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We scanned thousands of pages using scanners from Fujitsu, Canon, Brother, Epson, and more to find the very best
We test every aspect of the scanners in our reviews to bring you the best, most unbiased, data driven information and recommendations available anywhere on the internet.
We researched over 50 scanners and spent weeks scanning thousands of pages using a dozen of today's best scanners. We found the best model to digitize your documents, receipts, and old photos. We carefully evaluated each model's scan quality, speed, and ease of managing the resulting digital files. Whether you're just looking to digitize a few receipts here and there, have a stack of old photos you want to preserve digitally, or have mountains of documents to save for posterity, our testing results will help you choose the best model for you.
The best overall scanner from our tests is the Canon ImageFORMULA R40. This scanner excelled at scanning photos and text, and was easy to use with great software. Look for something a little more affordable? The Brother DS-640 is a portable scanner that only costs around $100 and still scores quite well across our tests, though it's a bit slower than many models.
If you are looking for the best scanner on the market and wouldn't mind saving a hundred bucks without giving up much in performance, check out the Canon ImageFORMULA R40. Compared to the Fujitsu ScanSnap iX1600, it had better optical character recognition. It also performed better in terms of software quality and ease of use. While Canon calls this an entry-level device, they have continually upgraded its performance. Due to firmware updates and hardware upgrades, the latest iteration has faster scanning speeds, better text recognition software, and improved image quality.
On the negative side, it doesn't support wireless scanning, and it simply can't compete with the incredible 67-page-per-minute speed exhibited by Fujitsu products like the ScanSnap iX1600. The good news is you can have equal scanning performance, better OCR, and a more user-friendly experience at a lower price. If 16.7 pages per minute is fast enough for your needs, the ImageFORMULA R40 is perfect.
For most users, the ideal scanner can quickly and conveniently digitize a short document or receipt whenever needed and then easily be stored. If you fall into this category, it's hard to beat the Brother DS-640. In our tests, this model consistently produced high-quality PDFs that looked nearly identical to the originals, almost perfectly used optical character recognition that made documents completely text searchable, and offered simple and easy-to-use document management. The most important and impressive feature is its size. The scanner is about the size of a standard power strip, weighs just over one pound, and powers over USB. All this means you can quickly plug it into your laptop when needed and then easily hide it away when not in use. You can even toss it in your backpack next to your laptop if you need to scan documents on the go. It's an ultra-compact and robust scanner at a relatively low price. This product was released in 2019 and has not changed much physically. However, it has had several driver and software updates and now supports Linux.
The only real downside to this model is its speed. Because you must manually feed each page, digitizing page after page of a document can be a slow and cumbersome process. The process gets even more time-consuming due to the lack of a duplex scanning feature, meaning you must feed every double-sided page twice. For reference, it took us two and a half minutes to digitize five double-sided pages with the Brother DS-640. This task takes 30 seconds with automatic document feeders. If you consistently scan documents over ten pages, this won't be the model for you. Still, for many people, the Brother DS-640 offers the convenience of size and simplicity at a price that won't gouge your wallet. If you want a bit more speed and scanning performance, check out the Epson Perfection V39 II. It scored a few points higher in both areas. For a truly low price, check out the Scanner Pro App — it's free.
The Fujitsu ScanSnap iX1600 is our top recommendation for those who have any job or small business that demands high-quality, fast, and easy scanning. Thanks to a large automatic document feeder and fast pace, this model turns a 50-page document into a PDF in a flash with a single push of a button. The resulting PDF looks great because this machine can accurately and crisply render everything from tiny text to detailed graphics. The user experience is also simple, as the iX1600 offers a large LCD touchscreen with an intuitive interface that makes both setup and daily use a breeze. Fujitsu has dominated the high-speed scanning game for years and kept updating the iX1600. While the scanning speeds have not dramatically changed (we don't know that anyone needs it to scan faster), the software and driver updates have allowed higher scanning resolutions and improved text recognition.
This model suffered from some errors in optical character recognition, but this is a common problem for many scanners. With that in mind, the only serious downside is the premium price. Some users may not scan enough to justify the hefty price tag. However, if scanning is a major part of your workflow, the investment is well worth the time and effort you'll save and the superior-quality scans you'll receive. For a high-speed, easy-to-use, high-quality machine, look no further than the iX1600. If you scan less frequently and just want an affordable option that you can tuck away in a drawer when not in use, look to the Brother DS-640.
Among the scanners our team has tested, the Fujitsu Fi-8170 stands out as one of the top performers. Its impressive speed sets it apart, making it an excellent choice for efficient scanning. Its high-capacity design can take on 100-page documents and easily handle large volumes. Moreover, its overall scanning quality and user-friendly interface make it well-suited for demanding scanning tasks requiring dialing in scanner settings.
Unfortunately, the Fujitsu Fi-8170 isn't perfect. It is best suited for business tasks, like text documents and receipts, and its photo scanning performance could have yielded better results. It's also many times more expensive than others in the field. Nonetheless, the Fi-8170 is a great scanner for those who require the ability to scan large documents quickly and easily. If you want a better balance of great performance and price, our top recommendation is the Canon ImageFORMULA R40, which has a 60-page document feeder and scores high across all our test metrics.
Epson hit it out of the park with the Epson WorkForce ES-60W. It is light, fast, compact, incredibly mobile, and easy to use. Not only is it amazing for those who need scanning on the go, wireless scanning, or scanning to the cloud, but its performance also rivals some of the best desktop and flatbed-style scanners on the market today. We were impressed with the resolution of the PDFs this model was able to produce.
Unfortunately, the Workforce ES-60W is slower to operate without a feed or output tray. Larger stacks of documents can be a lengthy and even tedious chore, requiring manually feeding each sheet into the device. If you don't typically need to digitize multi-page documents and want great performance and robust features on the go, there is no better choice than the ES-60W. If you scan infrequently, the Brother DS-640 is an even more affordable portable scanner with above-average scan quality.
For only a few bucks, the Scanner Pro App provides all the firepower needed if your scanning needs are ordinarily just a few receipts or a 1-2 page document per week. This app uses powerful software to turn your smartphone's camera into a high-quality scanner. If you have a flat, relatively monochrome surface against which to snap an image, the scans are automatically cropped and appear surprisingly crisp. Since the resulting files end up on your phone, it is effortless to attach them to emails or texts or upload them to the cloud storage service of your choice. It even offers optical character recognition, rivaling the accuracy of software found in dedicated scanning devices.
Relying on your phone's camera to scan documents has some inherent drawbacks. The process is relatively slow due to the need to frame each shot. It's not a big deal when working with one or two pages, but it can quickly become a time-consuming task when scanning multiple-page documents. You must also be careful not to cast shadows on the materials you're scanning, or the result may look smudged. Still, the Scanner Pro App is an incredibly inexpensive way to scan receipts and short documents on the go and can likely replace a dedicated model for many people.
It takes about 20 seconds to scan and save a document using the Scanner Pro App.
Credit: Chris McNamara
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We used speed tests and side-by-side comparisons to help us determine which scanner had the best overall performance.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
How We Test Scanners
To produce unbiased and objective data about the scanners in this review, we buy and hands-on test each scanner in a wide range of fundamental tests. Our review process comprises over 150 hours of setup, software installation, file management, spot-checking optical character recognition, and scanning paper documents, IDs, and passports. We put each model through more than 20 different tests and used each one in just about every way possible. The most important metric here is Scanning Performance, which accounts for 35% of the overall score. To gauge performance in different areas, we've divided our performance metric into two main focuses: black-and-white scanning (text-focused) and color photo scanning. Whether you're seeking a powerhouse to turn giant stacks of paper into text-searchable PDFs in seconds, need an efficient way to electronically store your receipts, or want to digitize important family photos, our testing will help you choose the perfect device.
We use four rating metrics in our hands-on tests:
Scanning Performance (35% of overall score weighting)
Speed (30% weighting)
Software (20% weighting)
Ease of Use (15% weighting)
Comparing images from different scanners. We analyze aspects such as brightness, contrast, and saturation to see which one best represents the original photo.
Text clarity varies among different models and is one of the ways we evaluate scanning performance.
We measure the time it takes each model to scan a 10-page, double-sided document, starting from the moment we press "scan" and stopping when we see a final PDF on our screen.
Why Trust GearLab
Steven Tata and Max Mutter began testing home office products in 2016. In the intervening years, they've used and analyzed hundreds of scanners, printers, shredders, and Chromebooks. That experience has given them a unique understanding of evaluating the quality of printed and digital text and images and the common pitfalls of software controls for common desktop devices. Their knowledge allows them to accurately assess whether a scanning device can do everything it needs without creating too many complications or annoyances for the user. Matt Spencer, who has a background in engineering and has tested hundreds of household items, also assisted in testing these devices. Ben Hickok brings all the testing data together with his technical writing skills and transforms it into our easy-to-read article designed to help our readers choose the best scanner for their respective needs.
We've tested dozens of scanners over the years of all shapes and sizes to help you find the best fit for your needs.
Credit: Natalie Kafader
Analysis and Test Results
Despite an increasingly digitized world, some institutions still use paper documents to communicate important information. That's where a scanner comes in, allowing you to digitize the vital information on those scattered scraps into an easily organizable, searchable, and savable format. Since scanning is an essential and annoying task, we focused most of our scoring on how well and quickly each model can digitize documents. If you're not sure how to narrow down the options here, we outline the most important features to look for and how to ensure a scanner aligns with your daily usage expectations.
What's the Best Value?
When it comes to digitizing documents, you're mostly paying for two things: speed and scan quality. High-priced models like the Fujitsu iX1600 ScanSnap or Fujitsu Fi-8170 get crystal clear text and can tear through pages in a flash. A more inexpensive model like the Canon ImageFormula R40 or the Brother DS-640 can still provide impressive scan quality at slower speeds. The Epson Perfection V39 II offers a reasonable value for scanning photos, but you again sacrifice the ability to scan long documents.
Our testing team evaluates scanning performance for various tasks, including document, receipt, and image scanning.
Credit: Matt Lighthart
Scanning Performance
A scan is useless if it isn't legible, which is why we ranked scanning performance as the most important metric in our tests, contributing 35% to the overall scores. Our first step in finding the best scanner is to assess the quality of each model's scans. Our testing focuses on printed type, handwritten notes, and receipts. In this round of tests, we found that every model could generally produce great-looking text, with a few exceptions. However, differences were apparent regarding how well each model could render color documents. These days, it is more common to want to print a digital photo, but occasionally, you need to digitize a printed photograph. Document scanners haven't traditionally been ideal for photos, but we still test their capabilities by scanning some images to see how well each model performs in that capacity. We then grade each model based on the scan clarity and color accuracy.
The Fujitsu ScanSnap iX1600 earned one of the top spots in our scan quality tests. It produces crystal clear characters on an entirely white background, renders text documents and graphs to near perfection, and does a surprisingly good job scanning photos and maintaining accurate colors and composition. However, it didn't earn a perfect score because it can occasionally make some images look oversaturated.
The Canon ImageFORMULA R40 earned one of the highest rankings for near-perfect black-and-white scanning and above-average color scanning performance. Although the sharpness of the digitized photos was nearly as good as the original, there was some minor over-darkening of dark areas and overly brightened light areas. Other models, namely flatbed scanners, were able to maintain more true light and dark distinctions.
The iX1600 produced the highest quality scans in our testing.
Credit: Steven Tata
The above-average Workforce ES-60W and the Brother DS-640 challenge other top models. The scanning performance of the compact and portable ES-60W was surprisingly good and challenged the notion that only traditional desktop or flatbed-style scanners can offer premium performance.
Despite its relatively low price tag, the Brother DS-640 also earned high scores on our scan quality scoreboard. Throughout our tests, it rendered PDFs with clear text and accurate colors. It even did a decent job of scanning photographs (though we wouldn't feed treasured old photos through it for fear they'd be bent — a flatbed model is still best for this application).
Even as a budget model, the Brother DS-640 produced some of the most quality scans of our test group.
The Epson flatbed models that we tested ranked slightly lower. Although they did not score as high, they do produce excellent-quality photo scans and are more than up to the task of digitizing your family albums. The V600 can even scan film negatives, something the Epson Perfection V39 II cannot do. It creates great-looking digital copies of text documents, but much more slowly than the dedicated document models with feeder and output trays.
The Epson Perfection V39 creates great scans of everything from photos to book pages.
The Epson Perfection V600 also creates great photo scans with a slightly higher resolution than those from the V39.
The Scanner Pro App performed impressively in our scan quality testing, exceeding our expectations. This app allows you to create high-quality and text-searchable PDFs with no extra hardware by turning the camera on your phone into a scanner. The resulting scans are nearly flawless if you find the perfect lighting. However, it is easy to get shadows on the corners of the document. While this doesn't detract from the scan's usefulness, it can look odd.
The Scanner Pro App, which uses your smartphone's camera to create PDFs, created the best some of the best color scans in our testing.
Speed
Let's face it: nobody likes the scanning process, so the faster you can get it over with, the better. To test speed, we scanned the same double-sided, 10-page document on each model and timed how long it took from loading the first page to opening a complete PDF. We gave the results a 30% weighting in the overall scores of each product. We then converted these times into page-per-minute (ppm) figures. Models with automatic document feeders were much faster than those that required loading each page individually.
The Fujitsu is an exceptionally speedy scanner.
Credit: Natalie Kafader
The Fujitsu iX1600 ScanSnap is the fastest model we tested; it blew through our 10-page duplex document in seconds. Its automatic document feeder aided this speed, which can handle up to 50 pages, allowing you to buzz through mid-length documents quickly.
The Epson WorkForce ES-400 II is an impressive model with regard to speed, rivaling the fastest model in our lineup.
Credit: Matt Lighthart
While the Fujitsu iX1600 ScanSnap is the fastest model we tested, the Epson WorkForce ES-400 II also offers impressive speeds. It can handle a single color sheet on a duplex setting at 600 DPI in four seconds and churns through larger multipage documents at a rate of 33 pages per minute. Unfortunately, it doesn't offer the scanning performance of the iX1600, but it may be an okay option when speed is a priority, and it costs a significant amount less than the iX1600.
Whether big or small, black-and-white or color, the Fujitsu Fi-8170 makes swift work of any task.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
The Fujitsu Fi-8170 performed slightly slower than its iX1600 sibling. While its page-per-minute average speed of 22.2 is slightly behind its sibling's speed, it has a much larger 100-page automatic document feeder. The automatic feeder allows you to blaze through a 100-page document in just a few minutes, a feat that would require slowing down to reload the document feeder of the iX1600 and nearly all other scanners we tested. The capacity of the Fi-8170 earned it recognition for being one of the best high-volume scanning devices you can put in your home office.
Large document capacity and speed are key features of the Fi-8170.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
While not nearly as fast as the ScanSnap scanners, the Canon ImageFORMULA R40 is a very fast model. It was able to handle an average of 16.7 pages per minute, and with a large feed tray, it could quickly complete larger tasks without compromising scanning quality.
The DS-640 is great for individual documents. The need to hand-feed it makes it slow for larger documents.
Credit: Natalie Kafader
One of the lower-scoring scanners, the Scanner Pro App, requires that you place each page you want to scan onto a monochrome surface, frame it within the camera on your phone, and snap a picture. This process takes more time than feeding a piece of paper into a machine, but with that said, we were surprised by how quickly the app could scan a document. It can automatically recognize the edges of the paper, so you don't have to fuss too much about perfect framing. Combining these features allowed us to scan three double-sided pages in a minute.
The Xerox Duplex Combo is a flatbed scanner, and although it is only a middle-of-the-road product, it also incorporates a feed tray and is reasonably fast at 10 pages per minute. It is an interesting hybrid that is fairly run-of-the-mill but might be an okay option for those seeking a more versatile device.
The manually-fed Brother DS-640 is slower, but quite affordable and much more portable.
Credit: Laura Casner
Flatbed Speed
Since all the flatbeds we tested are geared for photo scanning, they take much longer to scan text pages than their document-oriented counterparts. Scan times were somewhat variable, but on average, the Epson V600 took 40 seconds to scan a single text page, while the Epson V39 II does the job in half the time it is still rather slow. None of these models are great for scanning long documents.
The painfully slow scanning speed of the Plustek ePhoto Z300 is a real let down.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Software
A device's software can easily make or break your scanning experience. Ideally, you want software that makes installation simple, offers intuitive file management, and can make scanned documents text-searchable using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). We installed our scanners' software packages onto multiple Macs and PCs, managed thousands of files with each OS, objectively rated OCR accuracy to find the best software, and gave this metric a 20% weighting in the overall scores.
Regarding optical character recognition, there are two new contenders in town. Neither is our overall top-rated model, but both stand out for their ability in this specific area. If creating searchable PDF text is a key part of your workflow, then you should be paying attention to the Canon ImageFORMULA R40 and the Epson WorkForce ES-60W. These two outperformed every other device we've tested to date, giving the manufacturers of the most premium scanners a wake-up call.
The ES-60W is great for scanning individual receipts.
Credit: Natalie Kafader
We were surprised by the software capabilities offered by the simple Scanner Pro App. It spits out PDF files that you can easily manage within your phone's native file system and transfer directly into an email or text message or save to cloud services like Google Drive. It also has optical character recognition that is about 95% accurate. Finally, you can change all of its various options via a familiar mobile touchscreen interface, which is much easier than sifting through the PC-based software packages of the other models we reviewed.
Thanks to its excellent optical character recognition, the Brother DS-640 also ranked highly in our software tests. The OCR is backed up by easy installation, operation, and file management, whether using a PC or Mac.
Some of the models we tested offered a range of software packages from just good to great.
Credit: Chris McNamara
Behind the top models, the Epson WorkForce ES-400 II offers reliable software performance that is stable across a range of platforms and also offers nearly perfect optical character recognition.
Although it is one the all-around best scanners in our product lineup, the Fujitsu ScanSnap iX600 does a less than stellar job when it comes to accurate and reliable character recognition and has a significant amount of room for improvement. The Epson Perfection V600 also performed poorly for its included software. We feel like we spent more time than necessary wading through clunky menus before getting the scan settings we wanted. The software also did not seem to run well on any of our Mac devices, often freezing or crashing.
In addition to incredible speed and a large capacity, the Fujitsu Fi-8170 software package is well-designed and a good interface makes it easy to operate.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Ease of Use
User-friendliness is the last metric we test for, and it has a 15% weighting in the overall scores. Initial setup, including unboxing, calibrating, and getting a scanner to communicate to its associated software, can either be a simple and straightforward task or one so frustrating that it makes even the slickest model not worth buying. Additionally, small touches like how easy it is to load and unload paper and a clean user interface can make a model feel user-friendly or like it's been sent to turn your office chores into a never-ending purgatory. We connected each of our models with multiple different devices. We spent hours scanning various documents, receipts, ID cards, and more to uncover all the minor annoyances that might leave you wishing you'd bought a different model.
Luckily, most of our scanners were relatively easy to use, with multiple models sharing some great scores for the ease of use test metric. No model is perfect, but these top-performing options generally provide an easy setup and good user experience. The Epson WorkForce ES-400 II, in particular, stood out for its easy setup, which took our team about five minutes, its intuitive software, and five clear buttons that take out any guesswork. The ES-400's document feeder and output tray are also simple and effective and easy to collapse when not in use.
Large capacity document feeders and output trays easily collapse to reclaim precious desktop space.
Credit: Matt Lighthart
The Canon ImageFORMULA R40 is another option that offers good usability. It took less than 10 minutes to set up and is incredibly easy and intuitive to operate. While it wasn't the easiest to use, it is still up there, and its above-average score in this metric contributes to its high overall rank, giving other scanners a run for their money.
Scanning receipts with the Canon ImageFORMULA is easy due to its intuitive design that's built for all kinds of paper materials.
Credit: Natalie Kafader
Another notably easy-to-set-up, easy-to-use, and incredibly convenient model we tested is the Epson WorkForce ES-60W. It took only 10 minutes to set up. Still, other factors like IOS compatibility, a compact format, wireless scanning, and battery-powered operation make it stand out. Its user-friendliness does suffer a little due to the requirement of manual feeding, as it lacks a feed tray, but that is an understandable trade-off for a scanner you can fit into a laptop case.
The Epson is quick and compact.
Credit: Natalie Kafader
The Fujitsu iX1600 ScanSnap took us 15 minutes to get up and running, including a firmware update, and it was easy to get it to communicate with both Mac and PC devices. The automatic document feeder is easy to load, and the single-button interface keeps everything simple. Finally, the relatively large touchscreen controls provide a much more intuitive interface than any other model.
A good document feeder and paper tray, like on the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i pictured here, can make life much easier.
The Epson WorkForce ES-50 is simple scanner that is intuitive and easy to use.
Both the Epson V600 and Epson Perfection V39 II flatbed models have easy-to-understand controls and work with both Macs and PCs without any fuss. However, they lack some of the convenient features of the document-oriented models, namely an automatic document feeder, which can make scanning long text documents quite cumbersome.
The Canon ImageFORMULA is highly adjustable.
Credit: Natalie Kafader
Features like loading trays, a cumbersome interface, or overly advanced settings can complicate a scanner. The Plustek ePhoto Z300 has none of those complications, and while it is underwhelming overall, it is a fairly easy model to use and deserves mention for its straightforward design.
No trays, duplex features, manual feeding, and no interface to speak of, make this one of the simplest scanners to operate.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
How To Pick A Scanner
When choosing a scanner, you'll want to strike a balance between all aspects of your planned usage. Whether you need to scan an occasional receipt, preserve photos, or make digital copies of large business documents, you'll need to evaluate the speed vs. quality at which you expect to be able to complete those tasks.
Photo Scanning
If you intend to scan and digitize family photos with high-quality resolution and accurate color representation, then you'll probably want to look at something like a bed scanner that allows you to lay a precious photo onto a scanning bed and close the lid flat on top of it, without bending it. While these types of scanners can be used for documents, large double-sided tasks would become a painfully tedious endeavor, requiring a lot of labor that a scanner designed for documents could handle in a flash.
Document Scanning
If you plan to use your scanner in a home office environment and want to handle serious tasks, then you'll need to look at scanners with large document-feeding capacities and automatic duplex scanning for double-sided documents. While they are not ideal for gently handling photos, they can offer as good or better quality as a bed scanner and will accurately digitize everything from text with optical character recognition to high-resolution full-page prints.
Scanning Speed
Some scanners are fast, some are even lightning fast, and some scanners, like bed scanners or mobile scanners, are painfully slow, requiring a lot of manual labor for large jobs. However, they produce some of the highest-quality scans as a result. If you are trying to blaze through fifty-page documents or a stack of receipts, you'll want to look at a scanner with an automatic document feeder and a higher scanning rate. If your goal is to accurately digitize every aspect of a treasured high-resolution photo, a slower scanner may be worth the extra detail it offers.
After using each scanner in our review for a wide variety of tasks, and stress testing for speed, resolution, and accuracy, the verdict is in on which are the best models.
Credit: Matt Lighthart
Conclusion
They may not be the most exciting devices, but finding the right scanner can improve organization in your life, help preserve memories, and even increase productivity. Even if your job doesn't explicitly require one, having a quick and easy way to digitize documents, photos, and receipts can keep things tidy, permanently preserved, and more organized. We hope that our detailed testing results will help you choose the model that is best for your home or small office needs.
