Best A3 Document Scanner | Top 5 to buy 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 DS-50000 document scanner only makes our list because we wanted to feature also an exclusively an A3 flatbed unit. While it is a good scanner, you can’t really do document scanning without an ADF. But we get projects for flatbed scanning from time to time, and from our experience, these devices do have a use in real life.

We have found out when working on it that for this kind of A3 flatbed scanner you should focus on niche applications, such as very thin or very thick paper, fragile documents or just about any paper document that can’t be run through an automatic document scanner.

We ran for example old crumpled documents, and the results were interesting. The lid really helped us to flatten the documents, and without it, the results would not have been very nice. Even when the page was not completely flat, the CCD sensor made sure that every area of the document is captured.

This factor would increase its versatility from scanning documents for the office to being a full on photo scanner. Practically it will offer the best of both worlds, a really good scan quality and also fast scanning.

As you see, this makes it perfect for A3 scan sizes, so it fits into that niche. Still, it’s not the cheapest flatbed scanner, so don’t expect paying a low price for it.

Why I would recommend this scanner is that it comes with a bulletproof warranty. Practically you can find an Epson dealer to fix or swap your machine, just about anywhere on this planet.

All in all, it’s a nice scanner, but it’s missing the key feature of a great A3 document scanner and that is an automatic document feeder. You can also check the Plustek Opticpro A320 as an alternative, or Canon Canoscan Lide models, they could also do the job. All of them, including some Epson Perfection or Epson Expression models would be a much cheaper option.

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

Now it gets serious. The Canon DR-M1060 device is what I would call an interesting A3 document scanner. It’s a small document scanner for PC which can easily scan paper size of up to A3.

We have managed to run it close to 60 A4 sheets every minute, when we repeated the speed tests. The duty cycle is expected to be around 7000 sheets on a daily basis, which is good enough for most office work. Remember, this is a color duplex document scanner, so both sides of the document will be captured at once.

Out of our selection, this scanner is quite compact to say the least. It’s outside dimensions are significantly lower than most other devices we feature, especially for an A3 document scanning device. I managed to move it around the office without extra help and could connect it easily to the computer.

The scanner has a good scanning software, because they updated the old Capture Perfect bundled app. Now it’s called Capture on Touch. While it’s nowhere near as good as Kofax Express or even the Fujitsu Paperstream Capture software, it does come for free, bundled which each Canon document scanner. From our experience, with this software and given the volumes you will scan with it, it should be enough.

All in all, this is a great A3 scanner, especially if you want one that is really small and compact. It’s not my personal favourite, but I would trust it over an HP scanjet scanner any day. For example, the F1 flatbed OCR scanner is a million years behind it and it’s only an A4 in size.

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

This Panasonic A3 scanner has never been one of the most popular models from this manufacturer. I always considered this model to be more of a marketing tool, rather than a model they wanted to base their sales on.

For example the most important aspect of it is the scanning sensor. It uses a CCD sensor, which is different to just about any other Panasonic scanner. That is why I think they released this scanner, to stack it up against other CCD scanners from time to time. What I do like, is that with this image sensor you can really do color photo scanning, and results will come out great.

I was really anxious to get my hands on this device, especially for the quality of the image. The color depth is amazing, when comparing it to a CIS scanner, even though the dpi resolution is identical to a counterpart with CIS. Your photo and documents will come out really great, and I think this is one of the excellent choices to make when buying a device for A3 format scanning.

You can get 1200×1200 dpi with this scanner, but only as an interpolated resolution, not as an optical one, as would be the case with a Fujitsu scanner. What you can try is the flatbed attachment though, this could help for more pretentious work. I ran the device at 600dpi to scan some photos and I must say i really liked it. Not the highest quality on the market, but there or there about.

Anyway, this is a really good scanner, especially for entry level A3 scanning. It’s more expensive than let’s say a Canon DR-M1060, but it has a bigger ADF and can also be used for low volume production.

What I like about it, besides the 80ppm scanning speed is that I could scan face up, meaning it can hold around 200 sheets.

Scanning face down is not so simple, especially when scanning A3 documents. You constantly need to see how the paper moves through the scanner to make sure scans come out clear.

The software bundle also includes the Image Capture Plus, which is quite a decent capture software. Also, being included in the bundle, it comes for free. So you will also be saving money on the software side.

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

What can you say about the DR-G1100… While you would expect it to be a little outdated because of its age, you’d be surprised. But it’s still one of the best light production scanners that are currently available on the market. Every time someone let’s me get my hands on one of these it still works as good as when it was new.

This A3 scanner can go against many more expensive document scanners on the market. Let’s take the scanning size for example. It will go a little above A3 in width but it also features a long document scanning mode. For example I like to run A3 documents on the manual mode on it. The feeder runs continuously and I just feed one page after the other.

The scanning speed is around 100ppm which is enough for production work. I have seen this scanner used in offices where they’d be scanning 10-15 thousand sheets everyday. It still amazes me when I scan on it, how good it is at keeping up with the rated speed.

The driver has a lot of productivity features that you will like, from the blank page skip, hole punch removal and other small features that add up when you are doing large volume scanning.

The software bundled with the scanner was initially the Capture Perfect software. I never like that software. For me it seemed outdated and sometimes we had really bad errors when scanning.

Now though, Canon has fitted this scanner with a new software called CaptureonTouch. This is a great scanning app and while it may not be up there with more expensive capture software, it will do its job quite well.

A thing I really love about this A3 Canon scanner is the price. Especially now that a newer model has been launched, this device can be found discounted at a really great price. If it were me, for larger scanning projects, I would always use this device. It just runs reliably enough to trust it in even the most daring circumstances.

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 middle ground between the DR-M1060 model and the DR-G1100 model. It sits right there price wise and performance wise.

It has a daily duty cycle of around 10.000 sheets, but if you’re scanning that much, you are way better of with the DR-G110 model. These scanners capture only low volumes of documents on a daily basis, and even though it has the ability to scan A3, we would not suggest you use it for production purposes.

One thing I would use it for is if you are scanning A3 exclusively. For that, the scanner has a decent scanning speed and the 100 sheet ADF is good enough. It connects through an USB cable, so if you’re scanning really high resolution documents, it might take a while for the transfer.

What also helps is the straight scanning path, which is especially good for A3 documents. The scanners that have a U shape paper path do not help, especially when documents are longer, thiner or damaged.

Still, the faster and more expensive DR-G1100 is a superior sheetfed scanner to say the least. But the DR-6030Cis good enough for office jobs and also for smaller projects you might have from time to time. It’s also a bit closer to a portable document scanner, but we insist that you should not buy it to include it in your portable scanners fleet. test