 scanner does not come equipped with a dual sensor, so you cannot scan both sides of the paper at the same time. But the scanner has plenty of speed to make up for that. Also it has a weird “dual scan” feature which when you put in 2 documents that are small enough to fit side-by-side it will scan them both and put them as 2 separate documents. This could be useful with photos and useless in pretty much any other situation.

As far as image processing technology is concerned, the scanner comes with automatic color detection but it does not have automatic image rotation. This is a minus because most of the scanners out there at this price have automatic image rotation.

The scanner lacks an auto-crop feature too, making things more difficult for the person who is doing the scanning as they have to work more to achieve good scans. Everyone knows how annoying it can be to spend hours in lightroom cropping pictures. Background cleaning is another feature that’s missing however, this is something more special and you can’t expect it to be built into a scanner this small.

NOTE: The scanner manufacturer may have introduced these functions through software updates, so it’s not guaranteed that they are all missing.

The built-in Lithium-Ion battery usually lasts 250 scans before you need to recharge it so you don’t have to worry about running out of battery everytime you hit the button to scan. Most mobile scanners have a battery that lasts in this range, somtimes even better at 300 scans. .

Quality of images

Luckily the portable scanner comes with automatic deskew. This feature helps straighten the image even if it’s skewed just by 1 degree. That is going to please your O.C.D. quite a bit, at least i know it pleases mine. Punch hole removal feature is not present either, but you won’t miss that as much as you will miss automatic cropping.

OCR comes included with the portable ScanSnap IX100 scanner and it’s the good stuff from ABBYY. The russian software company has created some of the best OCR software to this date in the world and their OCR technology is the most advanced you can buy in a commercial product. .

Fujitsu Scansnap IX100 accesories unboxing

The fujitsu scansnap ix100 wireless mobile scanner does not have an ADF tray. So that will slow you down a bit. But it’s not it’s fault, because at this price only 1 in 3 scanners have this feature built-in. It just has a document feeder through which the papper passes.

What is admirable is that they managed to keep the weight down in this scanner, because it weighs just 0.88 lbs. The average weight for portable scanning devices that the same as the IX100 is 1.1 lbs.

Fujitsu have been careful to include a complete document scanning software suite for you in which you will find the Abbyy FineReader for ScanSnap and the ScanSnap home software. The ScanSnap software can integrate with cloud storage and it scans directly to platforms like Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote or Sharepoint. Fujitsu offers many ScanSnap apps: there is the scansnap manager, scansnap organizer, scansnap connect application, scansnap cloud and scansnap receipt just to name a few and they are compatible with scanners for Mac and PC.

The design is simple and clean, it has a scan button which also acts as a stop button while scanning, 2 LEDs for battery status and wifi connection status. .

Fujitsu Scansnap IX100 driver, manual & brochure

You can find the official driver for the Fujitsu IX100 here on the official website. If you need to look into more technical inner-workings or details, you can find the user manual here.

Also, the brochure might provide you with some information that we weren’t able to provide you with: Download the brochure.

What do real users say?

Users really like the fact that you can scan to the cloud. That seems to be the main party piece for everyone. They also enjoy the “straight to mobile” interface that the scanner comes equipped with. Another thing that people appreciate about the IX100 seems to be simplicity, the fact that you can define workflows and then just execute them with one click. Battery life is something people are not happy about though, especially if you are a power user. <!–

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