The only 3 Portable Scanners that save to Flash Drive in 2023

Brother ADS-1700W

Product	Images / Minute	Resolution	Connectivity	Duplex Scanning	ADF Tray	Weight	Price
Brother ADS-1700W	50 IPM	600 dpi	Wireless 802.11 b/g/n, Micro USB 3.0	Yes	Yes	3.7 lb. (1.67 kg)	Click for more info

This portable color duplex document scanner has everything that you want in a scanning device and also support for flash drives. More speed than a fujitsu scansnap s1300i portable color duplex document scanner, two-sided scanning support, a big touch screen LCD display and wireless connectivity to the global network together with a Micro-USB 3.0 port.

You load the original documents in its ADF tray, insert the USB flash drive into the USB port on the front, press the scan button, it will start scanning and when the device is done it will scan and store the digital files. Then you just remove the USB flash drive which has all your documents and images on it and you are done. You don’t have to set a file name or custom profile, everything is automatic.

So what document types can this image scanner digitize? Anything from invoices to receipts to plastic cards by the use of the dedicated card slot on the back.

This is a document scanner for Mac and PC, the software is compatible with either of them and you can also find TWAIN, WIA, ICA and SANE drivers to integrate it in custom business solutions. Brother ships this mobile color page scanner with the following software: Nuance PaperPort SE with OCR for Windows, Brother iPrint&Scan, Power PDF.

The only minus with it is that it needs a power supply to work like most office products, it doesn’t have a battery. So you can power it either through USB or the AC adapter. But the 2-sided scanning, flash drive support and wireless connectivity more than make up for it.

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 portable scanner with flash drive support. It lets you insert a USB memory stick and save the scanned images directly onto it. This is a very specific feature, very few scanners can save directly to a usb mass storage device with no computer required unlike compact desktop scanners which need a driver and USB connection. It has a scanning speed of 7 images per minute and a scanning resolution of 600dpi from its integrated CCD imaging sensor.

This portable scanner is equipped with a rechargeable Li-ion battery that should last for 400 scans but the number of pages per charge depends a lot on the resolution. You can recharge it using the USB cable but the USB doesn’t have enough power for a proper recharge, so the AC Adapter is the best way to go. It can also save to the internal memory in the form of an SD Card and Doxie provides you with an SD Card included in the package when you purchase the scanner. That should hold at least 3000 scans on it, so you need not worry about the capacity. You can always upgrade to a larger memory card if you need the extra space. So you can use the SD Card or USB Flash drive (We haven’t tried USB drives that power via USB yet with it and have an NTFS filesystem), without needing to connect to a computer.

The Doxie Software can save your digital scans to JPG, PDF and PNG format and it supports both Windows PC and Mac OS. It doesn’t have a long warranty, just 1 year. It does however have a TWAIN interface and if you are integrating the scanner into a more complex project where you have a custom scanning app, it will come in handy. You can run most types of sheets of paper like documents and business cards and also use it as a receipt scanner. The device is optimized for scanning photos or documents and you can use a photo sleeve for photos printed on very glossy paper.

There is no duplex feature on this scanner nor is there an ADF tray. You have to feed the paper inside it manually and then if you want to scan both sides, you have to manually flip the page. There are some issues with the way the feeder works that might affect the image but, Image enhancement features are present such as automatic color detection, automatic rotation and image cropping.

Doxie also provides Optical Character Recognition support with the scanner out of the box. If you need the same compact design but with wireless connectivity, then you can opt for the Doxie Go SE Wifi.

IRISCan Anywhere 5

Product	Images / Minute	Resolution	Connectivity	Duplex Scanning	ADF Tray	Weight	Price
IRISCan Anywhere 5	16 IPM	600 dpi	Wi-Fi, USB	No	No	0.73 lb. (0.33 kg)	Click for more info

The IRIScan Anywhere is the second portable scanner with flash drive support. It too will download all the digital scans directly to a USB memory stick. It works without the need for a computer. It has Wifi so you can connect it to your home or office hotspot and with a USB cable. It also has a TWAIN interface for integration with 3rd party apps. It uses a CIS sensor that produces scanned images at up to 1200dpi. The speed is 12 pages per minute at 600 dpi resolution and 8 pages per minute at 1200 dpi. It can produce 2 file formats: JPEG and PDF. That should cover you for most situations, but it would have been great to have the option to save as uncompressed TIFF or more advanced like CCIT Group 4 TIFF.

Automatic color detection and automatic cropping are two key features that this document scanner has. The Iriscan comes with OCR software, more specifically the ReadIris software which I don’t particularly like because of its low text recognition accuracy. The cool thing is that it has an LCD screen, not very big but it’s better than nothing. It also comes in 4 different colors.

This handheld scanner can tether and connect to your smartphone (Android or iOS) and tablet as well as Windows PCs or Macs. It also comes with an SD card included, a 4GB one. It doesn’t have duplex scanning nor an automatic feeder tray, so you have to manually put the paper inside and flip it if you want double-sided scanning. It is a very light scanner, it only weighs 0.73 lbs. The software bundle includes: Readiris Pro 15, Cardiris Pro 4 (Mac), Cardiris Corporate 5.7 (a small business tool to help with handling business cards), IRISCompressor Pro (Mac).

The ReadIris has a rechargeable battery that should last for about 100 A4 documents until you have to recharge. It is the most compact and lightweight portable scanner with flash drive support with the device weighing just 0.73 lb. This device is part of a line of cheap scanners that have appeared in the past years and have taken a lot of market share from the traditional manufacturers.

Brother ADS-1200

Product	Images / Minute	Resolution	Connectivity	Duplex Scanning	ADF Tray	Weight	Price
Brother ADS-1200	50 IPM	600 dpi	Micro USB 3.0	Yes	Yes	3.3 lb. (1.49 kg)	Click for more info

The Brother ADS-1200 is the fastest portable scanner with flash drive support here with fast scanning speeds of 25 pages per minute. You can scan any paper size up to A4 at a resolution of 600dpi. It has Micro USB 3.0 connectivity. It has TWAIN, WIA, ICA and SANE drivers so you can integrate it with any scanning app that you come across. The long document mode allows you to scan documents up to 34 inches in length. This scanner is different because it’s made by a large manufacturer and usually these scanners don’t come with this option, but the Brother 1200 does. There is an option to save the images directly on the flash drive. Brother claims the 1250W has the same feature too. These are the only scanners made by a large manufacturer with the scanning to usb option.

The included software is: Nuance PaperPort SE with OCR for Windows, Brother iPrint&Scan, Power PDF. the advantage of this scanner is that it has an ADF automatic document feeder tray, which helps you to stack papers to be scanned automatically by the scanner. The Dual CIS sensor makes this a complete duplex scanner.

You can just scan double-sided documents without any extra intervention. This is quite important and can be a deal-breaker in your purchase decision. The Nuance OCR software is ok for creating searchable pdfs as a digital copy. It’s not as good as ABBYY but definitely better than the Readiris software in terms of character accuracy, PDF formats, image file formats and options. You can use the Brother Web connect to upload the scanned images to Cloud Storage platforms like Google Drive, Evernote or Dropbox.

As far as the paper types supported, Brother claims that it supports the following features: Plain Paper, Thin Paper, Thick Paper, Thicker Paper, Recycled Paper, Business Card, Plastic Card. This means you can use it as a business card scanner or ID Cards scanner.

The image enhancement features on this brother mobile color scanner are quite solid, it can switch between scan modes automatically (black & white or color) and it can also correct the background color of the document so that it looks like it’s been made directly on the computer. These features are more for document scanning than photo scanning but the scan quality is enough for you to use this as a photo scanner. It has an AC Adapter, so no USB power for this device either.

If you want brother’s wireless version of this portable sheetfed scanner, then you should go for the Brother ADS-1250W or another brother wireless portable model, the ADS-1700.