Fujitsu fi-7160

Product	Format	Scanning area	Connectivity	Sheets per minute	Images per minute	ADF Size	Daily Duty Cycle	Price
Fujitsu fi-7160	A4	8.27 in x 11.69 in	USB 3.0	60	120	80 sheets	4,000 sheets	Click for more info

The Fujitsu Fi-7160 is a fantastic duplex scanner and we’ll explain why.

First of all it has an automatic document feeder that can hold 80 duplex documents. The feeder is equipped with an ultrasonic sensor for multifeed detection and it runs at a scanning speed of 60 pages per minute which if you have two-sided documents will translate into 120 images every minute. It’s a straight-pass system so you can run thicker paper types that bend harder.

One of the best things about it is the PaperStream software that it has bundled in the package. There is no shortage of features on it from Blank Page Detection which is specifically designed to remove blank sides of double-sided documents so that you don’t have to do it manually. Along with that, it also has Zonal OCR to help with form processing and barcode recognition. It allows you to use document separators and can extract metadata. The images can be exported into JPEG, TIFF, BMP, PNG or searchable PDF files.

There is one party piece with this document scanner too. Even though it is an A4 scanner, it uses its duplex function to scan A3 documents. What you do is you feed the large document through the scanner folded. It scans both sides of the paper in the single-pass duplex mode and then stitches the two images together into one A3 scanned image. Clever.

And that image will also be high-resolution because this scanner has a CCD Charge-Coupled Device sensor which can scan your documents at an optical resolution of 1200 DPI.

The big downside is the connectivity, it’s just by USB cable.

Raven Pro Document Scanner

Product	Format	Scanning area	Connectivity	Sheets per minute	Images per minute	ADF Size	Daily Duty Cycle	Price
Raven Pro Document Scanner	A4	8.5 in. x 11.7 in.	Wi-Fi (2.4ghz), Ethernet	60	120	100 sheets	6000 sheets	Click for more info

The Raven Pro is a different kind of duplex scanner. It has a more generous feeder capacity of 100 documents. Its software is not as rich in post-processing features as the Fujitsu, but it offers so much more in other areas.

First of all, there is the connectivity. It has wireless networking, an ethernet port and a USB port which you can use to either scan your documents to USB Flash drives or connect to your personal computer via the TWAIN driver provided on their website. It works on both major operating systems, be it a Windows PC and Mac OS.

Its connectivity enables it to scan directly to the cloud without a computer involved, something the Fi-7160 can’t do. Supported cloud storage platforms include Google Drive, Dropbox or Evernote.

Then there is the big LCD touchscreen that measures 8 inches and provides all the controls that you need to scan, enhance the image and send it to the cloud. It is so big and easy to use that you can crop your images directly on the touchscreen and also shift the colors to suit your need.

The pixel density is not as good, it is just 600 dots per inch, but that’s more than enough for documents and especially Optical Character Recognition. Usually anything up to 400 DPI is ok. It uses a different type of image sensor to scan the double-sided documents, a CIS (Contact Image Sensor).

One downside is that you can’t save the digital images in TIFF or BMP format but maybe in a future OTA update that will be possible.

As far as duplex documents go, it can detect and remove blank pages and it can keep a scan speed of 120 images per minute, which equates to 60 two-sided documents.

Fujitsu Scansnap IX1500

Product	Format	Scanning area	Connectivity	Sheets per minute	Images per minute	ADF Size	Daily Duty Cycle	Price
Fujitsu Scansnap IX1500	A4	8.27 in x 11.69 in	USB 3.1, WiFi	30	60	50 sheets	400 sheets	Click for more info

The IX1500 is a duplex scanner that is similar to the Raven Pro, it is a complete standalone scanner but which misses some features and adds some features and also has a slower speed. Still, it is significantly cheaper, so you if you need a standalone scanner for double-sided papers, it is worth considering.

It has an LCD touchscreen though not as big, still good enough to setup scanning profiles. You can even switch back and forth between simplex and duplex mode directly from it.

It has a USB port and wireless networking, but it doesn’t have the ethernet connection. This shouldn’t be a big problem as most modern routers have wi-fi.

But what about its duplex scanning capabilities? It has an automatic document feeder capable of stacking 50 two-sided pages up to an A4 paper size. It has a scanning speed of 30 PPM and 60 IPM respectively in duplex mode.

It also has the little party trick that the Fi-7160, this meaning the ability to use the duplex scanning mode to scan both sides of a folded A3 paper into a single image.

It can detect and remove blank pages when you scan double-sided pages but sometimes it does not as it has a preset sensitivity to what is a blank page, so might end up with the blank pages still in the document.

We like the ABBYY software that comes with it and has great text recognition accuracy and also converts high-quality scanned images to Word documents, Excel or PowerPoint and all with fully editable text.

Brother ADS-2700W

Product	Format	Scanning area	Connectivity	Sheets per minute	Images per minute	ADF Size	Daily Duty Cycle	Price
Brother ADS-2700W	A4	8.27 in x 11.69 in	Fast Ethernet, Wireless and Hi-Speed USB 2.0	35	70	50 sheets	3,000 sheets	Click for more info

The Brother ADS-2700W is a duplex document scanner in the same category and price range as the IX1500. It also has an additional ethernet port. The speed is also a bit faster at 35 PPM. The ADF tray is exactly the same size with it being able to hold at most 50 documents.

It is capable of scanning documents in 3 modes, Color with an RGB color depth of 24-bit, Grayscale with a depth of 8-bit and halftone.

This document scanner can ignore blank pages automatically, but just as with the IX1500 it has a certain sensitivity to what it thinks is a blank page. Most of the time the feature works great.

When you scan in duplex mode, there is no option to choose whether you want to scan double-sided on long edge or short edge. It automatically assumes you want long edge which fits most cases, but would be a nice feature to have.

Epson ES-400

Product	Format	Scanning area	Connectivity	Sheets per minute	Images per minute	ADF Size	Daily Duty Cycle	Price
Epson ES-400	A4	8.27 in x 11.69 in	SuperSpeed USB 3.0 and Ethernet (optional)	35	70	50 sheets	4,000 sheets	Click for more info

The ES-400 is the cheapest duplex scanner we are featuring in our list. Even though it is the cheapest, do not be fooled. The scanning speed is 35 double-sided documents per minute.

When scanning double-sided originals it also has much better features than some of the more expensive duplex scanners here. For example the option to skip blank pages has 4 settings of sensitivity (Very low, low, middle and high). And if that is not enough, you can set one to be user defined.

When you want to start scanning with the Epson ScanSmart software, it first prompts you with what type of scanning mode do you want (Simplex or duplex). The menu is great and easy to use, it allows you to configure some of the post-processing features like correcting document skew, image layout orientation, color mode and resolution.

It has a double-feed detection system in the form of an ultrasonic sensor so that you don’t feed multiple pages into the scanner by accident. For OCR it uses the Nuance Omnipage OCR software and it comes with TWAIN drivers for both operating systems.

Which is the best duplex document scanner for me?

If you want to do professional scanning which can involve form processing, a lot of image enhancement afterwards, then the Fujitsu Fi-7160. If you don’t need all the Pro features of the Fujitsu, the Raven is a much better choice because it offers many additional features.

At a lower price point, the IX1500 is the right way to go and if you are on a tight budget, the ES-400 is a duplex document scanner that will do just fine.