Settling on a scanner that meets your specific day-to-day scanning needs can be challenging. Most flatbed and sheetfed scanners on the market today are geared toward everyday office tasks or photo image capture, but they come in a wide variety of types and sizes, some fine-tuned for different purposes. Document scanners, photo scanners, receipt scanners, film scanners: That list is just a start.
We’ve outlined below the top scanners that we have tested across a range of categories and possible usage scenarios. “Scan” the list for the kind of work you do, then read on below that for a deeper dive into scanner specs and how to choose the right model for what, exactly, you scan.
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Deeper Dive: Our Top Tested Picks
Fujitsu ScanSnap iX1600
Best Desktop Document Scanner for Homes and Small Offices
Why We Picked It
It doesn’t have Ethernet, because it’s not built for a corporate network—just for connection to a single PC or handheld in a small office via USB or Wi-Fi—but otherwise the Fujitsu ScanSnap iX1600 is pretty much a model desktop document scanner. This sheetfed unit offers an easy-to-use color touch screen, a 50-page automatic document feeder, and a hefty 6,000-scan daily duty cycle. (To overwork it, you’d have to load the ADF to capacity more than 120 times a day.) Best of all, it comes with first-class scanning, workflow-profile, and optical character recognition (OCR) software.
Who It’s For
If you juggle a variety of pages, the iX1600 automatically recognizes and organizes documents, receipts, and business cards—and even items with different orientations and color settings—in the same batch. It’s a superb way for a home office or small office to get a handle on piles of papers.
PROS
- Comprehensive ScanSnap software
- Simple to learn and use
- Accurate OCR
- Versatile connectivity options, including mobile
- 6,000-scan daily duty cycle rating
Brother ADS-4900W
Best High-Volume Document Scanner for Offices
Why We Picked It
Brother’s scanners hold up well in a highly competitive, crowded market. That fact is more than enough to render the ADS-4900W our current favorite mid- to high-volume sheetfed document scanner for small to medium-size offices, workgroups, and enterprises. It stands out not because of any ground-breaking features or firsts, but because this is a terrific, rock-solid machine.
A whopping 9,000-scan daily duty cycle means you’ll have to have a very determined paper-feeding person (and some really big jobs) to stress this scanner out. It’s accurate, efficient, and reasonably priced (well under a grand) for what it is.
Who It’s For
For medium- to heavy-volume scanning in all but the largest offices, the Brother ADS-4900W serves as an industrial-strength desktop option. Some competitors from the likes of Raven operate via big touch screens, but if you just need reliable, basic bulk document digitization for your business, this model is a great option.
PROS
- Deep document management features
- Fast scanning and reliable feeding
- Accurate OCR
- Can scan to USB memory devices without a computer
- Versatile connectivity and strong mobile device support
- Large touch screen control panel
Epson DS-30000
Best Enterprise-Grade Scanner for Oversize Documents
Why We Picked It
The Epson DS-30000 laughs at your mere letter- and legal-size pages—this enterprise-class document manager and archiver can handle tabloid (11-by-17-inch) sheets, despite taking little more room than a standard sheetfed desktop scanner. Its automatic document feeder holds up to 120 letter- or 60 A3-size pages, and its daily duty cycle is a juggernaut 30,000 scans. Epson backs it with a three-year warranty with next-business-day replacement and bundles it with state-of-the-art document-management and scanner-interface software. The latter not only scans to a plethora of file formats and cloud and archiving sites, but it offers friendly Home, Office, and Professional modes for different levels of user expertise.
Who It’s For
It’s far from cheap at $2,499, but the DS-30000 is only half the cost of some of the copy-machine-size corporate scanners it competes with. Of course, it’s overkill for a small or even midsize office, but it stands almost alone as a high-volume, large-format desktop document scanner.
PROS
- Fast and accurate scanning and text conversion
- High volume rating, including large ADF
- Scans documents up to 12 by 17 inches
- Versatile scanner-interface software
- Moderate-size footprint
CONS
- Lacks wireless or mobile connectivity
- USB interface only; no networking option available
- Lacks business-card scanning and archiving software
Canon CanoScan LiDE 400
Best Flatbed Photo Scanner
Why We Picked It
Most nonprofessional photographers can’t afford a dedicated photo scanner. That’s why the flatbed Canon CanoScan LiDE 400 doubles nicely at scanning document pages and turning them into editable text, although to be honest you’ll want a higher-priced scanner with an automatic document feeder (ADF) for handling more than occasional multipage jobs. The LiDE 400 saves desk space with a vertical kickstand and comes with impressive photo scanning and touch-up software. It can even stitch together multiple scans of photos too big for its scanning area.
Who It’s For
The CanoScan captures vibrant color and crisp detail and ably serves a single small-office PC connected via USB. (It lacks wired networking or Wi-Fi for mobile devices.) Considering its under-$100 price, it’s a great solution for light-duty photo-quality scanning.
PROS
- Vibrant photo scans.
- Excellent software bundle.
- Comes with kickstand for upright positioning.
- Very simple to use.
CONS
- Lacks mobile device and wireless support.
- Could be more accurate when scanning serif fonts.
Epson FastFoto FF-680W
Best High-Speed Snapshot Scanner
Why We Picked It
The FastFoto has been on the market for some time, but this speedy, compact unit continues to be one of a kind. If you have stacks of old family snapshots, or similar card-size items to be scanned in bulk, the FastFoto can process them with speed and care. It’s gentle on photos and can even scan both sides of a print without flipping it over, capturing possible date data or back-scrawled notations with the image. It can also pinch-hit as a perfectly workable document scanner for digitizing bills and those old tax records.
Who It’s For
Scrapbookers, family archivists, or folks looking to reproduce or digitize photo albums to the cloud will find the FastFoto a godsend. It can process a stack of snaps in mere minutes, and even tweak them on the fly and name them according to filename sequences that you specify in the software. It may not be cheap, but it will pay for itself in time savings many times over for big scan jobs.
PROS
- Quickly scans stacks of photo prints.
- Decent as a document scanner.
- Scans to searchable PDF.
- Solid OCR performance.
CONS
- Somewhat pricey.
- Slower at photo scanning than its predecessor.
HP ScanJet Pro 3600 f1
Best Flatbed/Sheetfed Combo Scanner
Why We Picked It
Compact, easy to use, and accurate at OCR, the ScanJet Pro 3600 f1 is a winning hybrid flatbed/sheetfed design. As a flatbed, it can digitize photos, book or magazine pages, or fragile items that might not survive a trip through a sheet feeder; with its roomy 60-page auto-duplexing ADF, it’s ready to process lengthy documents lickety-split. You can use it and control it from a PC, or scan straight to flash drives or other USB drives without one.
Who It’s For
Doctor’s offices, real estate or travel agencies, banks, and other small organizations and workgroups that need to stay on top of the ebb, flow, and occasional tidal wave of paper will find the ScanJet invaluable. Plus, its support for scan profiles and workflows makes repetitive scan tasks easy.
PROS
- Compact design
- Relatively fast, highly accurate OCR
- Excellent HP Scan Pro interface
- Decent document archiving
- Scans to flash and other USB drives with no PC required
CONS
- Somewhat expensive
- No Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or device support
Raven Pro Document Scanner
Best Walk-Up Scanner and Document Manager
Why We Picked It
Naturally, the Raven Pro Document Scanner works with all kinds of computers and handheld devices, but if it’s connected to a network it doesn’t need a PC at all—you can perform a host of scanning and document management functions from its tablet-like 8-inch touch control panel. This medium- to high-volume sheetfed scanner has everything from a 100-sheet ADF to the ability to scan to flash or other USB drives or online storage (unlimited Raven Cloud space is included), and its robust PC software includes financial data scanning and archiving compatible with QuickBooks.
Who It’s For
Raven doesn’t provide dedicated Android or iOS smartphone apps, but the Raven Pro otherwise offers everything a busy office or workgroup could want, with impressively fast and accurate scanning whether you’re using its PC software or taking advantage of its touch screen. It’s a successful one-stop desktop scanning shop at a reasonable price.
PROS
- Fast scanning and saving to both image and searchable PDF
- Accurate OCR
- Onboard editing and document management
- Supports wireless and wired networking
- Scans to external USB flash and other USB drives
- Slick tablet-like interface
- Excellent software for scanner operation and document management
- 100-sheet ADF
- Free unlimited (Raven Cloud) cloud space
CONS
- Lacks dedicated handheld mobile device app
- Expensive accessories
Fujitsu fi-800R
Best Front-Desk Document and Card Scanner
Why We Picked It
A cross between a desktop and a portable sheetfed document scanner, the Fujitsu fi-800R takes only about 12 by 4 inches of desk space but delivers robust performance thanks to unique Return Scan and U-Turn Scan technologies that move documents in and out without requiring multiple slots or paper trays. Its Active Skew Correction lets you be careless about placing documents in the feeder, and its speed and 4,500-scan daily duty cycle are closer to its desktop than portable rivals (though its 20-sheet ADF is on the skimpy side).
Who It’s For
The fi-800R is a little pricey considering it supports only a USB instead of network connection and lacks a battery for portable scanning, but it fills a nifty niche as a front-desk document manager for handling customer and client paperwork. Its PaperStream Capture software is just the ticket for digitizing IDs, passports, and miscellaneous pages.
PROS
- Fast and compact.
- Accurate OCR.
- Robust software bundle.
- High daily volume rating.
- Well-suited to front-desk applications.
CONS
- Expensive.
- Connectivity limited to USB.
Brother DSmobile DS-940DW
Best Portable Document Scanner
Why We Picked It
With no automatic document feeder, the Brother DSmobile DS-940DW obliges you to feed pages manually, so it’s better suited to one- or two-page documents instead of lengthy reports or stacks of sheets. But otherwise, it’s the very model of handy scanning on the road, complete with a rechargeable battery and the ability to scan to a microSD card for later transfer to a PC, so you don’t even need to bring your laptop—just throw the 1.5-pound scanner into your briefcase and you’re all set. The Brother is rated for 100 scans a day and comes with software for smartly managing business cards and receipts.
Who It’s For
It’s obviously not a high-volume, heavy-duty document manager, but the DSmobile DS-940DW’s convenience, speed, and accuracy make it a standout in a crowded field of single-sheet portable scanners. Don’t leave the office without it.
PROS
- Small and light.
- Fast scanning and processing.
- Accurate OCR.
- Solid software bundle.
- Easy to use.
- Autonomous scanning to microSD card.
- Wi-Fi and USB 3.0 connectivity.
CONS
- No automatic document feeder.
- MicroSD card not included.
CZUR ET24 Pro
Best Overhead Book and Magazine Scanner
Why We Picked It
Overhead scanners are specialized devices with elevated cameras for scanning book or magazine pages. The CZUR ET24 Pro comes with a foot pedal or desk button that frees your hands for turning book pages or placing new content (up to tabloid size) on the scan platform. It also features automatic focus and page-turn detection, and you can even use the device in a Visual Presenter mode, with an HDMI port for playing video captured by the CZUR directly to monitors or HDTVs or livestreaming.
Who It’s For
In many ways, the CZUR ET24 Pro and its ilk resemble old-fashioned overhead projectors. Capturing book and magazine pages, however, is just one of many possible uses, ranging from capturing objects for presentations to classroom or online teaching. Its everyday book or magazine scanning speed depends more on your placement and page-turning hustle than its hardware, but the ET24 Pro is ideal for small and midsize offices, presenters, teachers, and others in need of its very specific talents.
PROS
- Automatic focus and page-turn detection
- Can operate via a desk button or a foot pedal
- HDMI video output
- Business-card archiving
- Accurate OCR
CONS
- No wireless connectivity or support for handheld devices
- Lacks networking
- No battery for off-plug operation
Epson RapidReceipt RR-600W
Best Receipt Scanner
Why We Picked It
The Epson RapidReceipt RR-600W is a powerful desktop document scanner with an automatic document feeder (ADF) that lets you capture up to 100 two-sided documents in one batch; it supports USB and Wi-Fi, and has a port for scanning directly to USB flash drives. Plus, its 4.3-inch graphical touch screen makes it easy to access scanning options or workflow profiles. But you’re not going to buy a device named RapidReceipt for general-purpose scanning—you’re going to take advantage of its ScanSmart Accounting Edition software that gets more intelligent as you use it, learning to identify recurring data like vendor names and monthly expenses. The app recognizes information, saves it to the appropriate fields in its built-in database, and exports to QuickBooks, TurboTax, or Excel-compatible CSV files.
Who It’s For
As we said, the RR-600W is a fine choice for any kind of office document management, with respectable speed, impressive accuracy, and a robust 4,000-scan daily duty cycle. But if receipts and invoices are your company’s bread and butter, it’s a better than fine choice.
PROS
- Fast
- Accurate OCR
- Strong software bundle, including ScanSmart Accounting Edition
- Huge 4.3-inch color touch screen
- 100-sheet ADF
- Robust mobile device and USB thumb drive support
- Low price for what you get
CONS
- ScanSmart not supported on mobile devices
IRIScan Mouse Executive 2
Best Handheld Scanner
Why We Picked It
It’s a winner in a category of one: The $79 IRIScan Mouse Executive 2 is the only mouse we know of that doubles as a handheld scanner. At first glance, it looks like just another two-button USB (not wireless) mouse with a clickable scroll wheel, but pressing a thumb button on its left side activates a laser sensor that scans an area about two inches wide with each pass of your hand. It obviously takes a little time to swipe back and forth to scan a letter-size page at 400dpi (or an A3 or tabloid page at 300dpi), but the mouse is a great match for business cards or photos. (It even comes with a mouse pad with clear plastic sheath that holds cards steady while scanning.) It does a fine job of adjusting for overlaps or less-than-perfectly-smooth mouse movements.
Who It’s For
The IRIScan Mouse and its Cardiris software (along with its general OCR software, which supports 130 languages and exports to everything from Dropbox and Evernote to Microsoft Outlook and Excel) are strictly for low-volume scanning needs, but free you from having to carry a portable scanner on the road. For business cards and occasional short documents, it’s a nifty gadget.
PROS
- Light and compact.
- Highly accurate OCR.
- Strong software bundle with cloud and business card archiving.
CONS
- Lacks mobile connectivity.
- Uses USB cable instead of wireless connection.
Buying Guide: The Best Scanners for 2023
The first step in scanner buying comes down to a simple thing: what kind or kinds of media you’ll be scanning. Knowing what (and how often) you expect to scan will tell you everything you need to know about the features you’ll need.
Photos, unbound documents, receipts, and business cards are the most obvious things to scan, but you might also need to scan bound books, magazines, film (slides and negatives), or easily damaged originals like postage stamps. Somewhat less common are objects such as coins or flowers.
You should also consider details such as the maximum size of the originals and whether you’ll need to scan both sides of document pages. This will tell you the kind of scanner you should be looking at: a classic flatbed, a model with a sheet feeder, or something else.
Do You Need a Flatbed Scanner, or an Overhead Scanner?
For photos or other easily damaged originals, bound material, and 3D objects, you need a flatbed scanner, which has a large glass platen on which you place the documents, photos, books, or items. (When we talk about scanning objects, here we’re talking about scanning three-dimensional objects to two-dimensional images. 3D scanners—which digitize objects to special 3D files for display or printing on a 3D printer—are a different beast entirely.)
Books, magazines, and objects thicker than a sheet of paper or driver’s license are good candidates for an overhead scanner, which resembles an old-fashioned overhead projector with an illuminated scanning head that looks down on a flat surface. These work like cameras, snapping pictures of items and feeding them to suitable software for optical character recognition (converting images to editable text) or flattening the curve near the spine of a book.
Delicate originals such as photos and stamps can go through a sheet feeder, but you risk damaging them. If you need to scan this sort of original only once in a while, you may be able to get by with a sheetfed scanner that comes with a plastic carrier to protect the originals. Keep in mind, however, that even brand-new, unscratched plastic carriers can degrade scan quality somewhat. Direct-to-glass is always better.
(Credit: Xerox)
Scanner models tend to stay on the market for a long time between iterations, and this is especially true of flatbed photo scanners. We regularly update our Best Scanners roundup, so should you encounter an “oldie but goodie,” it simply means that no similar model that we’ve reviewed has yet surpassed it.
Does Your Scanner Need a Sheet Feeder?
If your main scanning need is scanning documents on a regular basis—particularly those longer than one or two pages—you almost certainly want a document-centric scanner equipped with a sheet feeder. Having to open a flatbed lid and put a page on the glass is a minor chore, but having to repeat the process 10 times for a 10-page document is tiresome. Some sheetfed scanners can also handle thick originals such as ID cards.
(Credit: Fujitsu)
If you’ll primarily be scanning one or two pages at a time, a manual sheet feeder is probably all you need, or you can get by just fine with the scanning capability of an all-in-one (AIO) printer. If you’ll be scanning longer documents on a regular basis, however, you’ll want an automatic document feeder (ADF) that will scan an entire stack of pages unattended. Pick an ADF capacity based on the number of pages in the typical document you expect to scan. If you occasionally have a document that is more pages than the ADF capacity, you can add more pages during the scan as the feeder processes them. Some ADFs can also handle stacks of business cards well.
Do You Need Duplex (Two-Sided) Scanning?
Duplex scanning means scanning both sides of a page. If you expect to frequently scan documents that are printed on both sides, you’ll want a duplexing scanner, a duplexing ADF, or a scanner with a driver that includes a manual-duplex feature.
The best, swiftest duplexing scanners have two scan elements, so they can scan both sides of a page at the same time. A design like this will be faster than a scanner with a simple duplexing ADF, but it will likely also cost more. A more ordinary duplexing ADF will just scan one side, turn the page over mechanically, and only then scan the other.
In contrast, a scanner with a driver that supports manual duplexing will let you scan one side of a stack and then prompts you to flip and re-feed the stack to scan the other side, with the scanner driver automatically interfiling the pages. Manual duplexing in the driver is the most economical alternative, and it is a good choice if you don’t scan two-sided documents very often or you’re on a tight budget.
What’s the Right Resolution for Your Scanner?
For most scanning, having a high enough resolution at your disposal for the job at hand isn’t an issue. For, say, tax documents, even a 200-pixel-per-inch (ppi) scan will give you good enough quality for most purposes. A 300ppi scanning resolution is almost always sufficient, and it’s hard to find a scanner today that maxes out at less than 600ppi. For photos, unless you plan to zoom in on a small part of the photo or print the photo at a larger size than the original, 600ppi is more than enough.
(Credit: Canon)
Some kinds of originals, however, require higher resolution. If you’re scanning 35mm slides or negatives, or something small and finely detailed like a postage stamp, you’ll need a scanner that claims an optical resolution of at least 4,800ppi.
Then there’s the issue of the maximum scan size you can take. Picking a scanner that can handle the size of the originals you need to scan seems like an obvious point, but it’s easy to overlook. For example, most flatbeds have a letter-size platen, which will be a problem if you occasionally need to scan legal-size pages. Most flatbeds with ADFs will scan legal-size pages via the ADF, but not all do, so be sure to check. You can also find scanners with larger flatbeds, but they will, of course, take up more desk space.
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What Software Will You Use?
Most scanners come with basic scanning software. Depending on what you plan to scan, some of the features to look for include optical character recognition (OCR), text indexing, photo editing, and the ability to create searchable PDF documents. The days of platform-specific scanners are over; any modern scanner will work seamlessly with both macOS and Windows, and many of them can also scan to your phone or a cloud drive.
Specialized scanners have software with specialized functions. Receipt scanners come with accounting software for organizing your financial data. Scanners that handle business cards can usually extract the card data into a contact database (assuming the cards aren’t too ornately designed for the OCR software to read).
If you’re planning to scan photos or other images and then edit them in a program such as Adobe Photoshop, look for a scanner with TWAIN drivers that can scan directly into your photo editing app.
Do You Need a Special-Purpose Scanner?
Finally, consider whether you need a special-purpose scanner. Among the most common special-purpose choices are scanners for business cards (small and highly portable) and receipts (small and equipped with specialized software). Specialized slide scanners are smaller than flatbed scanners, but they’re no better at scanning slides than flatbed scanners with equivalent features.
(Credit: Epson)
If you travel often, you might want a portable scanner that’s small enough to fit in your laptop bag, or a handheld scanner that you hold and trace over text. Some portable models can operate without a computer attached, scanning to a memory card or smartphone. You can also find some that function as both portable and desktop document scanners by combining a portable scanner with a docking station that includes an ADF.
Depending on what you need to scan, any one of these may be a good choice, either as your only scanner or as a supplement to a general-purpose scanner. We’ve highlighted a few of our favorite special scanners in the picks above.
So, What’s the Best Scanner to Buy?
All-in-one or multifunction printers have built-in scanners, nearly all with flatbeds and many with ADFs. That may be sufficient for light scanning needs. To get the most out of your scanning, however, you’ll probably want to get a single-function scanner. Fortunately, there are many models to choose from, and the models below are among the best we’ve tested. For more focused advice, check out our roundup of the top scanners for photos, as well as our list of the best all-in-one printers, if having a scanner attached to your printer is more appealing. (And finally, after you’ve digitized all that paper, take a look at the best shredders we’ve tested.)
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