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 our favorite office document scanner. We love the fact that it has a 100-sheet automatic document feeder ADF capacity and that it is a high-speed scanner with a scan speed of 60 pages per minute.

The automatic document feeder has ultrasonic multifeed detection so that it doesn’t accidentally pull in 2 pages at once and also some features for duplex scanning like blank page detection and removal. After the pages have been correctly scanned by its CIS Contact Image Sensor with 600 dpi optical resolution, it applies an automatic deskew function to straighten them. And then should you want to apply some manual corrections like cropping or RGB color adjustment, you can do that with the 8 inch built-in LCD touchscreen.

The touch screen is something we want to touch upon (No pun intended). It is the biggest of any document scanner and allows you to operate all the scanning functions and especially allows the document scanner to operate on its own. And that is what makes this the best office scanner, the fact that you can use one device across your entire workplace or even company, depending on the size. Every user can set their own destination or scan profile and it can do scan to Email and also be used in the US as a Fax Machine.

The device connects and can scan directly to the cloud. Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Evernote are just a few cloud storage platforms to choose from and the Raven development team which is the most active we have seen in any scanner manufacturer can add new integrations as things progress because this fast office scanner can also update itself over-the-air. As far as connecting to the internet goes, this document scanner has it all: 2.4Ghz Wi-fi, Ethernet port and a USB port to either scan to USB flash drives (Something quite useful in some departments) or connect to a Windows computer or Mac using TWAIN drivers. The lower-end model doesn’t have the TWAIN driver.

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 Fujitsu IX1500 is an office scanner that is very similar in some ways with the Raven, but it is much cheaper and more of a direct competitor of the Raven Original than the Pro. But it does offer some features that you do not get with the previous scanner.

First of all it can scan A3 documents. How? You fold them in half, scan them in duplex mode and then the software stitches both sides together into an A3 digital image. Practical when you have a few, but not a solution for when you have many.

The Optical Character Recognition software is way better because it comes with a bundle of ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap. Not all OCR software is the same: This one can convert scanned images to searchable PDF files but also to Word documents which have a fully editable layout and editable text in them. The software can also export to TXT, RTF, Excel XLS which are file formats that are unavailable to the Raven OCR which happens only in the cloud that the manufacturer provides. So if you need to export to Microsoft Office or Open Office, this scanner is much better suited.

The pixel density is the same as with the previous device with a 600 dots per inch image resolution and the color depth is the same story with a 24-bit RGB color depth when scanning in color and an 8-bit depth in grayscale. The scanning software and drivers are compatible with both operating systems, Windows and Mac OS X and it is capable of scanning documents to high-quality TIFF, JPEG, PNG and BMP file formats.

You can connect this office scanner to your personal computer via USB cable or via wireless network. We prefer the latter one for obvious reasons especially for business use in environments like a corporate office as it has enough security protocols to meet the needs of organizations.

This scanner also has an LCD touch screen but a smaller one which you use just for fiddling with the scan settings rather than cropping, adjusting or previewing the images. But let’s not forget the fact that it costs almost half as much as the Raven.

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 another one of the best office scanners you can buy. It is a device that is closer to a production scanner than the IX1500. The reason being that it has a very intelligent image post-processing software bundle that consists of Paperstream IP and Paperstream Capture. It can do things like Zonal OCR, advanced Barcode Recognition and intelligent image adjustments. It was created for professional office users.

Another great feature is the 1200 DPI scanning resolution which is excellent for scanning photos. When doing photo scanning, the extra pixels really show off sometimes.

The biggest drawback with this scanner is that it only has a USB port. But it does have a 60 pages per minute scan speed, an 80-sheet automatic document feeder with multifeed detection and all the image enhancements and Digital ICE features you want like document separation, hole punch removal, streaks correction, automatic cropping and multistream. Multistream helps you scan the document and export it using two different scanning profiles. The software can do things that otherwise you would have to do in Photoshop. The feed rollers last for 200,000 scans and Fujitsu recommends a daily duty cycle of 4000 scans per day.

For OCR it uses the PaperStream software, which can be good and bad. File formats are limited but it does have great features for indexing and form processing which might help a lot more in your workgroup’s document workflow.

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

This office scanner is a direct competitor for the Fujitsu IX1500. They were both built with the idea of extended connectivity and standalone scanning, that’s why they were also priced the same.

You can connect it via Ethernet, Wireless or USB connection. It also has a tiny color LCD screen to operate basic functions and a speed of 35 A4 documents per minute.

You can set scanning destinations to be E-mail, FTP and SFTP and also scan to a USB flash drive. Brother bundles the Nuance PaperPort app which is a document management software that allows you to combine PDFs, store and organize them, capture from multiple devices to the same destination, a global search feature and document sharing features.

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 Epson ES-400 is the best scanner for the home office because it is cheap, small and does the basics quite well. It costs less than half as much as the Raven Pro. You get a decent 35 PPM speed (70 IPM if you scan double-sided duplex documents), a 50-page ADF tray, Epson’s ScanSmart software with built-in OCR from Nuance (Now known as Kofax), TWAIN drivers and the possibility of scanning to the cloud.

As we mentioned before, this office document scanner is perfect for either a home office or a small office although for the latter I personally would be inclined more towards the IX1500.

Which is the best office scanner?

Overall? The Raven Pro. The touch screen, great software, fast scanning speeds and OTA updates make it a powerful product. The Fujitsu IX1500 comes in at a close second with its more specific features like A3 scanning, better OCR and multiple file formats. The Brother ADS-2700W is also a great alternative as a network scanner for your office.

For professional scanning? The Fujitsu Fi-7160 which has great post-processing and productivity features.

For home? The cheap and productive Epson ES-400.