Ricoh SP-2230N review: A solid, network-ready desktop document scanner

It's become increasingly common to find network connections on relatively affordable document scanners, sometimes even paired with color screens – such as on the Ricoh ScanSnap iX2500 we reviewed recently. The Ricoh SP-2230N is that scanner's more affordable cousin, forgoing the screen and Wi-Fi, but still covering the essentials for reliable business document scanning, and supporting multiple users through a gigabit Ethernet port on the back panel.

This isn't the most sophisticated document scanner around, but it's clearly designed to survive years of fairly intense scanning and archival. Ricoh quotes an expected daily volume of 4,500 sheets – that's about nine every minute over an eight-hour working day. It's built for a range of input media, from regular A4 pages, through register receipts or plastic ID cards, to folded A3 or over-length sheets.

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Open up the paper mechanism, and you'll see dual contact image sensors (CIS), meaning the SP-2230N can capture both sides of each page in a single pass. This duplex capability means its 30-page-per-minute (ppm) engine speed translates to 30 images per minute (ipm) in simplex mode, or 60ipm when scanning both sides. A sister model, the SP-2240N, ups those speeds to 40ipm and 80ipm respectively.

This scanner's sturdy paper input tray clips into place and feels almost indestructible. Its long, telescoping output tray is built into the base of the scanner body. This does flex – we got the tip to touch the desktop when pressing down on it – but it doesn't feel at all under strain when doing so. One drawback of the click-in input tray is that it's not designed to fold closed over the input slot, which would help prevent dust gathering in the mechanism. Still, that's not likely to be a big issue on a scanner in daily use.

On the Ricoh SP-2230N's front panel you'll find buttons to cycle the power and start or cancel scanning. There are also three 'Send to' buttons, configurable for different functions depending exactly how you end up using the device. While this is useful, it's not as self-explanatory as the configurable icons on the ScanSnap iX2500's screen, which you can set up to trigger specific scan tasks for multiple users.

Ricoh SP-2230N review: Setting up

This is a compact and lightweight scanner – at 292mm wide, it's only about 3in wider than a sheet of A4 paper, so it's fairly easy to accommodate on a busy desktop. One exception to note is that with both trays fully extended, it's necessarily deep – we measured around 600mm (23.5"), far more than the stated 163mm (6.4"). The SP-2230N uses an external power adaptor, but this is about as small as they come – you can nestle the adaptor in the space between a wall and the rear of the scanner itself.

While an Ethernet port may be less convenient than Wi-Fi for scenarios like a floating reception desk, it does at least mean you don't have to worry about signal quality. It's great to have reliable gigabit speeds, although in our experience 100Mbit Ethernet probably wouldn't be a bottleneck even for 600 dots per inch (dpi) duplex scans.

Ricoh supports this scanner with its PaperStream ClickScan software, which makes it relatively easy to change basic scan settings when you're using the SP-2230N with a PC. It's easy to miss the extra settings icon on the File Format tile – you'll need to go here to enable searchable PDF files, rather than a straightforward PDF or another format. Alternatively, you can configure the scanner in PC-less mode, allowing you to route jobs directly to a network folder or email inbox, for example. Importantly, Ricoh has built in the necessary intelligence for the SP-2230N to run optical character recognition (OCR) onboard, so you can enable it for PC-free scanning – an excellent feature.

With just the three Send to buttons, this scanner isn't as configurable as some we've tested, but that does still allow some flexibility. For example, you could define one workflow to drop searchable PDFs into a network folder, and another to email a particular address with ID card scans. Our one grumble is that there's no easy way to mark which button does what – you'd need staff to remember, or to come up with a labeling system yourself.

Ricoh SP-2230N review: Scanning

We performed our usual suite of timed scan tests from a Windows 11 PC, experimenting with triggering jobs directly from ClickScan's Scan button and from the hardware button on the scanner itself. The SP-2230N almost lived up to Ricoh's stated speeds, hitting a best of 55.4ipm on a 24-side duplex scan at 150dpi. It was only fractionally slower on shorter jobs, completing a 10-page, 20-side duplex scan in 23 seconds – a rate of 52.2ipm. We timed a single page at just six seconds at either 150 or 200dpi, although when stepping up to 600dpi this job took a further second.

These are decent speeds for a document scanner at the affordable end of the spectrum. What's more impressive is that on our reasonably fast host PC there seemed to be no difference in performance between simplex and duplex scanning, and precious little difference whether OCR was enabled or not.

A case in point came with our 10-page, 16-side torture test, a mix of yellowing, tissue-thin magazine pages and poor quality A4 prints, deliberately jumbled up to test automatic de-skewing, page orientation and blank page detection performance. This sailed through the scanner in 22 seconds at 150dpi, or 23 seconds at 300dpi, with the SP-2230N correcting every page and successfully skipping the four blank sides – not always the case among document scanners. With OCR enabled, the same jobs needed just an extra second each.

This scanner tops out at 600dpi, and as we'd expect, this was quite a bit slower than its low-resolution performance. It still scanned 22 15x10cm (6x4") photos in only 45 seconds, though, which is handy enough if you have a stack of snaps that need digitizing. If you do need faster speeds, the ScanSnap iX2500 completed this particular job in an incredible 15 seconds.

Just as we found with the ScanSnap iX2500, the Ricoh SP-2230N performed brilliantly at its default settings. It detected and corrected rotated pages, straightened up skewed ones, and ignored empty sides without slipping up. We didn't experience any misfeeds or damage, even on thin and tired documents that have been through more scanners than we'd care to mention.

That's perhaps the main thing for a scanner that might be capturing contracts, certificates, or other irreplaceable documents, but happily the SP-2230N combined this reliable performance with strong quality throughout. Regular office documents were nicely exposed, with accurate colors, and reasonable crispness even at a relatively low 150dpi. Although backgrounds were whitened to enhance the results, this didn't come at the cost of fidelity – subtle graphics and small pen marks such as checks were retained.

While you'd get better photo scans from a good quality flatbed scanner, the SP-2230N is certainly good enough for archiving company or family snaps. We've seen document scanners that struggle to reproduce the color in photos, lack the necessary sharpness, or simply miss rich details in the shadows or lightest parts of an image. The SP-2230N had none of those problems – its dynamic range in particular was excellent, allowing it to capture photos with surprising fidelity.

Ricoh SP-2230N review: Is it worth it?

Provided you aren't expecting blistering, departmental speeds, the Ricoh SP-2230N offers everything a single user, or even a small office or workgroup could need from a document scanner. It's rugged and was entirely reliable in our tests, producing consistently straight, streak-free and clean documents. Ricoh's software, and the scanner's own onboard processing, means it's well suited to routing documents through a couple of different regular workflows, especially given it can apply OCR without any help from a host PC.

All this makes it a good choice for a front desk, provided it's within reach of a wired Ethernet connection, and that you won't need support for passport scanning. It's also ideal as a cheap document scanner shared within a small team – just find a way to remember what the three buttons do.

Ricoh SP-2230N specifications