What would the document scanner of your dreams do? Maybe it’s really small, maybe it auto-rotates your documents, or maybe it scans a stack of papers at light-speed. Whatever you dream of, we’ve got a little something for everybody here.
Are you trying to digitize 10 years of financial paperwork, or a stack of handwritten stories? Do you need to scan business cards, photos, receipts, or other awkwardly shaped papers? Not all scanners are created equal, and only a few are a jack of all trades.
Whether you need to scan some receipts or digitize your overstuffed filing cabinets, you’ll need a dedicated document scanner to do the job right. That’s why we’ve gathered up the top scanners for every home and small office need.
Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 ($420)
If you need to digitize an impossible mountain of documents, then the Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 may be your only hope. This thing’s the workhorse of desktop scanners. It can scan and digitally organize up to 25 double-sided pages per minute (that’s 1,500 pages in an hour). Thankfully, you won’t have to manually crop and rotate the thousands of pages that you’ll scan, because the Fujitsu can auto-rotate, auto-crop, and balance every page that it digitizes.
The Fujitsu can automatically turn a stack of papers into a multi-page, high-resolution (600 dpi) PDF. It can also organize a stack of scanned receipts, legal papers, or photographs. If you need your documents on the cloud, then you can set the Fujitsu to sync with Dropbox, Google Drive, and Evernote.
Although the Fujitsu is perfect for scanning piles of documents and receipts, it’s not great for scanning books, magazines, and art. Unless you’re trying to plow through your bloated file cabinets or working with a lot of paper documents, you’ll want to check out the other options here. The SnapScan is the best at what it does, but its repertoire is narrow.
Xerox DocuMate 3220 ($269)
If you need a versatile document scanner that has the speed of the Fujitsu, then you should take a peek at the Xerox DocuMate 3220. It can scan both sides of a page simultaneously, it can handle 15 pages a minute, and it doubles as a flatbed scanner. It’s a great option for people who need to scan a variety of formats, like business cards, sticky notes, photographs, and plastic ID or credit cards.
This scanner is pretty bare bones when compared with the Fujitsu. The Xerox DocuMate 3220 doesn’t feature any robust auto-crop or auto-rotate software, it can’t upload documents directly to the cloud, and it can’t connect to your computer via Wi-Fi. It’s also not the best scanner for high-quality photographs or drawings, as it only has a resolution of 300 dpi.
Although the Xerox DocuMate 3220 is an efficient and flexible scanner for most office environments, it may fall short for people who want cloud connectivity, robust scanning software, or high-resolution images.
