Epson DS-70

Product	Images / Minute	Format	Connectivity	Max. document size	ADF Tray	Weight	Price
Epson DS-70	11 IPM	A4	USB 2.0	8.5 in. x 72 in. (215 x 1828 mm)	No	0.59 lb. (0.26 kg)	Click for more info

Let’s kick things off with teh Epson DS-70. It’s quite a standard CIS A4 portable scanner, with more or less basic features.

The scanning speed is quite low, somewhere around 11 images per minute. It does not have a duplex mode, tehrefore don’t expect to scan both sides of the paper in one go.

While it may not have the duplex mode, the range of thickness for the paper is quite wide, between 23lb to 182lb. This is quite impressive, meaning you can scan just about anything.

Because of this wide range of documents that can be scanned, it does not offer an ADF tray, meaning you will have to feed each document by hand into the scanner. This will definitely slow you down when you have a batch of more than 10 documents.

Besides this, it has some features, which include the automatic image rotation and the automatic cropping. I wasn’t expecting this device to feature auto color detection but it is included.

Last but not least, it has background removal and deskew. These 2 features are critical if you want to do OCR for your scanned documents. Because this scanner comes with OCR, which will ease your work when it comes to creating searchable PDF’s directly.

Brother DS-620

Product	Images / Minute	Format	Connectivity	Max. document size	ADF Tray	Weight	Price
Brother DS-620	16 IPM	A4	Hi-Speed USB 2.0	8.5 in. x 32 in. (215 x 812 mm)	No	0.88 lb. (0.39 kg)	Click for more info

With the Brother DS-620 we are moving to a higher productivity, as this scanner is a bit faster than the previous one. Again, this A4 portable scanner is under 150 and does not have auto duplex. This seems to be a theme in this price range, right?

Anyway, moving on, the scanning resolution is around 600dpi, achieved by using a powerful CIS sensor. One thing which I don’t really like though is the paper thickness range. It is between 60g/m2 to 105gm2. This means you won’t be scanning much more than standard documents.

Yes, I understand this scanner is under 150 dollars, but still, I would have preferred a wider range. Especially given that it doesn’t have an automatic document feeder, which in that case, I would understand the narrow range.

Regarding other features it’s missing, I will present a few. Background removal is not available, and this is not good to hear. Given that it has an OCR feature, you won’t always get the best results if you don’t have a clean background.

Then it’s the deskew feature. I can’t image scanning without it. Really, having skewed documents is not the nicest thing visually, not to mention that it really influences the OCR process, by decreasing its accuracy.

Vupoint ST 470

Product	Images / Minute	Format	Connectivity	Max. document size	ADF Tray	Weight	Price
Vupoint ST 470	6 IPM	A4	Hi-Speed USB 2.0	8.5 in. x 125 in. (215 x 3175 mm)	No	2.8 lb. (1.27 kg)	Click for more info

The Vupoint ST 470 is by far the slowest scanner out of this lot. This A4 1200 dpi portable scanner costs somewhere under 150 dollars and has a scanning speed of around 6 images per minute.

Given that it does not have a duplex feature, you will constantly have to turn the pages round after scanning one side of the document.

The CIS sensor facilitates this scanners high resolution. Practically it should reach around 1200 DPI, which is really good. Still, the resolution is interpolated, it’s not an optical resolution. Therefore, the quality is not way better when compared to an optical resolution of 600dpi.

The paper thickness that this scanner can process is the standard one, defined under the name plain paper. Yes, more or less all the documents that are relatively standard paper will go through the scanner. You might have some issues with really thin or thick paper though, so I suggest going for another scanner if you want to scan those.

One of the things I like about this device is that it works with the Abbyy FineReader software. This will create OCR files, such as searchable PDF or Microsoft word files, from scanned images.

Canon imageFORMULA P-215

Product	Images / Minute	Format	Connectivity	Max. document size	ADF Tray	Weight	Price
Canon imageFORMULA P-215	30 IPM	A4	Hi-Speed USB 2.0, USB 3.0	8.5 in. x 39.4 in. (215 x 1000 mm)	Yes	2.2 lb. (0.99 kg)	Click for more info

We are quite big fans of the Canon ImageFormula P-215. It’s one of our favourite portable scanners currently on the market.

I will start with the good points. It’s a 600dpi A4 scanner, that works through a USB 3.0 connection. The scanning speed is around 30 images per minute, and it features an automatic duplexing capture unit.

Another good thing about is that it has an ADF tray. While this is not a big one, it’s enough to hold a couple of documents in it.

Besides the automatic rotation, which is missing, the other features such as automatic color detection or automatic cropping are present with this scanner. Both of these features should help you achieve a good scanning quality directly out of the box.

Now, the scanner comes with a built in Capture on TOuch Lite version. This will do most of the scanning tasks you need and provide good scanning results for basic workflows.

Other options are the full CaptureOnTouch solution, or if you want you can integrate the driver in your own app. This can be done through a TWAIN or ISIS interface.

ClearClick

Product	Images / Minute	Format	Connectivity	Max. document size	ADF Tray	Weight	Price
ClearClick	12 ipm	A4	USB	8.5 in. x 47 in. (215 x 1193 mm)	Yes	0.9 lb. (0.4 kg)	Click for more info

Last but not least we have the Clearclick photo to usb portable scanner. Now, this scanner is more suited to photos, rather than documents, but of course you can also scan documents with it.

So we will start with the resolution. This will go up to 1200 dpi, and deliver your documents in either a JPG or PDF format.

Installation is done quite easily, and will work both on a PC or MAC. Just plug in the usb connection and you should be good to go. The driver interface is a native one, so you won’t have to go through ISIS or Twain interface adjustments.

The scanner is also sold with an OCR solution, called the DIRECTSCAN OCR software. This means that once you connect your scanner to the computer and install the software, you are good to go and create text based files from your scanned images.

The OCR software will only work on PC, so as a MAC user you can only operate the scanner directly through the app of your choice.

The manufacturer sells this scanner with a 1 year manufacturer warranty, but this can be extended for an additional year.