Doxie GO SE

Product	Images / Minute	Resolution	Connectivity	Duplex Scanning	ADF Tray	Weight	Price
Doxie GO SE	7 IPM	600 dpi	USB	No	No	1.3 lb. (0.59 kg)	Click for more info

The Doxie GO SE is the first portable photo scanner in our list. It’s not as fast as the other scanners in this comparison. It scans images at a rate of 7 images per minute while the average scanner that we featured here can digitize 10. So speed is not on the Doxie Go’s side. It’s an A4 format scanner with a 600dpi resolution. The 600 dpi will be more than enough for digitizing photos.

You can connect the Doxie GO SE portable scanner to your PC with it’s integrated USB port and it can digitize documents that are even 30 inches long. It can also save the scanned images to SD Card. It’s not a duplex scanner, but neither are most of the scanners we talk about here. The only duplex scanner here is the Brother DS-720.

The integrated auto color detection will help the Doxie GO distinguish between color and black & white photos and automatic image rotation helps you by not having to worry in which way you put the photos into the scanner. Even if they are upside down, the scanner will automatically rotate them. There is also an auto-crop feature integrated into it, which will get rid of the black space around your photos, cropping them clean. Deskew is the last of the integrated image enhancement functions that the scanner has.

Doesn’t matter if the photos are skewed, even if it’s is as little as 1 degree, the software will correct them. No punch hole removal installed on the Doxie GO SE though. The Doxie GO SE comes with integrated OCR software to create searchable PDF files and editable text documents, however it doesn’t have an ADF tray, so you will have to manually feed the photos.

It is worth mentioning that this is our favourite scanner in this category also because of it’s attractive price tag. The battery will last for 400 scans at an image resolution of 300 dots per inch. Doxie offers integrated software that allows you to upload your scanned photos to Google Drive, DropBox or Evernote. A good plus for this portable photo scanner is that you receive an 8GB memory card included.

If you need a Wifi version of this scanner, then the Doxie Go SE Wifi has the same scanning features, but with added Wireless connectivity.

Epson ES-60W

Product	Images / Minute	Resolution	Connectivity	Duplex Scanning	ADF Tray	Weight	Price
Epson ES-60W	15 IPM	600 dpi	USB 2.0, Wireless 802.11 b/g/n	No	No	0.66 lb. (0.3 kg)	Click for more info

The Epson Workforce ES-60W is the second portable photo scanner scanner on our list. It is far faster than the Doxie GO because it has the ability to scan pictures at a speed of 15 per minute. It’s also like the Doxie, it has a Contact Image Sensor that can produce 600dpi scanner with the capacity to scan A4 formats. However, the ES-60W portable document scanner has something extra to offer, wireless connectivity making this a wireless portable scanner. Also, the scanner is capable of scanning very long documents, up to
a maximum scan size of 72 inches. It doesn’t have duplex, but then just 2 of the scanners that we feature here have it. And since photos are not duplex I wouldn’t consider this as being a disadvantage.

The integrated auto color detection will help the scanner decide if it’s dealing with a grayscale or a color photograph and treat them in different ways. Auto crop also will make sure that you don’t have any black space around your scan, even if the photo is really small. The scanner is smart and it’s going to tell if you fed the photo upside down and automatically rotate it. This will save you large amounts of time spent in photo editing software afterwards.

This mobile color page scanner lacks a background removal feature, but bear in mind that that feature is good for documents and will not help in photos. Usually when we want to scan just photos in our digitizing center, we turn that function off because it distorts the bright colors, thinking that for example a cloudy sky is actually background. It comes with punch hole removal which is completely useless for photo scanning but there you go. The scanner also has an OCR feature with the Scan Software and I do recommend you use this. For sure, you’re not going to scan just photos with it and it’s important to have great Optical Character Recognition.

It’s small and at just 0.66 lbs it’s such a compact and lightweight scanner and the nice thing about it is that it lets you scan to your cloud storage with the Epson ScanSmart software. It also has a small LCD display that shows the battery percentage and some basic info. This portable scanner with rechargeable battery.

Along with portable photo scanners, Epson also makes specialized flated photo scanners. Some of their best models are the Epson perfection v850 pro and Epson Perfection V800 which are best used for high-quality photo papers. They are also professional slide scanners and film scanners too with a 4.0 Dmax black density and probably the best flatbed scanners you can buy.

There is also the Epson perfection V600 color photo image film negative scanner which has the best balance between price, high-quality scanning and features and the epson perfection V39. If you want to scan really large photos, then the Epson Expression 12000xl-ph is the one for you. The advantage that these scanners have against portable ones are their high scanning resolution and advanced digital ICE technology that removes dust particles and scratch marks from scanned photos.

If you want a portable flatbed scanners, the Doxie Flip is the one to get which can scan 4×6 photos.

Vupoint ST 470

Product	Images / Minute	Resolution	Connectivity	Duplex Scanning	ADF Tray	Weight	Price
Vupoint ST 470	6 IPM	1200 DPI	Hi-Speed USB 2.0	No	No	2.8 lb. (1.27 kg)	Click for more info

The 3rd scanner we’ll be covering here is the VuPoint solutions magic wand ST 470 (Yes, the makers of the Magic Wand Portable scanner), one of the most interesting photo scanners with feeder. This one is the slowest among the ones listed here with a scan speed of just 6 Images per minute. It’s also A4 like the other ones that we covered, but it has a little party piece: A 1200dpi optical resolution. This pixel density in the JPEGs and Bitmaps this portable photo scanner produces is made possible by the CCD (Charge-coupled Device) imaging sensor.

That’s a lot and it will make a difference in photo and document scanning. However, in my humble opinion, sensors from Epson and Canon and the larger manufacturers have more dynamic range, so it’s not just the megapixels. For example, the Moire effect that appears in scanned photos can be toned down if you fiddle with the resolution options (It’s just a thing of maths, complicated to explain). So the more resolution options you have the better chance you are going to get to a good result in terms of scan quality. Also, our tests have shown that text recognition accuracy does not change after you increase the resolution from 600dpi to 1200dpi. It is also a matter of color fidelity and how accurate color is represented by the imaging sensor. Basically more or less the same problems that you would have with a digital camera.

This wand scanner has just a regular 2.0 USB port and no wireless connectivity. VuPoint however states that it can scan things that are 125 inches long. I personally do not believe that is realistically possible because you would have to feed the paper perfectly straight through the feeder. So if the paper is as wide as an A4, after 2 meters it might crumple inside the scanner and break. But if it’s narrower it will forgive you. One of the Vupoint’s main advantages is that it also has a small color LCD screen on which you can preview the scans.

It doesn’t have duplex and like I mentioned before, you won’t miss it. But you will miss the auto image deskew and auto image rotation features, both of which are not present on this scanner and I cannot understand how that is possible in 2020, but there you go. It’s also considerably heavier than some of the scanners here at 2.8 lb.

By this point I would like to mention the fact that these scanners don’t digitize film negatives, only photos. For that we recommend a specialized Slide and Negative scanner. One cool thing about the VuPoint Solutions ST 470 is that you can scan directly to an SD memory card. They even provide one in the package. Another cool thing is that you can supercharge your productivity by buying an autofeed docking station for it.

Brother DS-720D

Product	Images / Minute	Resolution	Connectivity	Duplex Scanning	ADF Tray	Weight	Price
Brother DS-720D	10.6 IPM	600 dpi	Hi-Speed USB 2.0	Yes	No	1.1 lb. (0.49 kg)	Click for more info

The next portable photo scanner in our line-up is the Brother DS-720D. As far as speed is concerned, it’s right in the middle. Not great, not terrible. It’s sensor can do just 600dpi and a 24-bit color depth, but you will find that most of the time it’s more than enough.

You can connect this device to your PC with its USB 2.0 port like you would do with all the office products and you cannot connect it using WiFi because well…it doesn’t have it. What it does have is a duplex mode. That’s nice to know, because when you will be using it for document scans(and you will, your family archive can only have so many photos before this device will be repurposed). If you have had a scanner or printer with manual duplex you will appreciate this feature. You can download SANE and TWAIN drivers for this handheld scanner and they are compatible with PC and Mac.

For some reason, Brother didn’t equip this scanner with the intelligent enhancement features, also know as ICE technology that we find on the Epson, which I find to be a huge minus for image quality and the fact that there is no ADF tray makes it quite disappointing. It is a light scanner though at just 1.1 lbs.

As with the other scanners listed here, you won’t be able to use it to this Brother mobile color scanner to scan negatives and slides (for that you need a scanner with a film holder that is specialized for film and slide scanning), but you will be able to easily scan 4×6 photos. Other versions include the Brother DS-620.

Brother also makes reliable desktop scanners: 2 great choices are the Brother ADS-2800W and 3000.

Canon imageFORMULA P-215

Product	Images / Minute	Resolution	Connectivity	Duplex Scanning	ADF Tray	Weight	Price
Canon imageFORMULA P-215	30 IPM	600 dpi	Hi-Speed USB 2.0, USB 3.0	Yes	Yes	2.2 lb. (0.99 kg)	Click for more info

If you want fast scanning, look no further than the Canon ImageFormula P-215 portable photo scanner. It can scan almost 30 images per minute (We say almost because spec speed doesn’t always translate into real speed, but it basically means really quick scans). This is the high-speed photo scanner in this article. Format-wise and resolution-wise it’s business as usual, 600dpi for high-quality scanning (You can scan digital images at 600dpi and they will come out very nice) and A4.

Canon could have fitted this with Wi-fi connectivity, but instead they went for USB 2.0 / USB 3.0 port to connect it to your computer. In my opinion, all the speed that you gain with the USB port you lose looking for the USB cable. It’s a duplex scanner (which we like) and it can scan documents that are up to 40 inches long (which we’re not really impressed about).

Another thing that we like about this photo document scanner are the image enhancement features. It’s got it all from automatic deskew (which will straighten pictures even if they are slightly skewed by as much as 2-3 degrees) and automatic color detection, which will tell if you are scanning a black & white photo or a color one. Worth mentioning that it includes software for OCR. The device has the option to scan the digital files directly to a color laser printer but we have not tested if you can connect it to a Canon photo printer as scanning together with photo printing can make a great combo for making copies of your family photos.

This scanner model has got a major advantage though over the other scanners: A full ADF tray. Yes, you can just stack the photos in the tray and push a button and the scanner will work it’s magic. It’s rechargeable battery will last for about 400 scans. There are some color photo scanners like the ClearClick which actually run on AA batteries which we think is quite a bad idea. If you want the direct competitor to this scanner, it is the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i.

If you need a flatbed version, Canon makes the Canon CanoScan Lide 400 and 300.

Which is the best portable photo scanner?

If it were us, we would just get the Doxie Go but we have to admit that each scanner has it’s own party piece. The VuPoint has that 1200dpi sensor for example which is really nice but it lacks in speed and it’s so heavy.

When we selected our favourite, we looked a lot at what people think after 6 months of using the device and Doxie Go just won in reliability and customer satisfaction. That makes it our favourite as well.

You might be asking yourself why didn’t we include models like the Epson Perfection V600 or the Epson Perfection V370 or maybe some Canon CanoScan lide 220 model. The problem with those is that we don’t consider them to be trully portable (Not even the FlipPal mobile scanner). They are lightweight cordless flatbed photo scanners. Portable for us would be something that you can easily fit in a small bag and that you can use to easily scan a photo. We would recommend purchasing a flatbed scanner if you also have photo slides and negatives to digitize. We will however be doing a review in the future of the Pandigital Personal Photo Scanner Converter.

There are a few models of portable photo scanners that are specialized just for photo scanning: the Epson FastFoto FF680W is the most popular together with the Fastfoto FF-640. There is also a Plustek Photo Scanner called the Plustek ephoto z300.

Worth noting that this is not really the only way to scan physical copies. There are other portable devices with good scanning capability. Mirrorless cameras can also do the job, but certainly not as good as the CCD sensors built into these scanners.