The Best Sheetfed Document Scanners for 2022 in the UAE and Saudi Arabia – PCMag Middle East
Need to scan one- and/or two-sided multipage documents in a hurry? Sheetfed scanners are designed to do just that.
I’ve covered the document scanner industry for well over 20 years, and each year I find myself more impressed with the sheer number of machines. You’ll find everything from tiny single-sheet portables capable of processing just a few pages per minute (ppm) to high-volume workhorses that can handle hundreds of pages per minute. Today’s sheetfed document scanners are true workhorses; if you’ve only used the relatively slow scanner of an all-in-one printer, you’ll be amazed at how a dedicated scanner can make short work of the stacks of hardcopy documents cluttering up you and your team’s work area.
Every multi-sheet scanner—except combination sheetfed/flatbed machines—has a relatively compact build and an automatic document feeder (ADF) for sending page after page to the scanning sensors. Unlike a flatbed scanner, a sheetfed model processes only individual pages and can’t be used to scan objects such as books or magazines. Most sheetfed scanners have two sensors for simultaneously reading both sides of a page. These top-notch, high-speed document scanners, the best we’ve tested, are optimized for processing plenty of text quickly and efficiently.
This roundup focuses primarily on desktop document scanners, but to keep it comprehensive, we’ve also included PCMag’s favorite sheetfed portable document scanner and our top pick for a flatbed scanner with an ADF attachment (or a from-the-ground-up combination sheetfed/flatbed such as the HP ScanJet). Our goal is to help you choose the best possible scanner for your needs, and there are plenty of factors to consider. Let’s start by going over the pros and cons of each of our top picks, followed by a detailed guide that explains how to choose the best sheetfed scanner for your needs.
Why We Picked It
If you’re going to call a product the Best Desktop Document Scanner for Most Users, above all else it has to be versatile. The ScanSnap iX1600’s comprehensive software runs on PCs, Macs, and Android and iOS handhelds. A similar version runs on the control panel of the scanner itself, from which you and your team can set up, scan, configure, edit, execute OCR, and perform some rudimentary document management tasks. You get both wired and wireless connectivity, scanning directly to USB drives, a great price—and a rare 4.5-star PCMag rating.
Who It’s For
This and other Fujitsu scanners are so easy to learn and use that a better question might be “Who is it not for?” Families and home-based offices; small offices and workgroups; moderate document archiving applications; scanning into bookkeeping, tax, spreadsheets, and other financial programs; and more—the low- to mid-volume environments that would benefit from the ScanSnap iX1600 are many.
Why We Picked It
With the RR-600W, you get a highly capable midrange sheetfed document scanner, Epson’s ScanSmart scanner interface, and the ScanSmart Accounting Edition—a.k.a. Receipt Manager—plug-in. In other words, in addition to capable all-purpose scanning and document management, you get an intuitive, polished interface for capturing and archiving invoices, receipts, and other financial documents. More and more scanners nowadays come with receipt scanning software, but few apps are as well-developed as Epson’s.
Who It’s For
Designed primarily for home offices, small businesses, and workgroups with workflows up to about 4,000 scans daily, the RR-600W and its software handle and archive not only financial data, but also business cards and everyday document management. A small business couldn’t do better.
Why We Picked It
Even though we reviewed it over five years ago and later models have come close, we haven’t yet encountered a portable sheetfed document scanner that stands feature-to-feature with the WorkForce ES-300W. Epson’s grab-and-go scanner comes with wireless connectivity, support for handheld mobile devices, a battery for remote operation, and just about every other feature you’d want in a portable scanner. It keeps winning year after year because we haven’t come across an alternative with a comparable feature set.
Who It’s For
Travelers who need to capture data from multipage documents (either one- or two-sided), business cards, ID cards, credit cards, and more will wonder how they got along without this scanner. That includes traveling execs, home-based business entrepreneurs (both at home and on the road), and trade show attendees. The ES-300W is a great value for anyone who needs to scan documents on the fly or in tight spaces.
Why We Picked It
In addition to a strong software bundle that scans pages, converts them to the desired file format, and lets you and your team perform fairly sophisticated document management routines, the Raven Pro gives you an 8-inch color touch screen that allows you to do almost anything you can with its PC software right from the front of the scanner. It can also digitize, sort, and store financial and business contact data. This is a fast, accurate, versatile, and easy-to-use sheetfed scanner suitable for mid- to high-volume document management.
Who It’s For
The Raven Pro is a speedy, high-volume machine that can keep up with a busy office, workgroup, or enterprise with heavy scanning activity. It’s designed to allow easy access and operation by even your least tech-savvy staff or organization members.
Why We Picked It
What makes this little powerhouse uniquely suitable for front desk environments? Its ability to operate in two configurations that Fujitsu calls Return Scan and U-Turn Scan and that make the scanner’s footprint remarkably small compared to ordinary sheetfed desktop models. Pages perform a U-turn into an output tray that stands nearly upright, instead of onto a long extended tray or the desktop itself. There’s also a handy toggle to switch between ordinary paper and business cards and thicker content such as IDs and credit cards, making the fi-800R all the more suitable for quick and easy data harvesting.
Who It’s For
By “front desk environments,” we mean oh-so-many businesses and organizations. Doctors’ and dentists’ offices, hospitals, insurance office, auto parts or tire or rental counters—nearly everywhere clients, customers, or patients provide data that needs to be scanned and archived.
Why We Picked It
Flatbed/sheetfed combo scanners like this one offer the best of both worlds—relatively fast scanning of one- and two-sided multipage documents via the automatic document feeder (ADF), and manual scanning of book and magazine pages, photos, or delicate or easily damaged originals. We’ve looked at a number of combos this year, and the all-new ScanJet Pro 2600 f1 checks most of the boxes for a scanner designed to accommodate busy small and home-based offices.
Who It’s For
It’s not built for high-volume enterprise work, but this HP is an exemplary entry-level sheetfed/flatbed combo scanner for home or hybrid offices. It’s ideal for digitizing modest stacks of documents via the ADF and high-res photos via the flatbed.
Why We Picked It
A good value at under $1,000, the Raven Pro Max is a fast, accurate, feature-rich scanner with a tablet-like, 8-inch touch screen and a highly competent software bundle. You get both wired and wireless networking as well as document editing and management from both the control panel and the Raven Desktop software.
Who It’s For
Scanners at this enterprise-class level are primarily used for document management, that is, turning printed pages into searchable PDF or editable Microsoft Word files. Given the Max’s speed, capacity, and volume rating, it’s ready to handle thousands of pages via the ADF or individual photos, book pages, or fragile documents one at a time on the flatbed. Busy offices and workgroups will get excellent results from this combo scanner.
Why We Picked It
Faster and $100 cheaper than its Best Office Network Scanner predecessor the ADS-3600W, this Brother scanner boasts an ADF that holds twice as many pages and its 9,000-scan daily duty cycle is a rare find in an under-$700 scanner. Connectivity options abound—Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct, USB 3.0, Apple AirPrint, Brother Mobile Connect—and you can scan straight to a USB drive with no PC involved. Brother’s comprehensive software bundle covers not only the key aspects of document scanning and archiving but even limited photo scanning and editing.
Who It’s For
Given its speed, capacity, accuracy, and bundled scanner interface, editing, and document management software, the ADS-4900W is best suited for environments with heavy daily scan volumes over either a wired or wireless network (or both). Smartphone and tablet users can also access the scanner via Wi-Fi or Wi-Fi Direct. In short, this business-class scanner is ready for hectic offices with a variety of users.
The Bottom Line:
The fast, accurate Epson DS-30000 is a sheetfed document scanner designed for high-volume management and archiving of documents of all sizes, including large-format sheets.
Why We Picked It
While there are other scanners that support wide-format tabloid-size (11-by-17-inch) documents, most are too bulky for the average desk. The Epson DS-30000 is far from tiny, but relatively trim considering its ADF holds up to 60 tabloid-size originals—or 120 letter-size sheets or 40 postcards or 30 business cards or 10 envelopes or one passport (with an optional carrier sheet). You can load letter-size originals in either portrait or landscape orientation—try that with an 8.5-by-11-inch scanner—and take advantage of resolutions from 50 to 1,200 dots per inch (dpi).
Who It’s For
Obviously, this wide-format workhorse is designed for offices and organizations that need to digitize and archive plus-sized documents as well as high volumes of standard-size documents. Its 30,000-scan daily duty cycle and speeds up to 140 images per minute (ipm, where each page side counts as an image) make it ideal for fleet and enterprise deployment.
Why We Picked It
With its tablet-sized control panel, built-in QWERTY keyboard, and onboard hard drive, the HP Digital Sender Flow 8500 fn2 Document Capture Workstation is an industrial-strength network document scanner. Not only is it ultra-fast and -accurate, but it lets you digitize, edit, and archive your documents all from the same device. To share the wealth, you can connect it to a Gigabit Ethernet network and let some or all of your team members have at it.
Who It’s For
The words “Best High-Volume Enterprise Scanner” don’t leave a lot of room for interpretation. This HP leviathan is built for capturing and digitizing scads of documents, converting them to searchable or editable text, and saving the results to your desired file format. It’s most likely to make up the heart of your existing document management system, or one created using HP’s bundled and optional enterprise software.
Why We Picked It
Given its swift scanning speeds, exemplary OCR accuracy, high capacity and connectivity, excellent scanner interface utility, and supplied document management software, Epson’s DS-970 stands tall among a crowd of competitors. With a robust 9,000-sheet daily duty cycle, 100-sheet ADF, and rated performance of 85 pages or 170 images (page sides) per minute, it’s ready to meet the PDF creation and editing and document management needs of a busy enterprise.
Who It’s For
It’s overkill for most small offices, but midsized and large businesses and workgroups seeking a fast, high-volume scanning and document archiving solution will be glad they found this Epson.
Why We Picked It
Who says an entry-level document scanner has to be a punishment? The WorkForce ES-580W comes with a 100-sheet ADF, a large color touch-screen control panel, wireless networking, scanning to USB drives, and a comprehensive software bundle starring Epson SmartScan, a modular app that performs a variety of document management tasks including strategic file naming and archiving. And since you can find it for under $400, it’s a terrific value.
Who It’s For
This Epson is designed for home offices and small businesses with relatively light scanning loads, though its large ADF and 4,000-scan daily duty cycle mean it won’t let you down during the occasional crunch time or busy day. It’s also a good choice for hybrid home and office workers.
Document scanners are classified and priced according to capacity, volume, and speed ratings, followed by connectivity and functionality (including the ability to scan to smartphones and tablets) and their software bundle. Size, weight, and specialized features may also be factored in, but the main things that push up the price of a document scanner are (1) how much work the scanner can do and (2) how quickly it can do it.
To keep from spending an arm and a legon functionality you don’t need, start by figuring out how many pages you need to scan each day. A multi-sheetfed portable scanner, such as Epson’s WorkForce ES-300W, might be rated for a daily duty cycle of 500 pages or so. On the high end, the Visioneer Patriot H80 (reviewed here in mid-2017) and Fujitsu fi-8170 and fi-8270 (2022) all have daily duty cycles of 10,000 pages.
Another question is how many pages you’ll have to scan at a time. If you’re dealing with lengthy documents, you don’t want to have to break them up. A relatively inexpensive desktop model, such as the Epson DS-530 Color Duplex Document Scanner, might come with a 50-sheet ADF; a heavy-duty one could hold as many as 250 sheets for serious batch scanning.
One speed factor is whether the scanner has one or two sensors for scanning double-sided documents. Another is the size of the page that you want to scan. All sheetfed document scanners can accept letter- and legal-size pages, but if you’re working with larger sheets, make sure the scanner is big enough to handle them. A few high-end models can feed through sheets up to 20 feet long! On the small side, some scanners have special features for receipts and business cards, with software to help manage expense reports and contact databases.
No one wants to stand around waiting for a scan job to finish, and in the real world, that doesn’t just mean the physical process of scanning. When we test scanners, our speed ratings also factor in the time it takes for the scanner’s bundled software to process the scan and save it to either image or searchable PDF. (We’ll look more closely at bundled software below.) In general, the more you scan, the faster your scanner should be.
The most basic scanner interface is a Scan or Start button, which is fine if all you want to do is basic scanning directly to your PC. Touch-screen panels with limited or extensive menus give you more walk-up options. Sometimes scanning software lets you set up predefined profiles for file type, resolution, and destination that you can then select and run from the scanner’s control panel.
In a few cases, the scanner’s own operating system handles profile management and other features. One of the better implementations of this shared functionality is on Fujitsu’s consumer and small-office ScanSnap machines. Whether you’re using ScanSnap software on your computer or operating the touch screen, functions are almost identical, saving you from having to learn two different ways to do the same thing.
If you already have a document management system in place, you may not even need most of the software included with your new scanner. However, scanning software packages can do a lot. Various apps and plug-ins enhance and manipulate photos, convert scanned pages to editable text with optical character recognition (OCR), organize and archive business cards, and even extract financial data from receipts and invoices and send it to your tax prep software. Scanning apps for mobile devices are increasingly feature-rich as well.
Software varies widely from manufacturer to manufacturer and from product to product. This is one of the places where our reviews and roundups come in handy: We zero in on the specific features that make document scanners suited for particular tasks and needs.
Each scanner comes with a different mix of wired and wireless connectivity options. These control which computers and mobile devices the scanner can work with. They also affect how quickly the scanner can send a scan to your device, as data transfer over Wi-Fi will likely be slower than over an Ethernet or USB 3.0 connection.
USB will suffice for connecting a single computer. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi Direct, and near-field communication (NFC) will let a scanner talk to a single smartphone or tablet. If you’re looking for a scanner that multiple people can use, make sure it has Ethernet or Wi-Fi to connect to an office network or Bluetooth LE for handling multiple mobile devices. Some models, such as the Epson WorkForce ES-865 Color Duplex Document Scanner, don’t have Ethernet preinstalled but can be expanded with an optional network interface unit.
Your computer’s or phone’s operating system matters a lot less than it used to. Most major scanner manufacturers offer drivers and software for both Windows and macOS, as well as apps for both iOS and Android handheld devices, wherever some sort of wireless–NFC (near field communication), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi Direct–are available. Some devices can also scan directly to USB flash drives.
Before you purchase a scanner, make sure you know what you want it to do: how much you’ll scan, how fast the scanning process should be, which devices the scanner will connect with, and what the software should do with your scans once they’re processed. Then be prepared to make some trade-offs between features and budget. Multi-sheetfed scanners are often intended for business use and priced accordingly. But with a little research, you should be able to find one that meets your needs and doesn’t break the bank.
Want to know more about the many scanning options out there? Check out our roundup of the best scanners we’ve tested. And if you need to print, copy, and fax too, an all-in-one printer might be your best choice.
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