Vupoint ST 470 review | What’s good, what’s bad?

What’s so special about it?

This little scanner, called the VuPoint 470 saves your scans directly to a microsd card up to 32GB. That’s something quite new in this category, because we are used to connecting the scanners to a PC or the internet to download the scans. But with the VuPoint they get saved directly to a card. Oh and the manufacturer is nice enough to include an 8GB SD card with the machine. It has an “auto feed dock”, which basically just means a paper feed system. It doesn’t have an ADF tray though, just an automated feeding system. Something quite nice that you also get with the scanner is a little 1.5″ color LCD display mounted on it. In reality the screen is useless on checking quality, it’s just for the basic stuff. The resolution is another interesting strong point. It’s up to 1200dpi. I don’t know why they felt the need to put an extra over 600dpi for a portable scanner but the extra quality is welcome.

Vupoint ST 470 Datasheet Explained

This portable scanner has a scan speed of about 6 images per minute using the integrated dock. This is lower than the average scanner at this price which will do 15 images per minute. But fast scanning is not its advantage, it is the versatility from the two scanning modes. When you are not using the scanner with autofeed dock connected, it can do almost 15-20 pages per minute.

The Vupoint ST470 easily scans any format up to a maximum scan size of A4, so there’s plenty of room for most of your everyday documents. The resolution as I mentioned before is 1200dpi which is considerably better than the 600dpi you get with portable scanners that cost the same as this one. So this will be a great photo scanner. However, in reality you will not always need the high-resolution scans. The final image will just end up being very large and you don’t get as much extra detail as you would think. In our scanning center we usually stay away from these resolutions unless the scan quality is needed.

It has a USB 2.0 connection so you can plug it into the computer as well. You can use the USB cable as a the main power source for the scanner. There is no TWAIN, WIA or SANE interface, so don’t expect to be able to integrate this product into specialized scanning apps. The maximum scanning length in 125 inches.

To achieve this quality, the magic wand portable scanner uses a high-resolution CIS sensor, but you don’t have to know that. All you need to know is that the quality of the JPG image will be very good. As far as supported paper thickness is concerned, the maker only states plain paper as being supported, however because of the type of mechanism, you should be able to run heavier paper through it.

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Features for Productivity

This portable scanner does not have duplex. That is a shame, but at this price only half the scanners have duplex support.

The scanner comes with automatic color detection. It will know automatically if a piece of paper is printed in color or black & white and will adjust accordingly. However it cannot tell if a document is fed upside down, because it doesn’t have automatic image rotation. But it does have automatic image cropping, so you will not get any black borders in your scanned images. Background removal (or background cleaning as it’s called) doesn’t exist on this device. Very few scanners in this price range are equipped with this feature.

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Quality of images

The VuPoint ST470 portable scanner doesn’t come equipped with automatic deskew or punch hole removal either. Deskew is particularly useful because it straightens the image, it doesn’t matter if you fed it skewed through the scanner. Punch hole removal is not a necessary feature on a scanner like this.

The good part is that the magic wand handheld scanner is that it comes equipped with OCR software that lets you convert your scanned documents into searchable PDF and Word files. .

Vupoint ST 470 accesories unboxing

While the Vupoint ST470 has an automatic document feeder, it doesn’t have an ADF tray and that can be misleading a bit for the users. So you still have to manually feed the papers into it, you can’t just stack them in a tray and wait for the scanner to do it’s job. At 2.8lb it’s heavier than the other mobile scanners at it’s price point however, I would assume that all the extra features would have to affect the weight a bit. Still, you can carry this scanner around with no problems and the manufacturer gives you a protective case for it as well in the box. This is a scanner for Mac and PC and the software works on both platforms.

It includes the standard 4GB memory for storing images but also supports microsd, microsdhc memory cards up to 32GB.

This portable handheld scanner uses a rechargeable LIthium Polymer battery that lasts for approximately 400 scanned photos and documents.

The best accessory is the autofeed docking station for Magic Wand which turns it into a portable scanner with autofeed.

There is also another Vupoint solutions magic wand portable scanner but the ST-470 is a superior model in all ways. .

Vupoint ST 470 driver, manual & brochure

If you need to download the lastest drivers for the Vupoint Magic Wand Portable Scanner ST470 you need to go to this page. Remember, you don’t nee a computer to use this scanner, so if you’re in a hurry after the setup, you can just save the scans on the included microsd card.

They also provide an instruction manual here. That will cover a lot of topics that we can’t in this article.

If you are looking for more detailed specs and product information on the wand scanner, please have a look at this page..

What do real users say?

People who really bought this document scanner for day-to-day use have used this one a lot for digitizing their family photos. It turns out that the VuPoint scanner is a very good alternative to a classic flatbed scanner. They seem to love the auto-feed dock and aligner but they don’t like the fact that sometimes you have to resset the device. Darker photos also require a bit more attention. VuPoint’s tech support also is not the finest on the market, but all things considered, people are quite happy with the product. It might just be a good flatbed replacement. <!–

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