Document Scanners I've Used Over the Years
Scanning documents is a significant part of what I do. Between my own archival projects and contract work for clients who need paper collections digitized, I've spent a considerable number of hours feeding pages through various machines and evaluating the results. Over the years I've owned or regularly used five different document scanners, and I thought it might be useful to write up my impressions of each. This is not a formal review or a buying guide. It's just one person's experience with specific machines over extended periods of real use.
I should note at the outset that my priorities are somewhat specific. I care most about scan quality at 300 and 600 DPI, reliable paper feeding with minimal jams, the ability to handle mixed-condition originals including slightly wrinkled or curled pages, good TWAIN or SANE driver support so I can use the scanner with my preferred software rather than the bundled application, and durability over long scanning sessions. Feed speed matters but is secondary — I'd rather scan slowly with no jams than quickly with frequent jams. Color accuracy is less important for my work than tonal range in grayscale, since most of what I scan is text documents, correspondence, and monochrome printed material.
The first scanner I used seriously was a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500. This was the standard recommendation for personal document scanning at the time, and for good reason. It was compact, reasonably fast at about 20 pages per minute in duplex, and came with decent bundled software. The ADF held 50 sheets. Image quality at 300 DPI was good for text documents, and at 600 DPI the results were sharp enough for archival purposes. The main limitation was paper handling. The S1500 was designed for standard office paper in good condition. When I tried to feed older documents — brittle paper, pages with fold creases, anything thinner than standard copy weight — the jam rate went up significantly. I also had issues with the rubber feed rollers wearing out after about eighteen months of heavy use. The proprietary ScanSnap software was adequate but I preferred other applications, and the S1500's driver support for third-party software was limited on some operating systems. I used this scanner for roughly two years before upgrading.
Next was a Fujitsu fi-7160, a step up into Fujitsu's workgroup scanner line. The difference was immediately apparent. The paper handling was vastly better — sensors detected double feeds, and a straight paper path option reduced jams with difficult originals. The ADF held 80 sheets. Feed speed was rated at 60 pages per minute in duplex, though I rarely achieved that because higher resolution settings slowed things down. At 300 DPI the output was excellent, with clean text rendering and smooth grayscale gradients. At 600 DPI, finer detail preservation in small text and halftone images was noticeably better than the S1500. The fi-7160 used standard TWAIN and ISIS drivers, meaning I could use it with essentially any scanning software. The machine was louder and larger, but for desk-based work these were acceptable trade-offs. I used this scanner for several years and it handled tens of thousands of pages with only routine maintenance. If I had one complaint, it was that the bundled PaperStream software was resource-heavy and occasionally crashed during long batches.
For a while I also kept a Canon imageFORMULA DR-C225 as a secondary scanner for lighter-duty work. The DR-C225 had an unusual upright design that took up very little desk space. Feed speed was about 25 pages per minute, ADF held 30 sheets. Image quality was acceptable at 300 DPI but showed softness at 600 DPI compared to the Fujitsu units. The paper path was a U-turn design, fine for standard paper but less than ideal for fragile originals. What I appreciated was its compactness and quiet operation. For small jobs — scanning correspondence, digitizing receipts, processing a short stack on-site at a client's location — it was convenient and reliable. The ISIS driver worked well. I wouldn't choose it for a large project, but as a complement to a heavier-duty primary scanner it served well. A colleague at the community center where I help with records mentioned she needed a simple scanner, and I recommended something in this category.
More recently I acquired an Epson DS-530 II as an alternative to the Fujitsu line. The DS-530 II has a 50-sheet ADF and a rated speed of 35 pages per minute in duplex. Build quality felt solid. The paper handling was competent, with reliable double-feed detection and a gentle transport mechanism. Image quality at 300 DPI was very good — comparable to the fi-7160. At 600 DPI I noticed slightly more image noise than the Fujitsu, particularly in halftone originals, but for text the difference was negligible. The TWAIN driver was well-implemented. The bundled Epson Scan 2 software was simpler than PaperStream but more stable, with no crashes during extended sessions. The machine is quieter than the fi-7160. Feed speed in practice was a bit slower than rated at higher resolutions, but consistent and predictable, which matters more to me than raw speed.
The last scanner I want to mention is one I don't own but have used extensively: a Kodak i2600, which belongs to a small nonprofit I've done volunteer archival work for. The i2600 is an older workgroup scanner, discontinued now, with a 75-sheet ADF and a rated speed of 50 pages per minute. It has clearly seen heavy use — scuffed case, ADF cover slightly loose — but it still performs well. The paper handling is forgiving, accommodating a wider range of paper conditions than any of the other scanners I've used. Image quality at 300 DPI is good, not outstanding, but adequate for the correspondence, newsletters, and meeting minutes that make up the bulk of the nonprofit's archive. What impressed me most was the durability. The staff told me they've been using it for many years with very little repair. The consumable parts are easy to replace and inexpensive. The drivers are showing their age and newer OS compatibility requires workarounds, but functionally it does its job without complaint.
If I were advising someone on a scanner purchase, my recommendation would depend on their volume and budget. For occasional small batches, a Canon DR-C series or current ScanSnap would be fine. For regular scanning of larger collections, the Fujitsu fi series remains the benchmark. The Epson DS line is a credible alternative at a lower price point. Whatever you buy, budget for replacement rollers and separation pads — they're consumable parts and their condition directly affects scan quality and feed reliability. I keep spares on hand. It saves frustration when you're a thousand pages into a batch and the feed starts slipping.
I realize this is an extremely niche topic. I wrote a longer comparison on a scanning hobbyist forum a few years back — I think my handle there was "docpreserve" or something similar. I should see if that post is still up. But scanning is one of those tasks where equipment choice makes a real difference to the quality and efficiency of the work, and yet there's relatively little detailed, long-term user feedback available compared to the volume of brief product reviews. If even one person doing similar work finds this useful, it was worth writing up.
— K. Vadala