All Scanners Feeds

Pentax DSmobile 600

1205166087

The Pentax DSmobile 600 scanner measures 280 x 51 x 38mm, and is a small and convenient device to carry around.

It connects to your laptop using USB, which also powers the device. The driver, along with the supplied DSmobile Scan software that allows you to save scans as PDF files, come on a single CD. This makes the Pentax DSmobile 600 a breeze to set up.

Fast compact scanner

There is also the more powerful PageManager 7 for editing your scans to a variety of formats.

To scan, insert your page and press the button, which feeds it through the sensor. With a maximum scan area of 216 x 356mm, you can scan up to A4.

Scan times vary, with an A4 text page taking 20 seconds, while a full-coloured one took close to 90 seconds.

Overall, the Pentax DSmobile 600 produced scans that were smooth with little sign of jagging.

Epson Perfection 4490 Photo

tech.co.uk staff — 1204475258

The 4490 offers much of the appeal of the 4990 Photo but at a far lower price.

It boasts the same 4800x9600dpi resolution for a start, though the stratospheric resolution figures being bandied about by scanner makers nowadays do need to be approached with caution.

The theoretical sensor and stepper motor resolution (which is what these figures refer to) are no longer the limiting factor in recording detail. They haven't been for some time. It's the scanner's mechanical and optical precision that determine its resolving power, and that's down to manufacturing and design, not pixels.

Photographers should note that the 4490 can scan both 35mm and medium format films, and comes with Digital ICE dust reduction, which was previously only found on dedicated film scanners. Non-photographers, meanwhile, can automate the usual common scanning tasks - PDF, email, copy and scan - using buttons on the front.

There's even an optional 30-sheet A4 ADF (Automatic Document Feeder). So, although the 4490 appears to have a strong photo bias, it's actually a very efficient and capable office workhorse. This is backed up by speedy scanning times, although performance when descreening our A4 magazine page was a little disappointing.

From a distance, it was hard to distinguish the 4490's scan results from those of the other Epsons; scan quality was first rate. The descreening filter's effect appeared to be a little patchy. Some parts of our page were smoothed effectively; in others the printing pattern remained.

The unscreened 150dpi scan came out very well, though, with clean photo rendition. The 6x4 photo scan was great, but it was apparent by now that all the scanners could accomplish this with ease.

Epson Perfection 4990 Photo

tech.co.uk staff — 1204302277

One of the aims of such tests is to establish how much you need to pay for a flatbed scanner. Central to this is whether you want high-quality film scanning, as this is what tends to bump up the price. Cheaper flatbeds can scan film, but usually to a standard that's not acceptable.

You might imagine the resolution and precision required for film scanning would have a knock-on effect on reflective scan quality. We'll see about that. One thing that is immediately obvious, though, is this scanner's sheer speed. The 4990 comfortably beats the rest.

Although the 4990 doesn't sport a set of buttons on the front for routine scanning tasks, the scanning software is simple and direct to use, so any kind of reflective scan - from photo prints to magazine pages to black and white documents - can be set up in moments.

The software includes Epson Creativity Suite, Photoshop Elements 2.0 and SilverFast SE 6.0, which is a higher-end scanning application for photographic use. It's a shame that you get Elements 2.0 rather than version 3.0, but this reflects the fact the 4990 has been out for longer than the cheaper 4490 model.

The scan quality is excellent, with very strong but nonetheless realistic looking colours. The descreening filter appears to work well, but the 4990 wasn't quite as good as the 4490 in our 150dpi test, producing some interference artefacts in photos. The 6x4 photo scan couldn't be faulted.

Epson's flagship scanner shares top marks for quality with the Canon 9950F, but the Epson's faster scanning speeds mean it sneaks ahead overall.

Wizcom Quicktionary 3 Lite

tech.co.uk staff — 1202738067

Providing a quick way to translate text from French or Spanish to English and vice versa is the Wizcom Quicktionary 3 Lite (£100 inc. VAT). By inputting text using the built-in scanner or its touchscreen keyboard and stylus, it's easy to use when out and about.

Adaptable to left or right-handed users, the unit can be easily shared. Despite its simple operation, translation isn't as efficient. While you can scan or input whole sentences, translation works on a word-by-word basis, which can be a slow process.

With its rubberised grip, sturdy plastic casing and included carry case, it's as resilient for mobile use as it is easy to operate. We would have preferred full sentence translation as an option, but this is certainly faster and easier than scanning through a pocket dictionary.

Pentax DS Mobile 600

Martin James — 1193353200

Pentax's original DS Mobile was focused entirely on delivering the ability to scan documents and pictures on the move.

At about the size of a small umbrella, it was unapologetic about putting convenience ahead of ultimate image quality.

The DS Mobile 600 is the same size and weight as the original, but doubles scan quality to 600dpi. It still connects via USB, which stays on message as far as convenience is concerned.

PDF scanning

Setup is easy enough - the supplied DSMobile SCAN software installs quickly and is launched by pressing the single button on the scanner itself. Of most use here is the ability to scan straight to PDF. Also bundled is PageManager 7, which includes an OCR utility and allows easy conversion between formats.

Despite its improved 24-bit colour scan quality, and Pentax's own photographic pedigree, the DS Mobile 600 is at its best as a portable document scanner.

The unit is discreet and quiet in operation, and could happily be called into play to scan documents during a presentation. Each page needs to be fed manually, but this is a simple, albeit slow, process.

Photo scanning was less impressive, despite the improved resolution. The DS Mobile 600 comes with two photo sleeves, but our scans were noticeably grainier than the originals and certainly no match for a decent flatbed. Some tweaking of the settings helped, but not enough to make it worth considering a realistic first-choice photo scanner.

And while we understand Pentax focusing on its improved colour scanning in promoting the DS Mobile 600, it's only when considering its portability that this becomes an attraction.

As a document scanner, however, we have few reservations at all. It's quiet, lightweight and easy to use, which is exactly what you need when scanning on the move.

CardScan Executive V8

Julia Sagar — 1187046000

It probably won't revolutionise the office, but if you're looking for a fast, easy and safe way to store your business card collection, the CardScan Executive V8 is worth considering.

The CardScan Executive V8 is a miniature USB-powered business card scanner and contact manager system. It provides an efficient way to organise your contacts, taking just three seconds to scan each card and add the information to its address book.

The data can then be copied over to Microsoft Office on your PC, or to your PDA or Windows Mobile device, using the Data Exchange Wizard. There's no direct support for Office 2007, though.

At 9.2 x 8.1 x 2.8 inches, it's compact enough to fit in your laptop bag, should you wish to take it on your business travels.

In principle, the Executive V8 certainly is easy to use: just place a business card face up on the scanner and wait for it to be pulled through. Press 'process', and let the OCR technology do its thing - within moments all the information is on the screen, sensibly arranged for you to check and verify.

Character recognition accuracy

While we can't say our test batch achieved 100 per cent accuracy, on the whole the results were impressive. The software successfully identified and categorised most key information - all the more impressive considering that business card layout and content can vary widely. Notably, it correctly differentiated between landline, mobile and fax numbers each time.

However, we did find occasional problems with the character recognition accuracy. Tech.co.uk colleage Dan Grabham's name, for example, proved a stumbling block with 'bh' appearing first as 'kh', and then as 'h' before finally settling on the correct spelling.

And occasionally a detail - usually an email address or, in our case, the 'technology news first' slogan was read or classified incorrectly. In these situations, the data was assigned to 'Other', but we had no problem correcting the errors manually. As long as you briefly check the details of each card before verifying the information, this will be no more than a minor irritation.

All in all, it's a useful bit of kit for anyone who exchanges a high volume of business cards. Fast, efficient and easy to use, the CardScan Executive V8 will save you time typing the details of your contacts into your contact manager system.

It's only the £200 price tag and lack of integration with Office 2007 that might hold some potential users back.

Epson Perfection V700 Photo

tech.co.uk staff — 1183503600

Do you have stacks of old prints and slides, and want high-quality scans? Perhaps you lack the budget for a dedicated high-end film scanner? Then consider this Epson model.

It's a high-quality flatbed that comes with print and slide adaptor frames for volume scanning. The frames are removable so you can also use it for normal A4 scanning.

If you don't have the need for professional resolution and automatic image correction, or voluminous amounts of film or slides to scan, the V500 is probably overkill - you'd be better off with the more basic Epson 3590 (£80).

In the box is a copy of SilverFast SE, the German photo touch-up software. It's not the fully functioning version - for that you'll need to buy it separately or get the V750 upgrade. Adobe Photoshop Elements 3 is also bundled, as is the EpsonScan software. Between the three apps, everything's covered.

The film adaptors and frames include those for 35mm slides and 35mm negative strips, medium- and large-format. The available plate area is A4-sized and you get up to 6400 x 9600dpi resolution.

The scan quality is fantastic. Blown up, the JPEGs appeared virtually noise-free. At one time, you can scan 12 slides, 24 frames of 35mm film or two medium format prints.

Scans are speedy, too. You get three modes in EpsonScan - Fully Auto, Home, Professional - and negative frames took between 12.7-35 seconds, depending on the quality setting. SilverFast and Elements both have plenty of built-in colour correction palettes and Kodak colour swatches to refer to, but we just exported scans to Photoshop to preen them and take advantage of our custom ICC profile set-up for exporting.

What you need in a scan is strong detail (colour can be altered later) and in this regard the V700 was excellent at capturing all the nuances of the image.

Lexmark X9350 Wireless Office

tech.co.uk staff — 1178233200

This machine is an all-in-one fax, colour inkjet printer, scanner and copier. It performs with varying ability, faces stiff competition from HP and Epson, but generally failed to impress us considering the price. Lexmark has many different models of all-in-one machines on the market, and this is one of its more expensive models.

The X9350 comes with wired and wireless printing options. We found the wireless set-up a bit cumbersome, but nice to have as an option. Most people will use USB. The basic prints, on standard office paper, are pretty good.

The colours from the two small new carts are bright and sharp. The printer also offers Lexmark's photo-printing quality - the same as you can get on a dedicated mini-lab photo printer - and it has ports for all common camera card types. Sadly, we experienced banding, poor colour and pixelation in the glossy prints, and found it hard to accurately line up A6-sized glossy paper in the paper tray.

To test the scanning ability, we scanned and printed copies of the prints that the X9350 had just made and compared the results side-by-side. This showed up another weak point, as the colours appeared much more faded on the copy generated through the machine. Clearly, the scanner was not capturing all the information it was given.

The unit has useful business features such as duplex copying, a large front-loading paper tray with expansion available for another tray, and an Ethernet port. The duplex printing works fine, but the general results of printing aren't that great; small areas of the font tend to smudge and prints come out rather slowly.

Given that this printer sits at the top of the pricing scale, we were pretty disappointed by the results and so find it hard to recommend. It's certainly not in the same league as the equivalent HP model - the OfficeJet 7210.

Fujitsu ScanSnap S500M

tech.co.uk staff — 1172793600

Flatbed scanners still offer the highest quality scans for graphics work. For document scanning, though, where you don't need fine graphics quality, machines like the ScanSnap are the better option. The price is high but you get a lot for your money.

The 50-sheet document feeder and one-button control panel means anyone can dump a load of documents into the tray and get a lot of scanning done quickly. It's also a duplex scanner, so it scans both sides at once.

This latest incarnation of the ScanSnap is just under 30cm wide and 15cm deep, which is good news for reducing desk clutter. Paper chutes fold out neatly to cradle the documents and plastic guides slide to the paper size. The maximum size is A4 (legal) and there are no film or card scanning options.

With the scanner comes a copy of PDF manager, Adobe Acrobat 7. ScanSnap scans directly to Acrobat by default, but will also scan to Mac OS X's Preview app, or save files straight to a folder. ScanSnap only saves the files as PDFs for black and white documents, or PDF and JPEG for colour. These options are set in ScanSnap Manager.

Changing settings is easy and you get basic controls over the destination and quality. There's no ABBYY FineReader support, which enables you to create editable documents with optical character recognition (OCR), so you won't be able to make changes to your initial scan.

The preview options add time to the scan, but it's still very fast at 18ppm (pages per minute). This figure rises if you choose to scan at a higher quality. The high-end Excellent setting takes twice as long, but produces significantly sharper images for documents with grey areas of shading or graphics.

If you are just scanning sheets of text, the low quality Faster setting is fine. The colour scanning is superb considering the speed it scans at and the convenience of this design, but it's not as good as the higher-end flatbeds. James Ellerbeck

Planon DocuPen RC800

tech.co.uk staff — 1171670400

Optical scanners are common in offices, but portable scanners remain a rarity. The Planon DocuPen RC800 (£210 inc. VAT) is a unique, if expensive solution.

Sleek and portable, the DocuPen can be easily carried. Connecting via USB, rubber wheels help fix it in place as you roll it over your chosen document, to instantly send the scanned data to your laptop.

With just 8MB of memory, you won't be able to scan large colour documents at high resolution. However, lower settings can be selected and a MicroSD card can be added if extra memory is needed.

For basic scanning tasks on the move, this is an impressive tool, but the price is certainly steep.