1. Office
  2. Printers and scanners

The Best Portable Document Scanner

By Arriana Vasquez and Ben Keough
Updated
Three of our picks for the best portable document scanners for 2021.
Photo: Michael Murtaugh

Phone scanning apps are great for one-off instances, but there are moments in life, like applying for a mortgage or navigating major legal situations, where having a small document scanner makes life way easier. We’ve spent more than 160 hours researching and testing portable document scanners since 2013, and after our latest round of testing we’re convinced that the Brother ADS-1250W provides the best balance of usability, performance, and portability you can find. It accurately recognizes text, produces good-looking results, works wirelessly with computers and mobile devices alike, and scans quickly.

Everything we recommend

Our pick

The Brother ADS-1250W is fast, accurate, and reliable, but what really sets it apart from the competition is how easy it is to use.

Buying Options

Runner-up

Aside from a touchscreen and a few additional scanning destinations, the ADS-1700W is identical to our top pick. Get it if the ADS-1250W is unavailable.

Also great

Best for people who want a small, lightweight scanner that can do duplex scanning.

Upgrade pick

The FastFoto FF-680W costs more, weighs more, and takes up more space than our top pick, but it can quickly deliver solid scans of both photos and business documents.

Our pick

The Brother ADS-1250W is fast, accurate, and reliable, but what really sets it apart from the competition is how easy it is to use.

Buying Options

Thanks to intelligently designed software and reliable hardware, the Brother ADS-1250W is more pleasant to use than the other document scanners we tested. It offers more accurate text recognition, cleaner-looking scans, and a reliable Wi-Fi connection, and in our tests it scanned just as quickly as the other models we tried. It’s bigger and heavier than some of the competition, and it doesn’t include a battery, but we think it’s still portable enough for most people.

Runner-up

Aside from a touchscreen and a few additional scanning destinations, the ADS-1700W is identical to our top pick. Get it if the ADS-1250W is unavailable.

In terms of performance, the Brother ADS-1700W is identical to our top pick, but it typically costs more. For the premium, it adds a mediocre 2.8-inch touchscreen and the ability to scan directly to cloud storage services, FTP and email servers, and network drives. If those features speak to you, or if our top pick is out of stock, the ADS-1700W is a fine choice. We just don’t think its extras are necessary for most people.

Also great

Best for people who want a small, lightweight scanner that can do duplex scanning.

The Brother DS-940DW scanner is a smaller, lighter version of our pick but scans only one document at a time. It scans quickly and accurately, and can do duplex scanning, also known as double-sided scanning. It has a built-in rechargeable battery and can send scans via Wi-Fi. It’s good for people who don’t have a high-quality camera on their phone or those who need to scan pages in poor lighting.

Upgrade pick

The FastFoto FF-680W costs more, weighs more, and takes up more space than our top pick, but it can quickly deliver solid scans of both photos and business documents.

Traditional document scanners aren’t designed for photos—they bend documents as they scan them, and the rollers can damage photo paper’s delicate finish. The Epson FastFoto FF-680W is different because it can safely archive treasured snapshots in as little as one second per photo. It’s expensive for a convenience item, but if you have shoeboxes full of old shots, it’ll make short work of an otherwise annoying task.

Wirecutter has been covering portable document scanners since 2013, logging more than 160 hours of research and testing in search of the best, most reliable models. We’ve kept up at every step with changes in the category, including the introduction of duplex scanning, Wi-Fi, and built-in batteries. Ben Keough has been writing about imaging gear—including cameras, printers, and scanners—for more than a decade.

Arriana Vasquez has been with Wirecutter for a year, and in that time she has worked on a variety of guides related to home-office gear. For the most recent update to this guide she researched all the latest portable scanners and tested them against the picks made by Ben.

If you have a big pile of documents and receipts that you need to digitize, these scanners are the quickest way to get the job done. But you might want one for other reasons too:

  • Reduces clutter: This may be the digital age, but a frustrating variety of documents still come exclusively on paper, and many of them need to be kept for years according to state and federal laws. Creating digital copies means you can stay in compliance without drowning in a sea of paper.
  • Makes documents easier to find: Since portable document scanners use optical character recognition (OCR) technology to turn printed text into searchable text, you can do word searches to find exactly the document you need in seconds. That’s a lot better than spending an afternoon digging through dusty filing cabinets.
  • Scans are harder to misplace than paper: Even if you’re diligent about sorting and filing your receipts and tax forms, there’s always the chance you’ll inadvertently toss something out during a move or spring cleaning. It’s a lot harder to accidentally discard digital copies, especially when you’ve backed them up to a cloud storage account.
  • Easy to stow away: You probably won’t scan every day, which is why it’s great that these machines are designed to fold down into an even more compact profile for storage and travel. Stationary desktop scanners are faster, but they take up more space on a desk, and you can’t easily toss them in a drawer until the next time you need them.

If you already own a portable document scanner and like it well enough, you probably have little reason to upgrade. Scanner development moves at a snail’s pace, and models often stay on shelves for as many as four or five years between revisions. That said, if your current scanner doesn’t offer Wi-Fi, can’t scan both sides of a document at once, scans significantly slower than you’d like, or doesn’t reliably recognize text, give our pick a look.

If you have an all-in-one printer with a flatbed scanner and an automatic document feeder, you should think about buying a portable document scanner only if you find that you often need to scan when you’re away from home. Portable document scanners aren’t more accurate than all-in-ones and don’t produce noticeably better OCR results.

Technically, yes, a phone works for scans. But depending on lighting conditions, or the kind of document you’re scanning, a portable document scanner will produce higher quality scans more consistently. We have picks for the best Android and iOS scanning apps, and they’re great for quick medical forms and travel receipts, but we don’t recommend using them for large, frequent jobs or tasks where perfect character recognition is required.

Three of our picks for the best portable document scanners. arranged close to each other.
Photo: Michael Murtaugh

Portable document scanners are simple devices: They scan documents and deliver digital files. But there are a few boxes they need to check in order to be worth your time and money, so we prioritized these qualities when surveying the available models.

  • Usability: If you hate using your scanner, you’re not going to use it. The hardware interface needs to be easy to navigate, and the desktop and mobile software should be powerful enough to get the job done but not so complex that it gets in your way when you’re working under pressure.
  • OCR: A good portable document scanner should be able to accurately recognize printed text via optical character recognition, or OCR, and turn it into a searchable PDF. The best portable document scanners can also export the text as an editable document, either in DOC, RTF, or TXT format. Ideally, a good scanner accurately recognizes every character, but realistically we expect a success rate of above 90%.
  • Wi-Fi: Just a few years ago, Wi-Fi was a rarity in portable document scanners. Today it’s commonplace. Being able to run your scanner without a USB cable is a nice perk, especially if the scanning speed isn’t any slower.
  • Duplex scanning: Being able to scan both sides of a two-sided document in a single pass drastically reduces the amount of time it takes to scan large documents. The feature also reduces wear and tear on both the original documents and the scanner itself.
  • Automatic document feeder: Speaking of large documents, you don’t want to stand there and feed your scanner dozens of pages one by one. With an automatic document feeder (ADF), you can slide the whole stack into a slot and let the machine work its magic.
  • Portability: It’s right there in the name. Portable document scanners actually span a broad range of sizes and especially weights—from under 1 pound to well over 3 pounds. Although machines with ADFs tend to be on the heftier side, we think a feeder is important enough to make the extra pounds worth it. Any model around 3 pounds or less is okay in our books.
  • Speed: The best portable document scanners operate at around the same speed—about 25 pages per minute—but all else being equal, we prefer a faster one.
  • Diverse power options: The fewer accessories you need to carry with your scanner, the more portable it is. Most scanners today can run on either USB or a typical AC adapter, so if you want to travel light, all you need is a USB cable. Some include built-in batteries, so they can operate in a truly wireless fashion: no USB cable, no power brick, not even a laptop. It’s certainly a nice feature to have, but one we think most laptop owners can do without.

With these features in mind, we considered the full range of portable document scanners currently available from top brands like Brother, Doxie, Canon, Epson, Fujitsu, Visioneer, and Xerox, immediately ruling out bulky desktop models that didn’t collapse for storage and transport. In total, we found nine available portable (with ADF) models and 12 ultraportable (without ADF) models.

In 2021, we tested several models popular with the Wirecutter reader community—the Doxie Q and Fujitsu S1300i—and a few new models like the Canon ImageFormula R10 and tested them against our current picks. We also took another look at ultraportable document scanners.

To begin, we unboxed each scanner, taking notes on their size, weight, and build quality. Did the plastics seem thick and durable? Were the ADF guides sturdy when extended? Did the feeder tray latch solidly when we folded it down for storage? We also checked to see whether the manufacturer bothered to include a USB cable or other extras in the box.

Once the physical setup was complete, we installed the scanners on Mac and Windows computers, plus Android and iOS phones, taking note of any obvious pain points in either finding or using the software. We performed all installations over Wi-Fi, except in the case of a previous pick, the Epson ES-200, which is USB-only. However, we made sure to check that USB scanning also worked without a hitch on the Wi-Fi–enabled scanners.

To evaluate OCR capability, we scanned both an IRS 1099 tax form (PDF) and a simple text document with the same sentence repeated in descending font size from 12 points to 4, exporting the results as both searchable PDFs and (where possible) editable text files. To check image quality, we scanned several other documents, including a star chart designed for lens sharpness testing, a document from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) meant to mimic a typical office report, and a couple of photos printed on regular copy paper. We compared the 300 dpi scans with both the original prints and scans we made using the flatbed scanner on an average inkjet all-in-one. We don’t recommend using a portable document scanner to archive photos—we suggest using our upgrade pick for that—but we also used each model to scan a glossy color print just to see if the results were good enough for email and social media. In the case of the ultraportable document scanner, we tested scan quality against a phone scanner in a variety of lighting conditions.

To test scan speed, we ran a 20-sheet double-sided business document through each scanner using both simplex and duplex modes, over both USB and (except in the case of the Epson ES-200) Wi-Fi, and at both 300 dpi and 600 dpi resolution. In each case, we recorded how long the scan job took to complete, from pressing the Scan button until the results were ready to be saved.

Most document scanners are rated for everything from flimsy copy paper to heavy card stock, but we fed each machine a variety of paper types to make sure it could handle them. We also intentionally jammed each scanner just to see how easy or difficult it was to clear.

Finally, we ran a series of tests to gauge the effect that different power sources had on scanner performance. For instance, we attempted to quantify the effect that scanning via USB power had on laptop battery life, and also to see whether scanning slowed noticeably on USB power. We also checked to see if the machines would operate using a USB battery pack as a power source.

Along the way, we took notes on Wi-Fi reliability and any other glitches we might encounter in daily use.

Our pick for the best portable document scanner the Brother ADS-1250W scanning a W-9 form.
Photo: Michael Murtaugh

Our pick

The Brother ADS-1250W is fast, accurate, and reliable, but what really sets it apart from the competition is how easy it is to use.

Buying Options

The Brother ADS-1250W is the best portable document scanner you can buy because of how easy it is to use compared with its closest rivals. Brother’s software provides ample control and puts the most important settings at your fingertips. The ADS-1250W’s Wi-Fi connection is stable, and it can work over Wi-Fi with third-party scanning apps like Windows Scan and Apple’s Image Capture. OCR performance is excellent, and it scans just as quickly as any other model in this category. Although it lacks a battery, a feature some others in this class offer, it can operate via USB power at a slower speed. We think that’s an acceptable trade-off for most people.

Installation is simple, regardless of platform. Brother ships the ADS-1250W with a quick-start guide that provides instructions on how to download the software from Brother’s support site. The install process is essentially identical on Windows 10 and macOS Catalina—the only real difference is that Mac users will need to download the iPrint&Scan software from the App store whereas it comes as part of the install package for Windows. Although the ADS-1250W doesn’t have a touchscreen interface like the slightly more expensive ADS-1700W, we found it easy enough to connect via Wi-Fi by following the included instructions.

The ADS-1250W features physical buttons for one-touch scanning to USB thumb drives and a connected computer. Photo: Michael Murtaugh

Brother’s software is much more enjoyable to work with than the apps that come with other scanner brands we tested. The core scanning suite, Brother iPrint&Scan, is simple and straightforward. Once you’ve selected your scanner, you can adjust vital settings such as document size, color settings, resolution, and duplexing before hitting a big, bright green Scan button. The default scanning apps from other brands require you to click through a series of submenus to get to the same options. Once your scan job is finished, iPrint&Scan shows you the results, lets you reorder pages, and invites you to save the resulting document. If you want to save your scan in multiple formats, you can do that without having to rescan the pages for each file type.

In our tests, OCR results from the ADS-1250W were great across the board. When we scanned challenging mixed-format documents like the IRS 1099 form at 300 dpi, it missed only a couple of words, limited to those printed in very small fonts, in particularly squiggly fonts, and on darker backgrounds. Line breaks, especially on multicolumn documents such as the 1099 form, are a problem for any scanner, but the ADS-1250W handled them as well as any other model we’ve tested. With our descending-font document, the ADS-1250W was accurate 100% of the time at 6 points and larger, with both serif and sans serif fonts and at both 300 and 600 dpi. Accuracy dropped off with 4-point type but stayed above 90% at 300 dpi and above 98% at 600 dpi. The ADS-1250W was more accurate than other scanners we tested at almost every font size, in both styles, and at both resolutions (though the differences were not huge).

The scans from the ADS-1250W were cleaner than what we got out of the other document scanners we tested. It did the best job of correcting skew and cropping out dark edges, and its text looked sharp but natural. Generally speaking, the ADS-1250W produced very similar results to what you’d get from a typical all-in-one printer’s document feeder or flatbed scanner.

Text scans from the Brother ADS-1250W (left) were crisp but not oversharpened, making them easier to read. The Epson ES-300W (right) produced comparably oversharpened and overly contrasty text.

When scanning our photo, the ADS-1250W produced acceptably crisp results with accurate color and contrast. However, the rollers that pull sheets through the scanner can easily scratch the coating on glossy and matte photo paper, which essentially ruins the originals. If you really want to scan photos, consider a dedicated photo scanner like our upgrade pick; it produces far better results and won’t damage your prints. If you already have an all-in-one printer, the flatbed scanner on that machine will probably produce comparable photo scans and won’t scratch the finish.

The ADS-1250W’s Wi-Fi performance was mediocre overall but still better than what we got from its rivals. Its signal was consistently weaker than that of other wireless devices positioned near it (such as our test laptops and phones), but despite showing only one bar, its connection never failed during scanning. We don’t advise trying to use this scanner too far from your router, but within reasonable limits it should prove reliable.

The ADS-1250W isn’t just accurate, it’s also quick—roughly as speedy as the Epson models when scanning via USB and noticeably faster over Wi-Fi when using the manufacturer-provided apps. In our testing, the ADS-1250W took 48 seconds to scan 20 single-sided test pages via USB, which works out to a rate of 25 pages per minute. Over Wi-Fi, on the same task it clocked 52 seconds, or 23 pages per minute. In comparison, the Epson ES-300W managed 25.5 ppm over USB but slowed to 16.5 ppm via Wi-Fi. Since Brother offers an ICA driver (software to let your computer and scanner communicate with each other), the ADS-1250W can also work over Wi-Fi with third-party scanning apps in macOS—something Epson’s scanners can’t do.

We found that although the ADS-1250W can indeed handle everything from copy paper to heavy card stock and plastic IDs, it will jam if you don’t load your documents in exactly the right way. A large sticker on the document feeder shows you how to do it: Fan the sheets so that the first page goes deepest in the feed slot and the last page is farthest out, and then gently slide them into the slot. It takes a bit of experimentation, but once you have the feel, your jam rate will drop to almost zero. All of the scanners we tested were just as picky, so this issue isn’t limited to our pick.

In addition to scanning to a computer and mobile devices, the ADS-1250W can scan to a USB thumb drive (the scanner has a port on the back side). If you need additional scan-to options, such as FTP and network folders, consider the otherwise similar Brother ADS-1700W.

The ADS-1250W is slightly bigger and heavier than the other scanners we tested at 11.8 by 4.1 by 3.3 inches and 3 pounds. (It’s about the size of a footlong sub and the weight of an old-school MacBook Air.) But we think that’s an acceptable trade-off considering all the things this Brother model does well. If you place a much higher value on portability, you might want to consider other alternatives.

Since the ADS-1250W doesn’t have a battery, you have to operate it via USB or AC power. That means that if you travel with your scanner, you’ll need to carry a USB 3.0 cable (not included) or an AC power brick and cable (included). We don’t think either accessory will weigh you down too much, but these calculations are always very personal. (We tried powering it via a USB battery pack with both 12 W and 18 W outputs, but although the scanner’s power LED turned on, the machine wouldn’t operate.)

When running on USB power, the ADS-1250W’s scanning speed slows significantly: Whereas it took just 49 seconds to scan 20 pages at 300 dpi using AC power, it took 2 minutes 57 seconds to do the same task using USB power. This is one area where a battery-equipped competitor like the Epson ES-300W has a clear advantage—in our tests that model completed the same task in 47 seconds on both battery and AC power. When using USB power, the ADS-1250W is also incapable of scanning to a USB drive or scanning long paper such as banners or some longer receipts.

During the course of testing, we changed the Wi-Fi password in our Los Angeles office. Most devices in the office handled the transition just fine, but the ADS-1250W struggled. Since the scanner has no screen, we couldn't update the password on the machine itself, and the default Brother apps didn’t provide a way to change it, either. We tried downloading Brother’s optional Remote Setup app, but it was also unable to rectify the situation. In the end, we found that the most efficient, least frustrating way to set up the scanner on a new network was to re-download and run the full installer package, since it includes a network setup wizard. For this reason, we suggest keeping the installer package somewhere handy on your computer’s hard drive.

Although the ADS-1250W produces more accurate OCR results than the competition, Brother iPrint&Scan can export those results only as TXT and RTF files. Other scanners, such as the Epson ES-300W, can also export Microsoft Word DOC files with more advanced formatting. However, this is an extremely minor complaint—especially since the formatting in OCR-produced DOC files usually needs so much cleanup that it’s almost easier to paste in the plain text and format it from scratch.

The mobile version of Brother iPrint&Scan gets the job done for basic tasks, but its features are pretty limited. You can change only the document size, color settings, and duplexing. It offers no OCR, so you’re limited to image-only PDFs and JPEGs at 100 to 300 dpi, depending on color and speed settings. You can send these PDFs to a third-party app for OCR or upload them to the cloud and convert them later using PC software, but it would have been nice if Brother had included this functionality in its own app. Unfortunately, leaving OCR out of mobile apps is more or less the industry standard.

Finally, we have to call Brother out for not including a USB cable in the box. If you don’t already have one, grab an inexpensive Micro-USB 3.0 cable with a Micro-B connector like this one.

Our runner-up pick for best portable document scanner, the Brother ADS-1700W.
Photo: Michael Murtaugh

Runner-up

Aside from a touchscreen and a few additional scanning destinations, the ADS-1700W is identical to our top pick. Get it if the ADS-1250W is unavailable.

If our main pick is unavailable, or if you must have a touchscreen, you can go with the Brother ADS-1700W, a model virtually identical to the ADS-1250W. It uses the same software, produces the same scan quality, generates the same OCR results, and scans at the same speed. It also tends to cost more. Why? Well, it has a 2.8-inch color touchscreen LCD, for one thing. For another, it can scan to FTP and email servers, network drives, and cloud storage services in addition to your phone, your computer, and USB thumb drives.

A close-up of the small touchscreen and buttons on the ADS-1700W portable document scanner.
The ADS-1700W’s small touchscreen isn’t great, but it is something that no other portable document scanner we tested has. Photo: Michael Murtaugh

The ADS-1700W’s touchscreen will be instantly familiar to anyone who has used a cheap printer in the past few years. It’s small, low-resolution, and resistive (meaning you have to press hard to get it to recognize touches). It gets the job done, but it’s not exactly fun to use. However, it does allow you to do a few things you can’t do on our top pick, such as upload scans directly to the cloud and log on to your Wi-Fi network via the scanner itself.

If you’re uncomfortable with network setup in general, the ADS-1700W is also capable of Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS), which makes getting online as easy as pressing a button on the touchscreen and another on your router. This model is also slightly more future-proofed, since it is compatible with IPv6.

Our pick for the best ultraportable scanner, the Brother DSMobile DS-940DW, scanning a 1040 IRS form.
Photo: Michael Murtaugh

Also great

Best for people who want a small, lightweight scanner that can do duplex scanning.

The Brother DSMobile DS-940DW has all of the features we considered most desirable: Wi-Fi connectivity, duplex scanning, a built-in battery, and the ability to save scans to an SD card. It has a small screen on the right side that gives you the option to change certain settings like PDF versus JPEG or simplex versus duplex. These settings are only available when you’re scanning to an SD card though. If you're scanning to a computer or mobile you can make those changes in the software or app.

In our previous round of testing we looked at the Brother DSMobile DS-940DW but dismissed it because the included software—the Brother DSMobileCapture—was almost unusable. Since then Brother has migrated the DS-940DW over to the iPrint&Scan app.

On the left there’s a switch you can slide back and forth to choose between Wi-Fi, USB, or SD card. There’s also a Wi-Fi Protected Setup (aka WPS) button if you want a more secure wireless connection.

During testing it was one of the fastest scanners (tied with the Epson ES-60W). It scanned one-sided documents to a computer in .06 second and both sides (which the Epson cannot do) in .08 second. When connected to the iPrint&Scan app on mobile, duplex scan speeds were surprisingly faster, ready for viewing in .07 second (single-sided scans were still .06 second).

Our upgrade pick for best portable document scanner, the Epson FastFoto FF-680W.
Photo: Rozette Rago

Upgrade pick

The FastFoto FF-680W costs more, weighs more, and takes up more space than our top pick, but it can quickly deliver solid scans of both photos and business documents.

If you want a document scanner that can also handle photos without destroying them, the Epson FastFoto FF-680W is the best choice. Unlike our top pick, it doesn’t bend photos as they pass through the scanner, so it won’t leave scratches and other unsightly marks on the originals. It can produce high-resolution photo scans at a rate of about 1.5 seconds per shot and can scan a wide variety of sizes, including Polaroids. However, it’s much less portable and much more expensive than our top pick, so we recommend it only if you have a large number of photos that need scanning.

Scanners like this are great because they can bring your old photos into the digital age and save you from the mind-numbing labor of manually scanning each one with a flatbed scanner. With its automatic feeder, the FF-680W can handle batches of up to 36 photos, and it accepts photos ranging from wallet-size to 5 by 7 inches. If you feed them one at a time, it can also handle 8-by-10-inch shots and up to 8.5-by-36-inch panoramas. It also captures the handwritten notes on the backside of photos in a single pass.

The FF-680W scans photos without bending them, preventing damage to older prints and delicate finishes. Video: Rozette Rago

Typically priced around $600, the FF-680W doesn’t offer its considerable firepower on the cheap. If you don’t have a huge number of photos and don’t expect to produce more in the future, it would probably be more economical to use one of our recommended photo-scanning services to archive your memories. Our numbers suggest you’d need to scan about 1,500 photos to make owning the FF-680W a better value than outsourcing.

But the FF-680W isn’t just a photo scanner—it’s also a very capable document scanner. In our tests it was much faster than our top pick, chewing through a 20-page two-sided office document in just 29 seconds via USB, or a rate of around 41.5 pages per minute. Its document feeder can handle an impressive 100 sheets of copy paper. And unlike the Epson ES-300W, it also worked with third-party apps over a wireless connection thanks to its built-in ICA driver. However, it’s still saddled with Epson’s ScanSmart software, which we don’t like as much as Brother’s more intuitive and user-friendly iPrint&Scan. If you want a scanner primarily for capturing documents, we suggest going for our top pick. But if you want a scanner mostly for photos and also need to scan documents occasionally, the FF-680W will work well.

A close-up of the large buttons on the FF-680W portable document scanner.
The FF-680W’s larger body has plenty of room for physical controls and status LEDs, but no LCD. Photo: Rozette Rago

Installation is simple through the installer from Epson’s support site. We had no issues getting our test unit onto our office Wi-Fi network, and the USB connection was flawless on both Windows and Mac.

Epson’s FastFoto software both scans and organizes your photos. You can tag each batch with descriptive text and the time period in which the photos were taken, and the app then uses the info to create a template for file names. It can also auto-populate subfolders for each time period, apply automatic image enhancement, and scan back-side notes (saving the second file with a “b” at the end of the name and grouping the fronts and backs together in the app). You can save images as either lossy JPEGs or uncompressed TIFF files, but you have to choose before you scan—you can’t save to both formats in a single pass. And since everybody lives in the cloud now, the FastFoto app can automatically upload new scans to popular storage services such as Dropbox and Google Drive.

Our photo scans from the FF-680W looked very good, with accurate color reproduction and plenty of detail. Hardcore photo enthusiasts will want to stick with their high-end flatbed scanners, but the average shutterbug will be more than pleased with these results. FastFoto’s auto-enhancement feature makes faded photos pop, which is fine for social sharing, but it destroys detail with excessive contrast and sharpening. If you want to preserve your photos for long-term archival, we suggest turning that feature off and using an external editing suite like Photoshop to make your own tweaks. Auto-cropping and de-skew were generally very accurate for us, though they sometimes left white borders on photos with rounded corners and failed to correct skew on the back side of photos.

For someone who wants a very easy-to-use scanner, the Doxie Q has the easiest and most enjoyable setup of any ADF scanner we tested. Plus, it can save documents directly to an SD card, something that our main pick can’t do. While it can do just about everything our pick can do, it generally can’t do them as well.

For example, scanning speeds were significantly slower than our main pick. During our tests the DoxieQ took .50 second to scan one side of the seven-page IRS 1099 form, while the Brother ADS-1250W took only .20 to scan both sides of the 1099 form. Also, the Doxie doesn’t do duplex scanning.

Our top pick’s primary competitor is the Epson WorkForce ES-300W. The ES-300W has some real advantages over our pick, such as added power options, speedier performance when not on AC power, and a lighter, more compact design. But it’s also much less reliable and generally less enjoyable to use. The Wi-Fi is flaky, and it doesn’t work with non-Epson apps if you have a Mac. That might be okay if Epson’s own software were great, but it’s not. The default Epson ScanSmart app buries important settings in submenus, and the Epson Scan 2 alternative doesn’t let you review your documents post-scan to rearrange the order or rescan specific pages if something goes wrong.

The Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i offers a comprehensive, well-integrated suite of scanning software, but that is its only real advantage. Its document feeder can handle just half the sheets our top pick can, it scans half as fast (and drops to a truly glacial pace of around 4 pages per minute on USB power), and it uses separate USB cables for data and power, so you’ll have to carry two cables with you. Fujitsu also doesn’t provide TWAIN or ICA drivers, so you’re limited to using the company’s own software. If you already own and are satisfied with the S1300i, upgrading is probably not worthwhile. But if you’re buying your first document scanner, you have better choices.

The Canon ImageFormula R10 is one of the smallest scanners we tested, but lacks all the features that make it truly portable, like Wi-Fi, being able to save to an SD card, or a rechargeable battery.

The Canon ImageFormula P-215II is slower and less accurate than our top pick and doesn’t offer Wi-Fi. You can theoretically buy a separate Wi-Fi adapter and battery pack dongle at the eye-popping price of $170, but it’s out of stock everywhere and brings the total cost of the machine to near $400, which is just outrageous.

We considered but didn’t test the Visioneer Patriot P15 and Xerox XDS-P, which are identical scanners sold under different brand names. They lack Wi-Fi, claim a scan speed of just 15 pages per minute (compared with 25 ppm for our pick), and are slightly bigger than the ADS-1250W, yet cost more.

The Epson WorkForce ES-200 lacks Wi-Fi and a battery, which makes it a little smaller and lighter than the otherwise identical ES-300W. Unfortunately, most of its competitors now offer wireless connectivity, and its $250 list price is higher than our top picks. The value just isn’t there anymore.

Ultraportable Scanners

The Brother DS-640 and DS-740D don’t have Wi-Fi and you can’t save scans to an SD card. They’re pretty slow, averaging about 10 seconds for one page, and they can’t scan duplex.

The Epson ES-50 was the smallest, lightest scanner we tested. Similar to the Brother DS-640, however, the ES-50 doesn’t have any of the key features we were looking for like duplex scanning, Wi-Fi, or a rechargeable battery.

The ES-60W has most of the features we look for, like a rechargeable battery and Wi-Fi, but I found the connection to be finicky, and its Wi-Fi signal didn’t always show up on my phone. It also can’t do duplex scanning or save to an SD card slot.

Meet your guides

Arriana Vasquez

Arriana Vasquez is a senior updates writer for powering, home office, cameras, and hobbies at Wirecutter. Her hobbies include reading and photography. Her photos have won several awards in various online competitions, and she is the producer and co-host of Old Books Podcast.

Ben Keough

Ben Keough is the supervising editor for Wirecutter's working from home, powering, cameras, and hobbies and games coverage. He previously spent more than a decade writing about cameras, printers, and other office equipment for Wirecutter, Reviewed, USA Today, and Digital Camera HQ. After four years testing printers, he definitively confirmed that they all suck, but some suck less than others.

Further reading

  • A small document on the flatbed face of a Canon CanoScan LiDE 300.

    The Best Cheap Scanner

    by Ben Keough and Phil Ryan

    We think the Canon CanoScan LiDE 300 is the best for high-resolution scans of delicate or thick items, and the Epson Perfection V600 is best for film.

  • A person using their smartphone to scan a document using a mobile scanning app.

    The Best Mobile Scanning Apps

    by Ben Keough

    The simple design, high-quality results, free cloud storage, and $0 price make Adobe Scan an excellent choice.

  • A collection of instant photo printers, with their photos, that we tested to find the best ones.

    The Best Instant Photo Printer

    by Arriana Vasquez

    Our pick for the best instant photo printer is simple to use, and it’s light and small enough to carry. It uses easy-to-find, affordable film, too.

Edit
Dismiss