Xerox DocuMate 6460 review: The need for scanning speed

If you feel the need for scanning speed, the DocuMate 6460 from Xerox could be the answer, as this deceptively compact desktop scanner claims a fast performance of 70ppm. It can do this for colour and mono scans at 200dpi with speed only dropping slightly to 65ppm at 300dpi.

The 6460 can take some punishment too, with Xerox quoting a massive duty cycle of 10,000 pages per day. It's also great for big scan jobs; its ADF can handle up to 120 pages of 80gms paper.

The scanner's raked paper input tray offers a flatter path than most other upright desktop scanners, making it a better choice for scanning thicker media such as A4 photos. The input tray has latches for setting the paper guides for A4 or Letter sizes and lowering them allows dot-matrix paper and documents up to 3m to be scanned.

The scanner only offers a USB 3 connection so you'll need a Windows PC to host it. Installation on a Windows 10 desktop took 10 minutes with the routine loading all of Xerox' generous software bundle.

This comprises the Visioneer OneTouch scan management utility, along with Nuance's PaperPort Professional 14 for document management, OmniPage Ultimate and its OCR tools plus Power PDF for creating PDFs from other file formats.

OneTouch sits in the background and links the scanner's function button to nine different actions. The panel's backlit mono LCD display shows the name of the action selected so you don't need to place a list next to the scanner.

We initially hit problems as although the scanner was spotted by OneTouch, it refused to accept our new action profiles and also occasionally hung. There have been issues reported with recent Windows 10 updates and our solution was to visit the Visioneer support site and download its Update for Windows tool.

This confirmed there was a new scanner driver plus updates for OneTouch and PaperPort and proceeded to download and apply them. It all worked fine but this procedure is not documented on the Xerox support site which is unacceptable.

OneTouch actions include scanning to an application, local and network folders, printer, email, fax, FTP server or SharePoint server. To create an action, you choose a function number from OneTouch, pick a destination, add a BMP, JPEG, TIFF, PDF or searchable PDF output format and assign a scan configuration.

The OneTouch Acuity feature provides anti-skew, auto-crop, page rotation plus blank page skipping and an option to redact selected areas of an image with coloured blocks during the scan. Adding cloud support to OneTouch requires the scanner to be registered, after which you can visit the Visioneer Connect website and download plug-ins for Box, Evernote, Dropbox, filesanywhere, and Google Docs.

The 6460 excels in the performance stakes with our 50-page sheaf of bank statement returning the quoted 70ppm at 200pdi for both greyscale and colour. At 300pdi, the scanner proved to be faster that Xerox' claims as it returned the same speed for greyscale and colour. At 600pdi, speed fell substantially but colour tests mustered 22ppm whereas greyscale scans paused frequently and returned a lower 18ppm.

Output quality is excellent, with 200dpi greyscale and colour scans easily good enough for document archiving. Paper handling is beyond reproach as we didn't experience any paper jams during testing and found the 6460 to be very quiet as well.

The poor online support left us distinctly unimpressed but there's no denying the DocuMate 6460 delivers a mighty scan speed and great quality for the price. If you want a high-volume desktop scanner but don't require network support, then Xerox should be on your shortlist.

Verdict

The poor online support left us distinctly unimpressed but there’s no denying the Xerox DocuMate 6460 delivers a mighty scan speed and great quality for the price. If you want a high-volume desktop scanner but don’t require network support, then Xerox should be on your shortlist.

600dpi A4 colour ADF scanner

70ppm at 200dpi colour/mono

Simplex/duplex

120-page ADF

USB 3

Daily duty cycle – 10,000 pages

External PSU

Visioneer OneTouch and Acuity, Nuance PaperPort Pro 14, OmniPage Ultimate 19.1, Power PDF software

TWAIN/ISIS/WIA drivers

316 x 168 x 191mm (WDH - closed)

4.7kg

1yr standard advanced exchange warranty