Best A3 Document Scanner | Which is #1 in 2023

Epson DS-50000

Product	Format	Scanning area	Connectivity	Sheets per minute	Images per minute	ADF Size	Daily Duty Cycle	Price
Epson DS-50000	A3	11.69 in x 16.53 in	USB 2.0 Type B, Wired Network (optional)	15	N/A	N/A	N/A	Click for more info

The Epson DS50000 is a flatbed document scanner. It makes no sense to try and see how the pickup mechanism will run through a batch of documents, as the scanner does not have one.

So at first we wanted to see how it will scan normal A3 documents. As expected, you take a document, put it on the glass and hit the scanning button. If you put the lid on top of it, you will get a plus of cropping accuracy. I saw that on some tests, if we don’t put the lid down, sometimes the ambient light interferes with the cropping.

Every scan takes a few seconds, so it’s not slow, but if you have to scan really large batches of documents, you are better of if you run them through an ADF scanner.

The other test we ran are crumpled and fragile documents. When we scan a crumpled document, we always use the lid to flatten the documents and get an accurate scanning result. If the paper is also to dry, you have to be a bit careful when you press the lid so you don’t damage the document. But all in all, we do not see how we could scan them without it.

So for our test at least, we think this is a good scanner, but only for small batches or in situations where the documents are really damaged. Otherwise, if your documents are in good condition, we see it as not the best decision to use the Epson DS50000, because it will take ages to scan all of the documents.

Canon DR-M1060

Product	Format	Scanning area	Connectivity	Sheets per minute	Images per minute	ADF Size	Daily Duty Cycle	Price
Canon DR-M1060	A3	11.69 in x 16.54 in	USB 2.0	60	120	60 sheets	7,500 sheets	Click for more info

The second scanner is the DR-M1060, which is one of the smallest A3 document scanners available on the market. Let’s start with the standard A3 documents.

On the first test we put 10 sheets in the ADF and hit the scanning button. Everything worked as expected, the scanner completed the documents in around 30 seconds, without any issue whatsoever. We then increased the quantity to almost the maximum ADF capacity, nearly 60 sheets. In this case, things also ran well, but we could see that once we get close to the maximum capacity, there are some slight feeding issues in the beginning.

Once we get to around half that, the scanner performs very well and works as expected. We think that the way the ADF is built, A3 documents don’t sit that well in the stacker, that is why there are some issues when feeding the paper.

The second thing we tried was the fragile documents. Now, if you look carefully at the scanner, the paper path is quite narrow, and by this we mean that the paper turns quite aggressively during the scanning process. This is in fact due to the construction of the scanner, because Canon wanted to make this a small device. So in order to achieve this, the paper path has to take a narrow turn, making the turn of the document a bit aggressive.

In practice, what this meant was that we had some jams with the fragile documents. Some got stuck on the paper path, in different areas where things like this would not happen with a normal document. Same thing happened with the crumpled documents. There are some areas, other between the rolls, or even on the turn itself, where the paper will ocasionally get stuck.

So yes, this is a good scanner, but you should mainly use it if you want to move it around or you are scanning documents in good condition.

Panasonic KV-S5055C

Product	Format	Scanning area	Connectivity	Sheets per minute	Images per minute	ADF Size	Daily Duty Cycle	Price
Panasonic KV-S5055C	A3	11.69 in x 16.54 in	USB 3.0	80	160	200 seets	300 sheets	Click for more info

With the Panasonic KV-S5055C, we tried directly with the large batch of the documents. It won’t hold more than 200 sheets, which is relatively small, but we immediately put a 150 stack of A3 sheets and hit the scanning button.

The results were consistent with our expectation. Feeding was very reliable, no problem whatsoever. It is also quite a quiet device, not much environment noise, so you can definitely used it in an office environment.

The other test we did was with the crumpled documents. First of all we wanted to see how the feeding of the documents works. We actually experienced a few jams, but nothing serious. I rather think we used an extreme kind of documents, which were really damaged. I think that in most cases, even with crumpled documents, you should not have issues. With our set, we had a failure rate of 2 jams for every 10 batches we tested.

I don’t think this is that bad. I can actually bet that even with a top document scanner, you will get these happening from time to time. So in my opinion the results were pretty good.

One thing I did like when we scanned the crumpled documents, was the image quality. This is the only document scanner in our test with a CCD capturing unit. What this means is that the scanning depth is the largest out of anyone in the test. So for crumpled documents, the quality was really good, even for wavy documents that are not flattened completely when going through the scanner.

It is a big plus, and I think it is the scanner you should go for if you do have to scan such documents. We also had really good image quality for the documents that had a lot of color and images in it.

Canon DR-G1100

Product	Format	Scanning area	Connectivity	Sheets per minute	Images per minute	ADF Size	Daily Duty Cycle	Price
Canon DR-G1100	A3	11.7 in. x 16.5 in.	Hi-Speed USB 2.0	100	200	500 sheets	25000 sheets	Click for more info

Overall, the Canon DR-G1100 should be the best scanner for A3 documents in our test. We actually wanted to test this scanner for large batches.

So what we did was to build batches of nearly 500 sheets and we ran them through the scanner 50 times each. This is nearly 5000 documents. The scanner works relentlessly, it does not stop, it just goes on and on without stopping.

The feeding was perfect. We had to stop on occasion to clean the scanner rollers, but this does not take so much. Once you clean them, the scanner starts eating the documents once again.

For us, to scan 5000 documents took around 90 minutes, which in an 8 day shift would mean around 25000 sheets. Mind you, in our case everything was prepared in an optimal manner. All the batches were prepared in advance, and we could get each one in the scanner in seconds after once batch was finished.

But I guess if you are well organized, you should be able to go through around 12 to 15000 A3 documents every day. You will probably need 2 operators, one that is preparing documents and the other that is doing the scanning.

We only invested a couple of hours into testing the crumpled documents. What I did at first, was to try everything to slow the scanner down. The feeding mechanism is just too aggressive for such documents, so please, before starting to scan, find every option that will slow down the scanner.

All in all, the results were ok, but I don’t really like the fact that the scanner uses a CIS sensor. Sometimes, there were some areas that were a bit blurry, but this is only due to the fact that the paper was really wavy.

Canon DR-6030C

Product	Format	Scanning area	Connectivity	Sheets per minute	Images per minute	ADF Size	Daily Duty Cycle	Price
Canon DR-6030C	A3	11.69 in x 16.54 in	USB 2.0 SCSI-3	60	120	100 sheets	10,000 sheets	Click for more info

The Canon DR-6030C is the last scanner we tested to see how it works for A3 documents. With this one, we tried 2 separate things, given that it’s somewhat between the KVS 5055C and the DRM1060.

Immediately we took the maximum batch we could use on this scanner and this means 100 A3 sheets. These were normal pages and we wanted to see if we can fully load the ADF. The scanner went quite well, it did slip on some documents, but after my colleague recommended we clean the rollers, this did not happen anymore.

So for normal A3 documents, everything worked as expected and we were very satisfied with how the feeding mechanism worked. I guess we would have loved to have a larger ADF, but I can understand why it is not the case with this scanner.

The second thing we tried were the famous crumpled documents. Things got a bit tricky here and I can recommend you use the manual feeding mode for these cases. I mean you could run it on automatic, but the risk of damaging documents would be quite big. I don’t think this will happen when the documents are being fed.

The risk is when you either have a document that is not fed properly, like we had in our test, or when trying to pick multiple documents and ripping one apart. THis did not happen in our test, but we had the first situation. Luckily, there was not significant damage to the document.