Brother ADS-1700W

Product	Images / Minute	Format	Connectivity	Max. document size	ADF Tray	Weight	Price
Brother ADS-1700W	50 IPM	A4	Wireless 802.11 b/g/n, Micro USB 3.0	8.5 in. x 34 in. (215 x 863 mm)	Yes	3.7 lb. (1.67 kg)	Click for more info

The Brother ADS-1700W is by far the best portable scanner without computer connection. Because you can put a flash drive in its USB port, you don’t need a computer for scanning documents with it.

This mobile scanner has all that you could ever want. An automatic Document Feeder with a generous 20-page automatic document feeder ADF tray. Then there are the fast scanning speeds at 25 pages per minute. This is faster than most portable scanners ever made. The scan quality is superior as well at up to 600 DPI optical. It can also scan duplex documents with a single pass and it is easy to set up and start scanning without any computer attached.

Like with most serious duplex scanners, this wireless high-speed device can run most types of paper through it like color photos which are glossy, plain paper, receipts on thin paper and there is also a slot on the back for ID Cards and plastic cards.

There is also a solid scanning software package with this color duplex document scanner: Nuance PaperPort SE with OCR for Windows, Brother iPrint&Scan, Power PDF. You can use the Brother Web Connect to scan directly to the cloud, be it your favorite cloud app or cloud storage like Google Drive, Google Photos, Evernote and Dropbox. The Nuance software can create searchable PDFs directly from your scans.

What is interesting is that this intuitive portable scanner has no rechargeable battery. It has to run powered via USB power cable or AC adapter like regular desktop scanners. This Brother is the best choice by far as a scanner that doesn’t need a computer.

Brother also has other good buying options: The Brother ADS-1250w wireless portable document scanner works without a computer too. Other alternatives but which come with a computer required for connection: brother ds-640 compact mobile document scanner and brother ds-740d duplex compact mobile document scanner and the Brother dsMobile line.

Brother also makes great desktop document scanners like the Brother ADS-2700w and the ADS-2800w.

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 ST470 is the first portable document scanner without computer that we will be looking at. You don’t need to connect it to a Windows PC or a Mac for it to work, it’s a complete standalone scanner. It has a really high pixel density of 1200 dots per inch which makes even very small details in photos visible on computer monitors. Photo scanning will work great with this device. The quality is made possible by the CIS (Contact Image Sensor) integrated inside. It will bring out even the smallest details in your bitmaps and JPEG images. This resolution makes it a very good photo and document scanner.
If you do want to connect it to a computer, you can use the USB port (Hi-Speed USB 2.0) and the USB cable to link it to a computer and download the images.

The speed is not this color document scanner’s main advantage. The scanner has a scanning speed of 6 pages per minute which is not fast, but all the scanners that don’t require a computer have a slower scan speed. And if you take it out of the docking station it becomes as fast as you can move it. There is no duplex feature, so you as a user will have to manually feed the paper two times through the scanner to make sure you scan both sides of a document. It does not have a TWAIN driver, just the native driver interface so if you want to use a different scanning app other than the one provided by the scanner manufacturer, you will need to find a workaround.

Optical Character Recognition is included in the package with the scanner. You get the best OCR software available on the market, the ABBYY Finereader. Our lab tests have shown the ABBYY software to be superior to other applications like the ReadIris or Nuance Omnipage in both character recognition accuracy, layout detection and file format support. The Vupoint is an interesting and flexible scanner that doesn’t need a computer.

This product is what you also know as the magic wand portable scanner. There are 2 versions of the same product and this is the high-end one.

Doxie GO SE

Product	Images / Minute	Format	Connectivity	Max. document size	ADF Tray	Weight	Price
Doxie GO SE	7 IPM	A4	USB	8.5 in. x 30 in. (215 x 762 mm)	No	1.3 lb. (0.59 kg)	Click for more info

The Doxie GO SE is our second choice as a portable scanner without computer. Again, the Doxie Go is capable of scanning and transfering the digital images directly to an SD memory card and they include one in the package. You don’t need to tether and sync it with a computer or a smartphone, it can work by itself. The Doxie Go SE software also provides cloud support for uploading the scanned images directly to dropbox, evernote or google drive.

It has a lower optical resolution than the VuPoint scanner but not by a lot. It still offers 600dpi resolution which makes it a decent photo scanner as well. The image resolution matters to OCR in document scanning, but our tests have shown that there is no significant improvement from 300dpi to 600dpi and none whatsoever when you improve the image resolution to 1200 dots per inch. Usually what matters is how the text is printed on the paper.

This portable scanner can scan at speeds up to 7 pages per minute and it can handle any paper size up to A4. Extra-long documents can be scanned if they are no more than 30 inches in length. There is no duplex function, so if you have double-sided documents you will have to feed them manually two times and there is no Automatic feeder tray either, so you don’t have the possibility to stack up several documents and scan them in bulk automatically.

The software bundle that you get with the Doxie scanner is one app, the Doxie Software which is compatible with Mac and PC. It can save the scanned images to either PDF document or JPEG file. The software can also scan to cloud with a dedicated Send Button inside the app and Evernote support. A while ago you could youse an EyeFi card in the SD card slot with the doxie that added a wifi connection to your scanner so you could transfer the scanned files to your phone, but the card is no longer supported by EyeFi. To scan directly to your mobile device, just use the Doxie app.

With a weight of 1.3 lbs, it is one of the lightest scanners that you can buy and it also has a compact design, you should have no problems fitting it into a backpack or briefcase. It’s really good when you are on-the-go, you don’t have to turn on your computer. It has a status LED light that tells you whether it is on or charghing. The Doxie is a great scanner that doesn’t need a computer.

IRISCan Anywhere 5

Product	Images / Minute	Format	Connectivity	Max. document size	ADF Tray	Weight	Price
IRISCan Anywhere 5	16 IPM	A4	Wi-Fi, USB	8.27 x 11.69 in (210 x 297mm)	No	0.73 lb. (0.33 kg)	Click for more info

The Iriscan Anywhere 5 is the last portable scanner without computer that we will review. It’s quite similar to the Doxie Go in specifications. It doesn’t require a connection to a computer and no drivers are needed to be installed for linking the device to the computer. Even when you connect it, you can transfer the digital files like you would from a digital camera. It has multiple connectivity options if you do want it to be connected to your PC, you can do that by using the integrated WiFi or with a USB cable attached. It too doesn’t have a TWAIN driver and it makes sense since it was designed to work without a computer. The scanner software provides a few image enhancement features such as automatic color mode detection and automatic cropping, it will deskew the image and clean the background of the scan. This scanner captures any document that is up to A4 size.

There is some optical character recognition software included with this portable scanner: Readiris Pro 15, Cardiris Pro 4 (Mac), Cardiris Corporate 5.7, IRISCompressor Pro (Mac). The Readiris app is certainly not as good as the one that you will get with the VuPoint portable scanner, it doesn’t have the same recognition accuracy and layout detection, but overall it does the job and if you are not working with complex information in multiple languages, chances are you will not notice the difference. It is a lightweight design, the scanner itself weighs just 0.73 lbs and that is a big advantage for this product.

The disadvantage is that this mobile color page scanner does not offer duplex scanning nor an automatic feeder tray. The reason for not including the ADF tray is obvious, the scanner would have been much more heavy indeed. Not having duplex is going to have an impact on your productivity if you are scanning double-sided documents on a daily basis, but if you are just dealing with invoices you won’t have any problems.

What is the right portable document scanner without computer?

The Brother ADS-1700W portable high-speed scanner has no match at this moment in this category. This portable sheetfed scanner has all the features and the performance you can ever need. It is more powerful and more feature-packed than even the Fujitsu scansnap s1300i portable color duplex scanner. Two of our other favorite portable compact scanners are the VuPoint and the Doxie Go, with an advantage for the VuPoint for its powerful OCR software and also for its 1200dpi imaging sensor. There are also some office document scanners that can work independently: The Fujitsu ScanSnap IX500 wireless high-speed scanner and Fujitsu ScanSnap IX1500, Canon ImageFormula R40 and the Visioneer Patriot H60. Here are some great portable scanners that require a computer and that we have reviewed: fujitsu scansnap s1300i with the scansnap cloud app, Fujitsu ScanSnap IX100, epson workforce ds-30 portable scanner, epson workforce es-50 portable scanner, Epson workforce es-300w wireless scanner, Canon Imageformula P-215ii and Epson Workforce ES-400. If you want to scan photos then our recommendation is the Epson fastfoto ff-680w. There are all-in-one HP printers that have SD card support that have SD card support, so they can also present themselves as a solution. There are laser printers and inkjet printers with this function. We also reviewed flatbed scanners: canon canoscan lide 400 and Epson Perfection V39. They don’t work without a computer.