Bookeye 5 V1A – The latest A1 Bookscanner coming in 2022

The Bookeye 5 V1A A1 bookscanner is the latest device in this range of the market to be released. It will go out on sale in 2022, boasting a high end linear CCD capturing camera. Most of the features that you already know from other Bookeye products will be there so stick around and read this preview of the model.

Being an A1 bookscanner, this model will give you just about all the versatility you need with such a device. The cradle is again variable, moving from 140 to 180 degrees, which means scanning flat and Vshape is now all in one model. Not to mention the fact that the flattening glass plate is still there.

Models and options

From what we know and we heard, this device will initially be launched in one model, but we do expect a successor to the C35 model, as an upgrade to be coming soon. This means that one model will feature the basic characteristics which we expect to be a cradle of around 10cm variety in height and motorized left and right flaps.

The resolution and scanning size should stay more or less identical, although I expect that the replacement of the C35 will allow for a little bit larger scanning size, even for thicker documents. Yes, that will allow you to scan really thick books, without giving up on the actual scanning size.

I am really curious if the scanner will feature a 50cm cradle, which we have seen some people ask around in the market. The old C35 model was coming with a 35cm bookcradle, an improvement over the standard Bookeye 5 A1 model which was going up only around 10 cm.

Features

So let’s get a bit into the features this bookscanner offers. We will start first of all with the automatic book cradle, or to be more precise the motorized book cradle. This can be modified between 140 and 180 degrees. This means that you can scan books that open all the way or even large format documents. The position for this kind of scanning is at 180 degrees so all the way open.

The V-shape cradle can be opened at 140 degrees, when you are scanning fragile bound documents. I always thought that having a sub 180 degrees cradle will allow you to scan more fragile documents and it will be easier in general to scan books. But I think you also need a V shaped flattening glass to be able to achieve this. And in this scanner you only have a flat glass that flattens book pages.

So in order to take advantage of this feature you have to be able to open books all the way at 180 degree. Which means the cradle has to be opened at 180 degrees also, so only some of the books will be easy to scan. For others, I guess a book scanner with a v shaped cradle and flattening glass could work better. But I guess no other book scanner that can scan in V has such a good capturing unit.

Technical specs

So what are the most interesting technical specs we should look at. Let’s take into account resolution first. This will range from 100dpi to 600dpi optical resolution. Please understand that we are talking about optical resolution, this is no interpolated scanning resolution or other nonsense. So in terms of resolution, it really does not get better than this, especially in the price range. There are bookscanners that are 3 times as expensive, and still won’t compare in terms of scanning quality.

Not to mention that you can actually use this scanner at very high resolution. What we mean by this is that the bookscanner can be operated at 600dpi and it will take around 4 seconds per scan. That is extremely quick, believe me. Scanning at 600dpi optical resolution was more or less impossible for an A1 up to the point the BE4 V1A was released. That was the first scanner alongside the SMA Scanmaster 1, that really allowed users to achieve such high resolutions in practice.

Getting back to scanning speed, given that most projects will be scanned at 300dpi, the actual figure for a scan is around 2 seconds. Given that you are also getting a LAN connection, actual conversion of an A1 open book will be really quick. It should not take more than another couple seconds to transfer the image so you should be getting really good conversion times.

Image Quality

Image quality is a very controversial subject when it comes to book scanning. We have on the one side the metamorfoze and FADGI standards. I think the FADGI standards are more or less ok, but Metamorfoze is not something I really consider a standard. You got the first problem that this is a standard made by a private entity which is not really independent from certain manufacturers.

Second of all, I know the machines getting good scores on the Metamorfoze scale. A lot of my customers would not accept the scans made with those machines, if we would not run them through our image processing software.

I personally think that you should use your own judgement for image quality. And in my opinion the linear CCD bookscanners usually have the best image quality. Lighting is nearly perfect and usually the sharpness is very good. And the BE5 V1A is no stranger to this, the image quality is top nothc, just like any other ImageAccess product. You can zoom and zoom like a crazy man, the image will just look better and sharper. Even with the exposure set to Fixed, which should not turn out the sharpest images, the level of detail is impressive. In my opinion, anyone questioning the image quality on these scanners is really out of this world.

File Formats and Software

Regarding the file formats, the scanner offers more or less what you’d expect from a bookscanner. You’ve got the single and multipage raster PDF. This is usually the most important file format to have and to offer. The reason for this is because in most cases, a single software won’t do everything you need with the files. So you need a file output that will be a good file input for a scanning processing software solution. A single or multipage PDF really does the trick, so that’s why we think this is the most important format to offer.

The other two file formats are the Jpeg and the TIFF file formats, with various compression levels. I am not a big fan of the Raw Tiff, that file with no compression which has a really large size. While I do agree that it keeps all the details and has no quality loss, but in 90% of the cases no one needs such a quality level. I mean in most cases we are talking about text only, which is converted anyway to a digitally readable text.

Accessories and Options

When you are thinking of options and accessories for this scanner, I think the usual Scan2Net options and features will be those available. So better scanning software, TWAIN library and even Scan2Icc, which is a feature that creates ICC profiles on the fly, are just some of the optional extras that you can get.

Probably the best thing that you should focus on is the large cradle. I think that is where the major differences are, especially in terms of palpable differences. For a start, the basic model will probably have a book cradle that will be able to fit books up to 10-12cm. From there on, you will have a professional model that will feature a cradle that is at least 35cm. Maybe there will be a jumbo model, up to 40 or even 50cm, but I guess that will be kind of extreme.

So in our opinion, the major differences will be in terms of the book cradle you need. For 90 percent of the customers, you won’t need more than 10 or 12cm, but there will be some special projects where a really large book cradle will be required.