Recently, the good folks over at Fujitsu sent me a ScanSnap S1300i portable scanner1. Until recently, I have been using my Canon ImageFormula P-150M. I’ve been very happy with the Canon scanner, but there has been one recurring problem I’ve had with it: page feeding. Half the time I load multiple pages into the feeder, they either pull through simultaneously or get jammed on their way through. Since many of the documents I scan are multipage, you can imagine this can be frustrating.
So I decided to try the ScanSnap S1300i, mostly to see if it solved this problem. It is comparable in most ways to the Canon, perhaps just slightly bigger. But when it comes to scanning multiple pages, it does a far superior job. In the 10 days that I’ve had the ScanSnap, I’ve fed dozens of multiple page documents through it, including documents that would jam the Canon and have not once had a jam. Nor has the scanner decided to pull through multiple pages at once. As far as I can tell, the page feeder is on the ScanSnap is better than the one on my Canon and this makes me very happy because it solves the only real problem I had with my scanning. I even scanned documents that were creased and folded at some point–these documents always stymied by Canon scanner, but no so the Fujitsu ScanSnap.
Beyond the ability to successfully scan multiple pages without issues, the ScanSnap S1300i also does the things I absolutely must have my scanner do:
- Scans directly to Evernote. Load the paper, click the button and the document is automatically scanned into Evernote as a searchable PDF.
- Duplex scanning in a single pass (scans both sides of the page at the same time, and knows to ignore blank pages)
- Can handle different page sizes.
- Will straighten out crooked scans.
- Nice power management features.
While I like my Canon scanner, I think the ScanSnap S1300i is better because it doesn’t have issues with the page feeder. This saves me time and allows me to get my scans into Evernote on the first try.
There are lots of other features of the ScanSnap that I haven’t tried yet, but that look good. You can stitch PDFs together, you can scan in business cards and capture the information. You can use multiple scanning profiles. But for what I do–my 10 minutes of scanning each day–the features that I described above are all I need and they work great. I would recommend the ScanSnap S1300i for people looking for a reliable, portable, duplex scanner that can scan directly into Evernote. It’s a great little scanner.
- They did this because they know I am Evernote’s Paperless Lifestyle Ambassador, but they did so explicitly with no obligation to say nice things about the scanner or even review it at all. Happily, I really like the scanner. ↩
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