You can learn a lot from the manufacturers’ specifications, but there’s no substitute for hands-on testing. In all our printer and scanner reviews, we tease out devices true strengths and weaknesses through a battery of tests designed to mimic real-world print, scan and copy jobs.

We’ll also make more subjective assessments of elements such as the design, appearance and build quality, as well as the additional quality-of-life features it offers, and the value for money.

Print quality

We start with untimed print tests across a variety of print types, including black and white text, colour photos and greyscale images. We use these to check the output quality of the printer, looking for factors such as colour banding, text sharpness, image definition and whether there’s any run between ink colours.

Print speeds

To measure print speeds, we time how quickly a printer delivers a first page of black text, and a full 25-page mono job. Because we include all the time taken from clicking Print to the last page dropping into the output tray, our page-per-minute (ppm) speeds are always somewhat lower than the manufacturers’. On inkjets, we repeat this test at draft quality, which usually produces a faster result.

Our next test uses a 24-page document comprising web pages, presentation slides and magazine pages to measure colour speed. It’s a challenging test, so colour printers usually fall well behind their rated speed - mono printers typically get closer. Where there’s duplex, we print the first 10 pages onto five sheets, quoting the speed as images (sides) per minute. On laser printers we use a page from this document to time how long a first colour page takes. We repeat the mono and colour time-to-first-page tests from cold.

On inkjets we print two 10 x 8in photos onto A4 photo paper, then six borderless 6x4” photos. With lasers we print the latter test onto three A4 sheets. We do all our photo tests at the highest available quality settings.

Copy speeds

On an MFP we time a single photocopy and, where there’s an ADF, a 10-page copy, repeating this test in colour where available. If both the printer and ADF support duplexing, we time a 10-page, 20-sided colour copy. While we’re at it, we check the menu system’s usability, particularly when it comes to direct print and scan features.

Scan speeds

We test scanners with an office document, a 6 x 4in colour photo and a Kodak Q-60 colour input target. We time how long it takes to obtain a preview image, and create A4 scans at 150 and 300 dots per inch (dpi). We also time 600dpi and 1,200dpi scans of the photograph. The target helps reveal limitations in a scanner’s dynamic range, most commonly manifested as poorly distinguished dark shades.

Power consumption

Finally, we measure each printer’s power use in sleep and standby modes. We also measure peak consumption, usually during mono photocopying. It’s worth noting that, for laser printers in particular, our peak measurements are usually far higher than the typical power consumption.

Aimed at home workers and small businesses with a paper mountain to tackle, the Xerox D35 Scanner offers great scanning performance for a small price. For only £210, you get a top speed of 45ppm for colour and mono scans at 200dpi, with speeds only dropping to 35ppm for colour scans at 300dpi.

The D35 is ready for some serious scan action thanks to a high daily duty cycle of 8,000 pages and a capacious 50-page ADF. Its relatively flat paper path helps when scanning heavier media such as photos, and the paper tray guides can be flipped down for scanning documents up to three metres in length.

Installation on a Windows 10 PC took ten minutes, with the routine loading the latest drivers and complete software bundle. Along with the Visioneer OneTouch scan-management app and integral Acuity image-enhancement tools, you get ABBYY’s FineReader OCR software, Capture SE for batch scan management, DriverPlus for scan customisation and the Organiser AI app for slick document management.

Visioneer OneTouch sits quietly in the background and links the scanner’s function button to nine different actions for walk-up scanning. Actions include scans to detected applications on the host, local and network folders, printers, email, fax, FTP and SharePoint servers, while output formats include BMP, JPEG, TIFF, PDF and searchable PDF.

The OneTouch Acuity feature provides anti-skew, auto-crop, de-speckling, page rotation and blank page skipping capabilities. Its redaction feature can obscure areas of a scan with coloured blocks, and for more image-manipulation tools you can call up the TWAIN DriverPlus interface.

To start a scan, you click a OneTouch profile from the system tray or walk up to the scanner, choose an action number and select simplex or duplex operations. In all cases, there is a five-second pause as the app acquires the scanner and then starts the scanning process.

Performance was near perfect, with duplex scans of 30 bank statements returning 44ppm for 200dpi greyscale and colour settings. Stepping up to 300dpi saw greyscale scan speed hold steady and colour drop to 35ppm, but the D35 surprised us with its 600dpi scans, as it achieved an impressive 43ppm for greyscale and 33ppm for colour.

You won’t need the higher resolutions, however, as output quality at 200dpi is perfectly adequate for sPDFs and document archiving. The D35 is very quiet during scanning, and it handled all our documents, receipts and waybills without a single paper jam.

The Organiser AI app will prove useful as it scans the host PC, detects all document types and provides extensive search facilities. It also integrates directly with Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive so you can send files to the cloud simply by dragging them to the icons at the bottom of its interface.

The D35 may be a USB-only scanner, but it has a trick up its sleeve as it can link up with Visioneer’s VAST Network service. Install the Visioneer Network Scan Service Manager app on the host PC and you can share the D35 over the LAN.

Once each client PC has the D35 TWAIN driver, Network Scanner Manager app and network driver installed, it can connect to the scanner and use it as though it were local. We tested this on a networked Windows 10 PC and, after connecting to the scanner, could acquire images from any TWAIN-compliant app and use OneTouch as well.

The Xerox D35 Scanner delivers a lot of features for a very modest outlay, and combines them with good speed and output quality. It’s a great choice for heavy scan workloads, and the network support makes it even more versatile.

Xerox D35 Scanner specifications

Small businesses and home workers short on desk space will appreciate Fujitsu’s ScanSnap iX1300, as it packs plenty of document-digitising features into a footprint that’s only 296 x 114mm. It’s good value, too, with the scanner combining a choice of USB or 802.11n wireless connections with fast 30ppm scan speeds.

The iX1300 doesn’t need any space in front for ejected documents either, as it employs a smart motorised telescopic stacker. Just put your documents in the pop-up 20-page ADF and when scanning starts, the stacker automatically rises, extends itself and then closes back down again after the last page has been scanned.

The iX1300 comes with Fujitsu’s ScanSnap Home software, which is designed to make scanning a simple, one-tap operation. It’s swift to install; we visited the website provided in the quick start manual, downloaded the latest version and plugged in the scanner to a USB port on our Windows 10 host when instructed.

The utility ran a firmware update and guided us through creating a wireless connection, after which we dispensed with the USB cable. The routine loaded Fujitsu’s online update utility, which checks for new drivers plus OCR language packs and also downloaded the free ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap software.

ScanSnap Home provides a set of default scan profiles, with the Auto-Scan profile initially assigned to the scanner’s button. This makes light work of scanning as it detects the type of document loaded, automatically applies the most appropriate scan settings and saves them to a folder of your choosing.

You can create new profiles or use existing ones and modify their settings for resolution, colour, greyscale or mono scans, simplex or duplex operations and scan destinations. Output formats can be JPEG, PDF or sPDF, and the latter two options can also be password-protected.

A standout feature is support for direct scanning to Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive and OneDrive cloud accounts. To use them, you need the relevant desktop app loaded on your host PC and logged into the accounts you want to send the scans to.

You’ll need to use ScanSnap Home for all scanning operations, as Fujitsu doesn’t provide a TWAIN driver for acquiring images into third-party products. This isn’t a deal breaker, though; we created new profiles that loaded the ABBYY FineReader app, applied OCR and converted documents to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF and sPDF formats.

Scans are started by selecting a profile from ScanSnap Home and clicking on its central display or by highlighting a profile and using the scanner’s button. Either way, the iX1300 delivered on its speed promises, with a sheaf of 20 bank statements returning a perfect 30ppm for greyscale and colour scans at both 200dpi and 300dpi resolutions.

Stepping up to the top 600dpi setting saw speed for greyscale and colour scans drop to 9.4ppm. You’ll only need to use this higher resolution for photos, though, as output quality and OCR accuracy for general document scans at 200dpi are excellent.

Paper handling was fairly good, although the ADF can only take 20 sheets of 80gsm paper and occasionally fell over with double feeds when we used heavier 100gsm paper. That said, the iX1300 has a handy manual feed slot at the front for bulkier items such as booklets, and its return path feature means you don’t even need to open the scanner’s cover to use it.

The iX1300 is a clever little wireless desktop scanner that’s an affordable choice for small businesses and home workers. The versatile ScanSnap Home software makes scanning a breeze, and it delivers good speeds and output quality.

Fujitsu ScanSnap iX1300 specifications

Epson’s WorkForce DS-790WN is ideal for businesses that don’t want to dedicate a host system to their scanning operations, as along with a standard USB 3 port, this desktop model has integral Gigabit LAN and 802.11n wireless services. Its fast 45ppm scan speed for colour and mono documents means it can digitise your documents in double quick time and, at £499, it’s priced right for those on tight budgets.

The scanner is built to handle high demand, with a quoted 7,000-sheet daily duty cycle and a capacious 100-page ADF. It looks up to the job, too: its sturdy input paper guides kept our large bank statement bundles firmly in place during scanning, and its long paper mode can scan fan-fold documents and banners up to six metres in length.

The large 10.9cm colour touchscreen is perfect for walk-up scanning with icons for sending documents directly to computers, network folders, FTP servers, email, a local USB stick, cloud storage providers and Windows PCs using WSD (web services for devices). Computers are displayed in the touchscreen once they have Epson’s software installed, while the other network destinations are enabled from the scanner’s web console.

For direct to email scans, we set up our SMTP mail server and added email contacts (up to 300 are supported), after which they appeared in the touchscreen for quick access. Cloud scanning is configured from Epson’s Connect portal and, after registering the scanner, we could create destinations for Box, Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive and EverNote.

Networked over Gigabit Ethernet, installation on our Windows 10 PCs was quick. A single utility handles device discovery, driver downloads, installing Epson’s Scan 2 and Document Capture Pro utilities and checking for firmware updates.

The Scan 2 utility provides plenty of scan controls and is loaded when acquiring scans from third-party products using the TWAIN driver. You can select a resolution, colour, greyscale or mono scans, document and contents skew correction, simplex or duplex operations and blank page skipping.

Advanced settings offer text enhancement, brightness and contrast controls, and punch hole removal, plus watermark addition and an option to send images to two destinations simultaneously. Along with local and network folder destinations, you can select BMP, JPEG, TIFF, PDF and sPDF output formats, and save the settings as quick access profiles.

Epson’s Document Capture Pro provides excellent scan-management tools. You can create a range of jobs that comprise scan settings, output formats and destinations, job separation using options such as barcodes, patch codes or OCR detection areas, and save them for one-click access. Each PC appears in the scanner’s touchscreen so scans can be sent directly to them, and assigning button numbers to selected jobs on each PC makes them available for selection as well.

Performance is superb, with our stack of 30 bank statements swiftly dispatched at the quoted 45ppm for greyscale and colour scans at both 200dpi and 300dpi resolutions. Increasing the resolution to 600dpi also returned respectable speeds of 12.4ppm.

You won’t need a higher resolution for document archiving, however, as output quality at 200dpi is fine for these tasks, with Epson’s OCR services correctly converting every word on our statements down to 6pt fonts. The scanner was very quiet when scanning our test documents and its paper handling was near perfect, with only the occasional courier waybill causing the ultrasonic jam detection to be activated.

The WorkForce DS-790WN has every scanning angle covered, making it a great choice for business that want standalone digitising services. Its touchscreen makes walk-up scanning a breeze, Epson provides lots of scan-management tools and it delivers great speed and quality.

Epson WorkForce DS-790WN specifications

Coming in at the entry point of Canon’s family of imageFormula desktop scanners, the R40 offers home workers and small offices an affordable solution that’s easy to set up and use. It’s a standalone USB-only device with no network capabilities and, for the price, claims good speeds of 40ppm for mono scans at 300dpi and 30ppm for colour scans.

An advantage of USB scanners is their simple installation process. We chose a Windows 10 host PC, ran a single utility to load the TWAIN drivers plus the CaptureOnTouch 4 software, and plugged the scanner in.

There are some compromises: the R40 comes with the basic CaptureOnTouch Standard version so you don’t get the batch scanning and barcode recognition features of the Pro version. Furthermore, only Canon’s higher-end desktop scanners include the CapturePerfect scan editing tool and Kofax VRS (Virtual ReScan) image-enhancement app.

To be fair, the target market is unlikely to need these tools, and we found the software to be very capable with plenty of scan automation features. It links document and output profiles together and can assign nine shortcuts to the scanner’s single-digit LED display for fast walk-up scans.

Document profiles group together settings for colour or mono scans, resolution, simplex or duplex modes, blank page skipping and image straightening and rotation. The advanced setting option disables these and loads the TWAIN driver, which can be used to configure all the basic scan settings and apply extra functions such as brightness and contrast controls, background smoothing and shadow removal.

Output profiles determine where scans will be sent. Along with support for local and network folders, the installation routine pre-installs nine extra plugins. These allow CaptureOnTouch to send scanned documents to user–defined apps, printers, FTP or SharePoint servers and email, plus Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox and SugarSync cloud storage.

Profiles convert scans to PNG, BMP, JPG, TIFF and PPTX formats, while OCR is automatically applied when PDF is selected. If you choose the email option, CaptureOnTouch doesn’t send the scan directly but loads whatever client app is installed on the host PC and creates a new blank message with the scanned document attached.

Cloud scanning is also basic: the app simply sends the scans straight to your local sync folder. However, the setup manual has a link for a free download of the ReadIris Pro 16 OCR software, which supports direct scanning to cloud storage accounts.

The R40 combines a generous 60-page ADF with a 4,000-page daily duty cycle. Performance is a mixed bag, though, with duplex greyscale scans of 30 bank statements returning 46ppm at 200dpi and 300dpi, 6ppm faster than Canon’s claim.

Colour speeds were less impressive. The R40 delivered the quoted 30ppm at 200dpi, but dropped to 21.2ppm at 300dpi. The difference was more marked at 600dpi, with 16.8ppm greyscale and 4.6ppm colour scans.

The higher resolutions won’t be required for general document archiving as we found 200dpi produces perfectly sharp images with fonts down to 6pt correctly converted for searchable PDFs. Paper handling is also impeccable: the R40 had no problems with our collection of till receipts and flimsy courier waybills and will scan passports when placed in Canon’s optional carrier sheets.

Performance is inconsistent, but the imageFormula R40 offers a scan-friendly package at a good price. The scan management software will cover most basic requirements, making this a good choice for small offices and home workers that don’t require network support.

Canon imageFormula R40 specifications

Canon’s ImageFormula R10 is a compact, portable document scanner that’s ideal for mobile workers and home-based staff seeking a fuss-free scanner which doesn’t require acres of desk space. It has a footprint of just 285 x 95mm, and at 900g it’s light enough to carry around with you – although it would have been nice if Canon had included a protective pouch.

There are no accessories to worry about, either. The R10 doesn’t need a battery or an external power supply – it gets all the juice it needs over the supplied 1.7m USB 2 cable. Nor, for that matter, are there any drivers or applications to install: when you plug the R10 into a host computer running Windows or macOS, a USB-connected drive appears containing the embedded CaptureOnTouch Lite scanning app, which you simply double-click to start scanning.

Though small, the scanner is impressively capable. It delivers mono and colour scan services at claimed speeds of 12ppm and 9ppm respectively, which isn’t bad at all. The main feeder can handle paper weights up to 128gsm, with a dedicated front slot for scanning embossed cards up to 1.4mm thick, and since it’s a duplex mechanism it can scan both sides of a page in one pass. The design even includes a 20-page automatic document feeder (ADF) – something we wouldn’t have expected from a scanner this small. Just note that the one thing that’s lacking is an output tray, so you’ll need to leave some space in front to catch your documents after they’ve passed through the scanner.

Canon’s software is easy to get on with. Like most scanning suites, it uses document profiles to store combinations of settings, including colour or mono scanning, resolution, single- or double-sided capture, blank page skipping and image rotation. You can fine-tune the output by adjusting brightness, contrast and background smoothing, and save your presets for future use. These are stored on the scanner itself, so they’re always available, no matter what device the scanner’s connected to.

Scans can be saved in all the most useful output formats, including JPEG, TIFF and searchable PDF; however, the software is only able to scan to local locations. If you want to scan to the cloud, you’ll need to select a local sync folder as the destination and wait. There’s no way to store documents on the scanner itself, either, though from a data-protection standpoint this is arguably a good thing.

In our tests we found performance wasn’t quite up to Canon’s claims: duplex scans of 20 bank statements at 200dpi came out at 10ppm in greyscale and 7ppm in colour, dropping to 9.5ppm and 4.4ppm at 300dpi. Paper handling was a mixed bag too; during our bank statement tests, the scanner occasionally grabbed multiple sheets and stopped with paper jam errors.

These aren’t deal-breakers for a device such as this, though. Speeds are perfectly usable for a lightweight scanning role, and there’s no need to use the higher quality settings for everyday documents; we found scans at 200dpi were perfectly clean and sharp, with 6pt text correctly converted into searchable PDFs. And needless to say, the R10 had no problem with single-page scans, nor with our till receipts and courier waybills.

Card scanning went smoothly, too. Once you insert a card into the slot, the scanner draws it in, scans both sides and spits it back out the front. We tested this with a range of materials and found laminated driving licences, plastic loyalty cards and credit cards posed no problems.

In all, the ImageFormula R10 is an impressive machine. Its small size, minimal weight and clever embedded software means you can easily take it to wherever it’s needed and digitise your documents without having to install a thing.

Canon Image Formula R10 specifications

Not everyone needs a scanner costing upwards of £1,500, but if you have a daily paper mountain to climb then Kodak’s S2085f could be the answer. This mighty desktop scanner boasts superfast 85ppm scanning and a giant 300-page motorised elevator tray. It’s rated for up to 20,000 pages per day, and just in case you need to scan the odd awkwardly shaped item, it comes with a secondary A4 flatbed scanner built in too.

You can use the S2085f over either USB 3 or Gigabit Ethernet (but not both together), and it doesn’t require a high-powered host as it has its own internal CPU to handle image processing and enhancement. There’s a capacious output tray at the front, while a side lever opens up the rear, allowing you to feed through and scan documents up to 4.1m long.

Network installation is a cinch. The scanner’s touchscreen walks you through the process of enabling the Ethernet port, after which we ran the driver installer on a Windows PC. This discovered the scanner right away, and happily connected to it as soon as we’d entered its unique pairing ID.

Kodak’s Smart Touch software makes even huge scan tasks easy to configure and run. You can create up to 20 profiles to appear in the display panel for swift two-tap scanning, and each profile links to a settings shortcut that defines colour and resolution options. You can also add image controls such as anti-skew, blank page skipping or file separation using barcodes, and specify whether to use the document hopper or the flatbed scanner.

A destination and a file output type are specified too – you can choose from a selection of image and document formats, including searchable PDFs. Destinations can include a local or networked folder, a printer, an application, an email address (via either the host’s client software or an SMTP server) or a SharePoint server. If the scanner is shared between multiple users, you can register up to ten Smart Touch installations for walk-up scanning; users just need to select their name from a menu and enter a password or a PIN to send scans directly to their workstation.

There’s native support for Box, Evernote and Google Drive too, although for Dropbox and OneDrive you’ll have to scan to the sync folder on the host PC.

The bundled Capture Pro Limited Edition software adds single batch scanning and enhanced image processing, along with support for PDF encryption. The full version of the software adds data capture and indexing, image merging and multiple batch conversion; this costs £529 per year for Kodak Group B scanners.

The S2085f is certainly fast. It thundered through a pile of 60 bank statements at an average of 86ppm – in both colour and greyscale, and at both 200pdi and 300dpi resolution. Even going to 600dpi didn’t have any impact on greyscale scanning speed, and while colour performance dropped to 37.5ppm, that’s still pretty speedy. It’s largely academic anyway, as scan quality at 200dpi will easily satisfy your inner archivist.

One word of caution: when we say “thundered”, we mean it. During our tests, we measured very loud sound levels of up to 70dB from one metre in front. You will ideally want to give this scanner its own space, away from desks and telephones.

Still, though noisy, this beast isn’t violent. It handled our statements, till receipts and courier bills without any problems, and its fast double-feed detection stopped any from getting damaged when a jam occurred.

The S2085f will be overkill for many offices, but if you need to scan on an industrial scale, it has what it takes to keep up. Performance is excellent, output quality is impeccable and the integrated flatbed makes it supremely versatile.

Kodak S2085f specifications

Businesses seeking an easy way to share scans in the cloud will love Fujitsu’s ScanSnap iX1600. Designed to make scanning a simple, one-tap operation, it offers USB 3 and wireless connections, strong 40ppm scan speeds and an affordable price.

Ease of use is exceptional from the off. When you first power on the scanner, instructions appear on the 4.3in colour touchscreen to guide you through downloading Fujitsu’s support software and getting connected over USB. And when you then open the ScanSnap Home application, you’ll find it presents a graphical view that mirrors the scanner’s control panel, for a clear and consistent user experience.

The software comes set up with six default scan profiles; these can be easily customised to suit, or used as templates for your own profiles. Each one defines a complete scan operation, with settings for colour mode, resolution, simplex or duplex scanning and output destination. You can save scans as JPEGs or PDFs, with optional password protection for the latter. The bundled ABBYY FineReader app can also be used to apply OCR and save documents in Office or searchable PDF formats.

The Auto-Scan profile, meanwhile, takes all the work out of one-off scans: it automatically detects whether you’re scanning a standard document, business card, receipt or photo, and saves the output to a corresponding folder, using the most appropriate settings for quality and file format.

ScanSnap Home isn’t just about capturing scans, mind. The interface organises your previously scanned documents by folder or scan date, and includes basic search facilities.

Cloud services are accessed via Fujitsu’s ScanSnap Cloud platform. Signing up is free, and once you have connected your scanner you can scan directly to Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, Google Photos, Hubdoc and OneDrive. You can even send receipts directly to the Shoeboxed and Expensify expense account services – we haven’t seen better cloud support from any scanner.

Scans can also be sent directly to email addresses using the ScanSnap Mail service; you can send up to 300 emails per month for free, with up to ten addresses per message and attachment sizes up to 30MB. Two taps on the touchscreen are all it takes to send your documents on their way; by way of a small safety net, the scanner puts up a warning reminding you that documents can’t be recalled once sent, and offering an option to cancel the job before you commit to the operation.

Mobile users can get in on the act too, courtesy of Fujitsu’s free ScanSnap Connect app for Android and iOS. After we’d installed this on our iPad and pointed it at the scanner, we were able to scan directly to the tablet, or use the app itself to pull in scans over the network.

Mobile cloud operations are handled by the ScanSnap Cloud app, which lets phone and tablet users browse their cloud repositories and pick online destinations for documents, receipts, business cards and photos. A neat touch is that you can use the app to take photos of documents and send them as PDFs directly to cloud folders.

When it came to performance, the iX1600 slightly exceeded the manufacturer’s claims: a 30-page sheaf of bank statements was swiftly despatched at 43ppm at 200dpi, in both colour and mono. Moving up to the top 600dpi setting saw speed drop to 10.8ppm, but businesses should be more than happy with the output quality and OCR accuracy at 200dpi.

The ScanSnap iX1600 is a superb choice for SMBs and homeworkers that want fast, reasonably priced desktop scanning services. The way the touchscreen and ScanSnap Home software work together makes scanning a swift and intuitive process, and Fujitsu’s cloud support is simply second to none.

Fujitsu ScanSnap iX1600 specifications

You’d be forgiven for balking at the price of Canon’s DR-M260. However, while it may be expensive for a USB-only desktop scanner, it will appeal to businesses with big document scanning demands. It offers a fast 60ppm scan speed, an 80-page ADF and a heavyweight duty cycle of up to 7,500 pages per day – supported by an extensive range of document management utilities.

Since there’s no need to connect to a network, installation could hardly be simpler. Just pick a host PC, run the supplied utility to load Canon’s TWAIN drivers and scanning software, then plug the scanner in.

It’s impressively quiet in use, and we found Canon’s speed claims were actually a touch on the conservative side: we scanned in a 30-page sheaf of bank statements at 200dpi and found the job completed at 62ppm, in both greyscale and colour. Going up to 300dpi had no effect on greyscale speed, although colour performance fell to 53ppm.

As usual, the big drop-off comes at 600dpi. Here greyscale scans completed at 33ppm, while colour jobs averaged 13.4ppm. We’re not bothered about that, though, as 200dpi scans were clear and sharp, with text as small as six points accurately recognised and embedded in searchable PDFs.

Paper handling was a non-issue: the scanner dealt with all our dog-eared documents, till receipts and waybills without any problems. Single embossed ID and credit cards can also be scanned with the ultrasonic jam detection turned off, and optional carrier sheets can be used to safely scan passports.

The CaptureOnTouch software makes light work of common scan operations. Document profiles define resolution and colour settings, and tell the software whether or not to skip blanks, rotate skewed pages and separate document batches using page count, barcode or zonal OCR.

These are partnered with profile plugins, which determine whether your output will be saved to a local or network folder, uploaded to an FTP or SharePoint server, imported into an application, forwarded directly to a printer or attached to a message in your email client. Canon’s support site offers extra plugins for sending scans to the Nuance PaperPort app and saving to Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive or SugarSync folders.

For ad-hoc scanning, you can simply select your desired document and output profiles in the app and click the Scan button. Alternatively, you can use the right-hand pane to create preset shortcuts, and make them available from the scanner’s control panel. This isn’t a touchscreen – just a five-line monochrome LCD panel – but it’s still convenient for quick walk-up access.

For a more hands-on scanning experience you can use Canon’s CapturePerfect app, which lets you apply image enhancements such as colour and exposure correction, and save your scans in TIFF, JPEG, PDF or PPT formats.

If that’s not sophisticated enough for you, Canon also throws in a copy of the Kofax VRS (Virtual ReScan) image-enhancement software – although you’ll need to download the DR-M260 component from the Kofax support site, as this isn’t included on the bundled disc. This installs a new VRS TWAIN driver, which then can be accessed from either of the Canon apps, and indeed any other TWAIN-compliant application. With this tool you can tweak your scans to your heart’s content, with auto-cropping, edge-cleanup, de-speckling, contrast and brightness settings – and when you’ve finished, it will pass the spruced-up document back to the host app to be saved.

If you need a fast desktop scanner, the DR-M260 is good value, with very creditable scan quality and a great software bundle. Needless to say, if you require network support then you’ll have to look elsewhere, but for those who don’t, this scanner could be the ideal workhorse.

Canon imageFORMULA DR-M260 specifications

Brother’s ADS-2700W desktop scanner is a versatile choice for SMBs on a budget. It supports USB, Ethernet and wireless connections, and is well suited to big batch scans with a speed of 35ppm, a 50-page ADF and a daily duty cycle of up to 3,000 pages.

Setup is a bit of a faff: you don’t get any software in the box, so you’ll need to download it all from Brother’s website. Once you have acquired the main utility, though, the rest of the process is straightforward. With the scanner connected to our lab network via Ethernet the installer discovered it promptly, loaded the requisite drivers and invited us to download Brother’s iPrint&Scan app, along with Nuance’s PaperPort 14 SE digital file cabinet.

You can optionally install a remote network setup tool too, along with the Presto BizCard 6 card management app and a wireless configuration assistant to help set up the printer over Wi-Fi – although enabling this connection will disable the wired network port. Be aware too that, this being a lower-end model, you don’t get the full ControlCenter4 scan management tool, nor access to Brother’s Web Connect portal, which handles scanning directly to cloud and social media services.

Instead, the iPrint&Scan app for Windows and macOS keeps scan operations simple. It automatically connects to the scanner on the network and allows you to define multiple quick-scan workflows, specifying mono or colour scanning, target resolution, a wide range of output formats and your choice of output destination. While there’s no direct integration with cloud services, you can use Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive folders as workflow destinations. Scans can also be sent directly to email addresses, once you’ve set up an SMTP server.

Mobile users can install Android and iOS editions of iPrint&Scan too. We tried this out on an iPad and had no complaints: it quickly found the scanner on the network and allowed us to remotely initiate document scans, edit the generated output files and email them to contacts.

Walk-up operations are supported via the scanner’s 7.1cm colour touchscreen. You can select any PC on the network that has the Brother software installed, and scan documents directly to a receiving folder. Using the scanner’s web interface you can also create up to 25 one-touch profiles for direct scans to FTP sites and network shares.

Unauthorised use can be restricted with the scanner’s Secure Function Lock feature. Up to 100 user profiles can be created to control access and decide who can scan to destinations such as PCs, FTP servers and email addresses – and whether users can save scans to external media via the scanner’s built-in USB port.

However you manage your scans, the ADS-2700W has excellent paper handling. It coped with our stack of papers, till receipts and waybills quickly and cleanly, with lightning-fast reactions to paper jams ensuring that, on the rare occasion that an item got misfed, nothing was damaged. All the accompanying apps include tools to automatically clean up the output, including skipping blank pages, auto-straightening and punch-hole removal.

Speed is good too. Our 30-page sheaf of well-thumbed bank statements was efficiently scanned at the quoted 35ppm speed, at both 200dpi and 300dpi and in both greyscale and colour. Switching up to the maximum 600dpi resolution cut scanning speeds to 10ppm, but you’ll probably never need to go this high: we found the 200dpi setting was perfectly adequate for producing clean scans and accurate searchable PDFs.

SMBs that want a simple and speedy desktop scanner at a good price will find the ADS-2700W ticks all of their boxes. It doesn’t support the full range of cloud services, but it can’t be faulted for performance or output quality, and a trio of connection options means it will suit almost any office.

Brother ADS-2700W specifications

While some printers are better-suited to occasional use, the serious-looking Canon i-Sensys MF744Cdw is aimed at busy workgroups with established workflows. Make no mistake - this MFP is a real office workhorse. That doesn’t mean it’s limited in its flexibility, however: it works with Canon’s Application Library, which provides a range of customisable apps, all easily accessible from the generous 12.7cm colour touchscreen.

The apps include tools for one-touch scanning to particular destinations – such as email addresses and network shares – copying ID cards and scanning directly to a fax destination. If you have standard forms that need to be printed regularly, the Print Template app can churn them out on demand. And best of all, unlike Kyocera’s HyPAS extensions, these apps are all free and preinstalled – you just need to activate and configure them from the MFP’s web console.

The hardware, meanwhile, ticks all the boxes you would expect from a business-class MFP. It supports USB 2, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n wireless and NFC connectivity as standard, and comes with a built-in 50-page duplex ADF above the colour flatbed scanner. The standard 250-sheet paper tray is on the light side for heavy hitters, but you can add an extra 550-sheet cassette for £98.

A full set of toner cartridges is included too: rather than half-empty starter supplies, Canon provides its standard 2,300-page K and 2,100-page C, Y and M cartridges. Once these run out, we recommend replacing them with the high-yield versions, for printing costs of around 2p for mono and 11p per colour page, which is about average for this market sector.

Canon quotes a print speed of 27ppm for the MF744Cdw, and indeed our 27-page test Word document was printed in precisely 60 seconds at both the General and High Definition Text driver settings. Enabling double-sided printing only slowed us down to 21ppm and even on cheap 75gsm paper we saw pin-sharp text and detailed mono photos.

The MF744Cdw wasn’t quite so speedy with our 24-page colour DTP document; this arrived at 23.6ppm in both quality modes. The results were impressive, though, with photos revealing plenty of detail and images looking bright and vibrant with barely any noticeable banding.

When it comes to scanning, the Scan to Preset Destination app adds touchscreen icons for quick scans to network folders pulled from the MFP’s address book; once you have configured an email server, more can be added for scans to single and multiple email addresses.

The Print Template app allows you to upload standard forms as JPEG or PDF files (up to a combined maximum size of 48MB) and give each one a custom icon on the touchscreen. And while the Standby Slide app might not be the most functional, it’s appealing for when the MFP is in a public area, displaying a slide show of images and messages on the touchscreen.

The one thing that’s lacking from the onboard app lineup is cloud support. However, you can connect to all the main services via Canon’s free Print Business mobile apps, and scan to and print from any cloud account that’s set up on your device.

As for management, Canon’s Department ID feature lets you enforce daily page limits and control colour and mono printing. This needs to be enabled for each user in their driver settings and they will also need to enter a valid ID and PIN at the MFP’s control panel when they want to access local copy, scan and fax services.

Canon’s i-Sensys MF744Cdw has everything a busy office needs: plenty of features, good output quality and access controls. Running costs are reasonable too, and Canon’s Application Library turns repetitious jobs into one-touch wonders.

Canon i-Sensys MF744Cdw specifications

With a footprint of just 292 x 161mm, the ScanSnap iX1400 is a supremely compact desktop scanner. Yet there’s nothing cut-down about its capabilities: it churns through 300dpi colour scans at 40ppm, supports double-sided scanning and includes a decently sized 50-page automatic document feeder.

What you don’t get is network support – this scanner only works over a USB 3 connection. There’s no screen, either, nor anything much in the way of controls, but the blue button at the front links up with Fujitsu’s ScanSnap Home software for one-touch scan operations.

Installation on a Windows 10 desktop was swift. All we had to do was visit the website as directed by the manual, download the latest version of ScanSnap Home and plug in the scanner. The installer offers to download a free single-user copy of the ABBYY FineReader OCR software, and also loads Fujitsu’s online update utility, which checks for new drivers and OCR language packs.

The ScanSnap Home app presents five preconfigured scan profiles, with the Auto-Scan profile assigned to the scanner’s button by default. This detects whether you’ve loaded A4 pages, business cards, receipts or photos and performs a scan with the appropriate settings, saving the output to a folder of your choice.

We found the recognition process worked fairly well, identifying documents, receipts and business cards – but it refused to recognise photos and saved them as PDFs.

Still, it’s easy to set up a scan profile to get the results you desire. You can specify resolution settings, choose whether to scan in colour, greyscale or mono, enable double-sided scanning and choose where your scans should be saved, with optional password protection for PDFs. We had no problem setting up a profile to save photos as JPEGs, which we could then launch directly from the ScanSnap Home menu.

On that note, be aware that you’ll have to use ScanSnap Home for all scanning operations because Fujitsu doesn’t include a TWAIN driver to allow you to acquire images from within third-party products. But this shouldn’t hold you back too much; in addition to JPEG and searchable PDF output, you can create profiles that automatically perform OCR on scanned items and export them in native Word, Excel, PowerPoint formats.

Another smart feature of ScanSnap Home is its support for scanning directly to Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive and OneDrive. This requires you to have the relevant desktop apps loaded on your host PC, and logged into the accounts you want to send the scans to; you can then select the appropriate destination from the cloud services menu while setting up your profile. ScanSnap Home creates a new folder in your cloud account and drops scanned items into it, without your having to configure anything else.

The iX1400 is fast for its size. Set to greyscale at 200dpi, it scanned in our sheaf of 40 double-sided bank statements at a tidy 42ppm – and kept up exactly the same speed when we switched up to colour at 300dpi. Pressing on to 600dpi saw speeds fall to 10.8ppm, but you’ll probably never need to use this resolution, as scan quality at 200dpi was more than good enough for OCR and general document archival.

The ScanSnap iX1400 also tore through our stacks of business cards, small till receipts and courier waybills, using the supplied clip-on guide. On the rare occasion a paper jam occurred, the ultrasonic sensor stopped the job without damaging them – and throughout our various tests we were impressed by just how quiet the scanner was.

The lack of network support will be a sticking point for some roles, but the iX1400 and the versatile ScanSnap Home software work together to provide a slick and simple scanning solution. Speed and quality are strong too, making this an excellent desktop scanner for small businesses and homeworkers alike.

Fujitsu ScanSnap iX1400 specifications

Canon offers a whole family of desktop scanners, but the imageFormula DR-S130 is compact and affordable enough to suit home workers as well as small offices. It supports both USB and wireless connections, promises a good 30ppm scan speed and is very easy to use, thanks to a 4.3in colour touchscreen.

That’s not to say it can only handle basic tasks. Canon’s CaptureOnTouch V4 Pro utility lets you define all sorts of advanced scanning jobs: to get the best from the 60-page document feeder you can scan a whole batch of documents in one go, and have them automatically separated by page counts, bar codes, zonal OCR, patch codes or blank pages.

Getting set up is a breeze. A single installation utility loaded all the requisite drivers and software on our Windows 10 host in under 15 minutes. It also provided a tool to assist with wireless connections, and mobile users can download the free iOS and Android apps.

The scanner defaults to a USB connection, but this is easily changed via the touchscreen. You just need to tap on the desired SSID in the wireless menu to connect – and support for WPS connections means you don’t even have to enter a password. Once you’ve configured your Wi-Fi connection, you can swap back and forth between interfaces with a few taps, should you wish to.

The CaptureOnTouch software is very capable, allowing you to set up scan shortcuts with predefined scan modes and destinations. Document profiles govern settings such as colour or greyscale scanning, resolution, simplex or duplex modes and various image-manipulation options such as anti-skew and image rotation.

Output profiles determine where your scans should be sent, with options including local or network folders, printers, SharePoint and FTP servers, custom applications and even your locally installed email client. The cloud gets a look in too (sort of): you can tell the software to scan to Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive or SugarSync, but all this actually does is save the scan to your local sync folder.

Once you’ve set your shortcuts, they can be assigned to soft buttons that appear on the scanner’s touchscreen for one-tap selection. You can create up to 100 assignments, and if other users on the network have CaptureOnTouch installed then the menu also lets you scan directly over the network to them.

When the scanner is in wireless mode, you can log into it from a browser to access a basic management interface. Here you can set a password, configure your network settings or assign a PIN to restrict touchscreen access. You can also enable SNMP for remote monitoring – something you don’t often see on an entry-level desktop scanner.

In use, we found the DR-S130 delivered perfectly on its performance promises. Our pile of 30 bank statements was scanned in 59 seconds, regardless of whether we chose 200dpi greyscale or 300dpi colour settings. The connection interface didn’t make a difference, either – we saw identical speeds over both USB and wireless.

As usual, what does incur a performance penalty is stepping up to the maximum 600dpi resolution: we saw greyscale and colour speeds tumble to 16.5ppm and 7.6ppm respectively. You’ll rarely need to use this setting, though, as the 200dpi resolution is perfectly adequate for creating document archives and accurate searchable PDFs.

Paper handling is impeccable. The DR-S130 had no problems with our mix of bank statements, till receipts and waybills, and on the rare occasion when something got jammed, the scanner reacted quickly before anything could get damaged. Passports can be scanned too, although these must be put in Canon’s optional carrier sheets first, and you’ll have to specify the right document type in the settings as otherwise the double feed detector can get confused.

All told, Canon’s imageFormula DR-S130 is a great choice for SMBs and small remote offices. It’s easy to use, yet not short on sophisticated features, speed and output quality are both up to scratch – and it’s great value.

Canon imageFormula DR-S130 specifications

For businesses that need to process vast reams of paper documents on a regular basis, a sturdy and capable desktop scanner is a very worthwhile investment. Organisations with less demanding needs, however, may not need something as all-singing and all-dancing as the Kodak Scan Station 730EX Plus and for these companies - or just those with more of an eye towards value - the Brother ADS-2200 offers basic desktop scanning capabilities for a much more agreeable price.

The difference between this unit and Brother’s more expensive options like the ADS-3600W is immediately apparent in its boxy off-white design, which harkens back to the bad old days of beige dot-matrix printers. It’s not exactly an eyesore, but it’s also far from elegant.

That being said, its 299x145x141mm footprint (including the 50-sheet ADF input tray) means it’s relatively compact, and the 4kg weight isn’t overly heavy either. The input tray can also be detached to reduce its size when not in use, and the output tray also folds neatly away.

Another cost-cutting measure is the lack of display, so apart from a handful of buttons for tasks like cancelling a scan, scanning to USB or initialising a pre-configured one-touch workflow, all operations must be carried out via a connected PC. Sadly, the ADS-2200 is somewhat limited in this area too, as it only supports a wired USB-B connection. There’s no networking at all on offer, so you can forget about using this scanner to serve multiple devices. As a further annoyance, Brother also does not supply a USB-B cable in the box, so you’ll have to provide your own.

With that minor gripe out of the way, however, we found setup to be a painless process, with the relevant drivers downloaded and installed inside ten minutes. This also includes the raft of free software the Brother includes with every purchase, such as its iPrint&Scan app for desktop and mobile, Nuance PaperPort 14 SE, NewSoft Presto! BizCard OCR and Brother’s Remote Setup utility.

The lack of display and networking capabilities means there’s little in the way of security or multi-user management features here, and there’s no native support for scanning to cloud destinations, although the excellent iPrint&Scan app enables scanning to OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox.

However, while it may be a little stripped-back in some areas, it’s hard to fault the ADS-2200 on performance. Text was clear and flawlessly readable even at 200DPI, and it achieved its claimed 35PPM scan speeds at both 200DPI and 300DPI quality settings. It supports duplex scanning, and the ADF can handle documents up to A4 width, although it will scan longer pages up to 5,000mm and A3 documents can also be fed through with the aid of a carrier sheet.

It wasn’t entirely rosy, though. Speeds took a bit of a tumble to 3mins 40s when we bumped the quality up to 600DPI and if you want to make use of the maximum 1200DPI quality, then you’ll need to be wary. On a few occasions, a 1200DPI scan job was too large for the device’s memory to handle, causing it to abort the job. If this happens, you’ll either need to bump the quality down or split the job up into multiple batches.

Paper handling is largely good - the ADF didn’t always cope well with the very thinnest documents in our test runs, but any jams that did occur were swiftly detected and the scan halted to prevent damage to the document, and credit cards were handled with no complaints. Image straightening was also generally sophisticated and only stumbled occasionally with misaligned documents.

This device, then, isn’t exactly a workhorse, and it’ll be ill-suited to organisations that expect to be scanning hundreds of documents on a daily basis. It is, however, perfect for infrequent or small-volume workloads, such as digitising invoices for quarterly financial reports or supporting a front-of-house role. It’s also affordable enough to justify infrequent use - although Fujitsu’s SP-1130N is a shade cheaper.

It may not be the most feature-rich scanner, lacking many of the bells and whistles of more expensive rivals, but the capabilities it does have are mostly handled with aplomb. With great image quality and reasonable speeds, the ADS-2200 is an ideal option for small businesses or home offices who just need a scanner to handle the basics with a minimum of fuss.

Fujitsu’s SP series has long been a great choice for USB scanning – and now the SP-1130N ups the ante. It’s one of three new network-enabled models, along with the 1120N and 1125N, that offer the same speeds as their deskbound counterparts but add a Gigabit Ethernet port, giving you the freedom to locate the scanner where you want and drive it from any computer on the network.

Software-wise, all three stick with Fujitsu’s PaperStream IP software suite – and we’ve no complaints about that, as it offers a wealth of image-processing and scan-management features. Batch scanning in particular is made easy: you can create jobs that scan and process multi-page documents with a single click, and use barcode recognition or OCR zones for document separation or data extraction.

The SP-1130N on review is the fastest of the new models, citing a scan speed of 30ppm for both mono and colour scans at 300dpi. A claimed 4,500-page daily duty cycle shows it’s ready for high demand, and the automatic document feeder (ADF) has room for 50 pages, with a built-in ultrasonic sensor to detect paper jams and multi-feeds.

A single utility handles Windows host installation, offering the choice of USB or network port connections and loading the various PaperStream components. These include not only Fujitsu’s own software, but a custom version of ABBYY FineReader OCR, which adds options to export scans in a variety of Office document formats, or as searchable PDFs.

Also included is ABBYY FineReader 12 Sprint, which provides a simpler alternative to PaperStream Capture for quick scans, along with a system tray tool that lets you assign a defined action to the scanner’s start button. The package is rounded out by a network setup tool, and an agent that links up with Fujitsu’s free Scanner Central Admin web service for scanner fleet management.

This may all sound like a lot to take in, but setting up a scan profile is a simple wizard-driven process. You start by choosing colour, greyscale or mono output, then pick a resolution from 150 to 600dpi, specify a paper size and select single or double-sided scanning. Next, you set your scan destination, which might be a local folder, a network location, an FTP or SharePoint server, a printer or an email address. The one place you can’t scan to is cloud storage as Fujitsu’s ScanSnap Cloud app is only available with its iX series of scanners.

Document separation for large batch scans can be enabled too, using blank pages, page counts, predefined OCR zones, barcodes or Fujitsu’s patch codes. You can also tell the software to extract data from scanned documents by dragging a box around the area where you want zonal OCR to be applied; the information within can then be exported as a TXT, CSV or XML file.

Finally, it’s time to select any processing options you want applied, such as page rotation, image adjustment and clean up, deskewing, hole filling and blank page removal.

Once we’d got our profiles set up, we were pleased to find that performance fully lived up to Fujitsu’s promises. Our well-thumbed wad of 30 bank statements was scanned on both sides in 55 seconds, in greyscale and colour and at 200dpi and 300dpi. Factor in the five-second wait for each network scan to start and you’re looking at 30ppm precisely. As usual, switching to 600dpi causes speeds to tumble �� in this case to just over 8ppm – but you’ll very rarely need to use such a high resolution because output quality at 200pdi is absolutely fine for document archival purposes. OCR performance is similarly good, with text as small as 6pt on our test bank statements being captured accurately.

Nor did we hit any problems with paper handling. Our till receipts and thin waybills passed through the scanner without any jams, and on the rare occasion when two pages were picked up at once, the multi-feed detector immediately spotted the problem and stopped the scan before any pages were damaged.

If cloud features are important to you then you may need to look elsewhere, but Fujitsu’s SP-1130N delivers good performance and great output quality at a very reasonable price. Factor in the highly capable PaperStream IP software and this desktop scanner is a top contender for SMBs that are looking to soup up their scanning provision.

Fujitsu SP-1130N specifications

Sure, you can buy a cheap USB scanner and hook it up to a host PC – but that’s a waste of space and resources. Kodak’s Scan Station 730EX Plus is a far more elegant way to go, delivering speedy walk-up scanning in a compact, self-contained unit.

It’s a breeze to use too, thanks to a huge 24.6cm touchscreen that’s as big and colourful as an iPad. This offers soft buttons for preconfigured scan jobs, allowing users to get scanning with no training required: they simply need to load their documents into the large 75-page ADF, tap the right button and let Kodak do the rest.

Configuration is handled by Kodak’s Scanner Administration Windows utility. This automatically discovered the 730EX Plus on our network, and if you have more than one Kodak scanner it will find and manage them all. Initial setup takes a while, but that’s only because you get so many options: you can password-protect access to the scanner, connect to Active Directory, configure an email server for scan-to-email tasks and even set up fax details.

With this done, your next job is to create profiles for standard scan operations. You can select colour or greyscale, pick a resolution (up to 600dpi), choose between simplex and duplex scanning, and optionally apply advanced processing such as deskew, blank page detection and ultrasonic jam detection. The scanner can even recognise barcodes and read text from specific regions on each page: to set this up, you simply load in a sample document and draw boxes around the areas you want to check.

Your output choices include TIFF, JPEG, DOC, XLS, RTF and searchable PDF, while destinations can be network shares, email addresses, FTP, fax and SharePoint servers, printers and Kofax Front Office servers.

If you want to restrict certain operations to individual users, you can either create groups of imported Active Directory users or manually add your own user list; when staff log in, they can access the screen buttons or switch to a standard menu for manual scans.

All that’s left is to define scan jobs for your soft buttons to trigger. These aren’t quite the same as profiles, as each job can contain multiple destinations: with one tap a user could, for example, send the scan to their Active Directory home folder, multiple email addresses and a network share at the same time. You can even use the scanner’s built-in mic and speaker to create a voice message and attach it as a WAV file to an email scan job.

Soft buttons can be labelled with up to 65 lowercase characters, and customised with a background colour or small graphic to ensure there’s no confusion between options. Save your configuration, upload the file to the scanner and you’re ready to go. If you’ve tried this on previous Scan Stations, you’ll be pleased to learn that it’s much faster on the 730EX Plus, as the scanner doesn’t reboot every time you make a change.

The 730EX Plus isn’t just versatile – it’s fast. We fed in 70 double-sided bank statements, and looked on as it delivered greyscale scans to a network share at a whopping 75ppm. There’s normally no need to dial up the resolution, as the output at 200dpi was superbly sharp and clear, but if you wish you can switch to 300dpi with no impact on scan speed. Switching to colour mode did reduce the speed a little, but only to 65ppm. Converting our scans to PDF format added an extra 32 seconds, and opting to make our files searchable stretched this out to four minutes – but the OCR results were impeccable, and the whole process runs in the background, so you can keep on scanning while it’s working.

The 730EX Plus’ paper handling is very good too, although we found our big wad of statements occasionally pushed the ADF guides slightly apart, causing the last few pages to skew.

The Scan Station 730EX Plus may seem pricey, but it compares well to the combined cost of a high-speed USB scanner and a host PC. And what you get is a smarter solution, offering great speed, quality and security in a single, easily managed appliance.

Kodak Scan Station 730EX Plus specifications

The Kodak Alaris S2040 doesn’t do networking – we’re talking USB connections only. Even so, you don’t need to dedicate a high-end PC to hosting it: it has its own powerful onboard CPU, which handles image processing and enhancement internally, so you can drive it from a lightweight desktop with minimal hardware specs.

It’s a speedy operator too, claiming 40ppm at 300dpi in both colour and mono, while a big 5,000-page daily duty cycle means it won’t baulk at major digitising projects.

Although the specs are good, the installation process could be slicker: the CD supplied in the box was two years old, so we opted to retrieve the most recent software from the Kodak Alaris website. This was a pain, as each item had to be individually selected and downloaded, and for some components we also had to provide the scanner’s serial number and enter registration details.

At the end of the process, though, you’re left with a decent software bundle. The Smart Touch tool allows you to define scan profiles for quick, consistent operations, which can be triggered directly from its colour LCD panel. Nine profiles are predefined to get you started, but up to 20 can be presented in the scanner’s screen menu, and creating new ones is easy.

You can set options such as colour, greyscale or monochrome scanning, resolution and document type, with advanced controls including document size detection, punch-hole filling, anti-skew, blank page skipping and file separation when barcodes are identified.

Output formats are plentiful too: Smart Touch can export scans in searchable PDF format or PNG, JPEG, TIFF, and BMP image formats – or it will do its best to convert them into Word, Excel or RTF documents.

As for destinations, your options include local and networked folders, printers, faxes, custom applications, email – either via the host’s client app or directly through an SMTP server – and SharePoint servers. There are also options to scan straight to Box, Evernote and Google Drive; we had no problem connecting the software to our Evernote account, and appreciated the option of putting a time limit on access, ranging from one day to a year. Dropbox and OneDrive aren’t directly supported, but you can create profiles that scan to their local sync folders on the host PC.

If you crave more advanced tools, turn to the bundled Capture Pro Limited Edition software, which adds enhanced batch-scanning options, document indexing using barcodes, and basic image processing. It lacks many features of the full edition, though, such as exception processing to check for missing signatures or other required details: pricing starts at around £158 for a year-long subscription.

While we’re on the subject, another extra you might choose to invest in is the flatbed accessory, which sits under the main unit and connects to its USB port. Not everyone will need this, but it’s a must for passport scanning, as passports are too thick to go through the ADF.

The S2040 delivered the goods in our lab tests, digitising a pile of 30 bank statements at an impressive 42.5ppm in both greyscale and colour modes, and at both 200pdi and 300dpi. As usual, speed plummeted at 600dpi, with greyscale and colour scans completing at 9.7ppm and 5.2ppm respectively, but you’ll probably never need to use that mode. The results we saw at 200dpi were more than adequate for archiving, with very clear text and impressively accurate OCR for searching. Paper handling was impeccable too, with the S2040 working through our stacks of statements, flimsy courier tear-offs and till receipts without any jams.

The out-of-box experience may be clunky, but if you’re looking for a USB-only scanner then the Kodak Alaris S2040 is a very tempting option. It offers great performance, it can cope with big workloads, and you don’t need a high-end PC to host it.

Kodak Alaris S2040 specifications

Small businesses short on desk space will love Canon’s compact imageFormula DR-S150: it’s nicely compact and supports both wired and wireless networks, so you can locate it wherever is convenient.

Don’t think that small means cut-down, however. The ADF has a generous 60-page capacity, and its 4.3in colour LCD touchscreen makes it easy to access scan operations.

Indeed, it’s from here where you’ll begin setting up the DR-S150, by choosing whether to use USB or a network connection. If you go for the wireless option, the screen shows all available SSIDs, inviting you to tap on one and get connected right away. We opted for a wired connection, but you can switch between interfaces at any time with a couple of taps.

Installing the software on a Windows 10 desktop was just as easy, yet slightly slower. It took around 15 minutes to download and install the latest drivers, along with Canon’s CaptureOnTouch V4 Pro and Job Tool utilities. A little tool is also installed to help with wireless connections, while mobile users can avail themselves of Canon’s free CaptureOnTouch app for iOS and Android.

The desktop software is a pleasure to use, with a clear graphical design that makes it easy to set up scanning shortcuts with predefined settings. You’re first prompted to choose whether you want to scan in colour or mono, then to pick a resolution and specify whether you want simplex or duplex scanning, along with scan-optimising options such as blank page skipping, anti-skew and image rotation.

A variety of file formats is on offer too, including JPEG and PowerPoint; select PDF and the OCR option is automatically enabled, so your files will be searchable by default. If you don’t want this, just untick the “Add OCR information” box in the PDF settings window.

You also have plenty of options when it comes to setting a destination for your scan, including network folders, printers, SharePoint and FTP servers, and email addresses. Note that if you choose the email option, CaptureOnTouch doesn’t dispatch the file directly, but rather opens up your default client and creates a new blank message with the scanned document attached. Cloud features are a little unsophisticated too: there’s support for Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and SugarSync, but the integration is minimal, with scans simply dropped into your local sync folder.

On the plus side, batch-scanning capabilities are exemplary: you can use page counts, barcodes, zonal OCR, patch codes or blank pages to divide up a stack of papers into multiple individual jobs.

Once you’ve set up your shortcut with the correct scanning profile, batch controls and destination, you can assign it to any of 100 soft buttons that will appear on the scanner’s touchscreen. Walk-up-and-scan operations are just as easy: you simply tap the scanner’s CaptureOnTouch screen icon, choose a PC, and select a job from the list presented.

As for performance, the DR-S150 is officially rated at 45ppm – and that’s exactly what we saw when scanning big batches of double-sided bank statements, in both colour and greyscale, at 200dpi. There’s little need to go beyond that resolution, as these settings produce perfectly good searchable PDFs, but we tried dialling up the resolution to 300dpi and saw the scanner maintain 45ppm in greyscale, falling to 32ppm for colour scans. Pushing the resolution to the maximum 600dpi gave us still pretty good scan speeds of 17ppm in mono and 7.7ppm in colour.

We were more than satisfied with the DR-S150’s paper handling too. The scanner handled our collection of till receipts and wafer-thin courier waybills without any problems, and the anti-skew feature worked very well. The one caveat is that you can’t stick a passport straight into the ADF: instead, you can either slide it into one of Canon’s optional carrier sheets, or invest in the A4 flatbed add-on.

There’s really very little to criticise about the imageFormula DR-S150. It’s a neat little scanner with plenty of connection options, solid scan speeds, and good quality output – and the powerful software and colour LCD panel make it a breeze to use.

Canon imageFormula DR-S150 specifications

By now, it’s clear that the myth of the paperless office is just that – a myth. But don’t write off the whole idea: while it might not be realistic to ditch physical documents entirely, you can certainly reduce your reliance on them, and reap the rewards of a “paper-light” workflow.

For a start, if your office is packed with bulky filing cabinets, you can reclaim that space by digitising statements, invoices, sales records and legal documents. The original hard copies can be sent off to secure archival storage, where they are protected from disasters such as fire and flood, while you put the floor space to more productive uses.

Even better, keeping your digital copies in a central repository enables staff to instantly find and access the documents they need, which in turn allows them to work more efficiently and responsively.

Naturally, you’ll need to invest some time into the digitising process itself – but there are plenty of fast, affordable desktop scanners on the market, which can help you quickly digitise large volumes of documents, and stay on top of new ones as they arrive. There’s a whole host of business-class models from the likes of Brother, Canon, Fujitsu and Kodak Alaris that can make short work of your paper files.

Scan essentials

Before investing in a desktop scanner, think about your requirements. In almost all cases we’d recommend you choose a model with an automatic document feeder (ADF), so you can scan stacks of documents without having to feed each sheet in by hand. Capacities vary, so look for one that suits your expected workload.

Another major consideration is speed. If you have a large backlog of documents to process then you’ll want a fast scanner that’s designed to handle many thousands of pages per day. Such scanners can typically be had in the £350 to £450 price range; you can expect scan speeds of around 40 to 50 pages per minute (ppm), and duty cycles of between 4,000 and 5,000 pages per day.

Then there’s the question of whether you need double-sided scanning. In the drive to reduce costs and environmental impact, many firms now print on both sides of each sheet. If you have a lot of double-sided documents to scan, you won’t want to spend all day laboriously flipping pages: look for a duplex scanner, with imaging sensors on both sides of the paper path so it can scan both sides in one pass.

Passport to scan

Let’s be realistic: the documents you need to scan probably won’t be perfect stacks of pristine A4 pages. Modern business scanners can handle a wide range of document sizes and thicknesses, and they come with sophisticated jam-detection sensors that can identify when a page gets caught up in the mechanism and stop the paper rollers before your original document is damaged.

If that isn’t reassurance enough, consider a combined ADF/flatbed scanner: this gives you the option of laying delicate or bulky originals on the glass plate, and scanning them in place. This isn’t necessarily something you need to buy upfront, as some vendors offer optional add-on flatbed units that connect to the main unit to give you the best of both worlds. If you just need to handle a few fragile originals, it’s also possible to purchase carrier sheets or plastic envelopes to protect them during the scan process.

It’s also worth mentioning a special case that some businesses have to deal with: in certain industries (such as hospitality), it’s often necessary to scan a client’s passport. A standard ADF may struggle with this job, as passports are obviously smaller and thicker than the typical business document. You can look for a model that’s specifically designed to process passports, or one that allows you to put passports in a protective sleeve. Alternatively, you can keep a flatbed on hand for this specific job.

Connection choices

The cheapest scanners tend to connect directly to a PC via USB. This makes them simple to set up, but you may find you end up wholly dedicating a workstation to scanning and document management functions, which isn’t a great use of resources.

Network scanners aren’t much more expensive, and since they don’t need a host PC, you have much more flexibility in where to locate them. Some even have Wi-Fi support, although be aware that it’s not normally possible to use both wired and wireless connections at once.

Once you have a network scanner set up, authorised staff can control it from their own desktops, and some vendors offer free apps so users can acquire scans directly into their mobile device too. If you want your mobile workforce to enjoy tap-and-scan operations, look for devices with an NFC chip.

Get on the same page

Each scanner manufacturer provides its own suite of accompanying software, but all of them support scanning to a range of user-specified destinations, with typical options including local or networked folders and FTP or SharePoint servers. It’s essential to standardise on scan locations, or your digital documents will quickly get scattered across multiple systems and locations, making it impossible to find what you’re looking for.

It may even make sense to skip local storage entirely and scan to the cloud. Providers offer secure facilities for restricting access to specific users, and you get the added bonus of off-site storage, so documents can be accessed from anywhere.

Another thing to standardise is output formats. For most purposes, greyscale scans at 200dpi are fine: more detail is a waste of time and storage space. We recommend you save your scans in PDF format, as it’s widely supported and is highly storage efficient. You can use the OCR (optical character recognition) function in your scanner’s software to create searchable PDFs (sPDFs), enabling you to instantly find documents containing terms such as customer names.

Shop around, and you’ll find a host of affordable desktop scanning solutions that offer a wealth of digitising and document management features that are ideally suited to SMBs - so there’s no excuse for cluttering up your office with stacks of physical documents.

Stepping up as Epson's fastest ever A4 desktop scanner, the unassuming DS-970 delivers a remarkable 85ppm scan speed. Duplex capabilities double this to 170ppm while its 9,000-page daily duty cycle and generous 100-sheet ADF mean it's ready for some serious scanning action.

It can handle paper weights from 27gsm to 413gsm so embossed cards won't be a problem and its long paper mode can scan documents over 6 metres in length in a single pass. Its capabilities can be extended further as the DS-970 supports Epson's flatbed scanner conversion kit, allowing it to handle documents that can't be put through the ADF.

A key feature missing is integral network support as the DS-970 only offers a USB 3 port, although if you forego the flatbed kit, you can connect Epson's optional network interface unit. That said, we found the scanner easy to deploy on a Windows 10 host as the install utility loaded Epson's Scan 2 and Document Capture Pro utilities, told us when to connect the scanner and checked online for firmware updates.

Performance is on the money; the scanner ripped through our 30-page sheaf of bank statements at 85.7ppm for both 200dpi and 300dpi resolutions in greyscale and colour. Pushing the envelope to 600dpi didn't faze it too much either, as greyscale and colour scans of our statement bundle both returned very respectable speeds of 23ppm.

Not that you need such a high resolution though, as quality at 200dpi is perfectly acceptable for archival systems while the OCR capabilities correctly converted every word on our statements right down to small 6pt fonts. Paper handling is also good as the scanner breezed through our test mixes of till receipts, courier waybills and bills of loading - although due it its speed, you should keep your document stacks separated into ones of similar sizes to avoid paper jams.

Epson's Scan 2 utility provides plenty of scan controls and is loaded when acquiring scans using the TWAIN driver. You can select a resolution, colour, greyscale or mono scans, document and contents skew correction, simplex or duplex operations and blank page skipping.

Advanced settings offer text enhancement, brightness and contrast controls plus punch hole removal, watermark addition and an option to send the scan to two destinations simultaneously. You can choose local and network folder destinations, pick from BMP, JPEG, TIFF, PDF plus searchable PDF (sPDF) output formats and when you've finalised your choices, save them as quick access profiles.

Offices with a variety of scan demands will find Epson's Document Capture Pro very useful as you can create a range of jobs and save them for fast one-click access. Walk-up scan operations are possible too; up to 30 jobs can be assigned to the scanner's little 3.7cm backlit LCD panel so users can scroll through them using the control keys and run scans without accessing the host PC.

More scan destinations are available and you can send documents to email, a printer, FTP, SharePoint and web servers as well as Google Drive, Evernote and SugerSync cloud storage. Creating a scan job for our Google Drive account and assigning it to a button was pain-free while scans to email are run from the Document Capture Pro window, where it loads the host's default mail client, creates a new email with the scan attached and waits for you to enter a recipient.

The DS-970 may only offer a USB port as standard but it delivers a mighty scan speed at a very competitive price. Combine these with Epson's scan automation software and you have a great choice for SMEs with high-volume scanning requirements.

Verdict

The DS-970 may only offer a USB port as standard but it delivers a mighty scan speed at a very competitive price. Combine these with Epson’s scan automation software and you have a great choice for SMEs with high-volume scanning requirements.

600dpi optical resolution 85ppm @ 300dpi colour/mono Simplex/duplex 100-page ADF 3.7cm colour LCD screen USB 3 Max daily duty cycle – 9,000 pages External PSU Epson Scan 2, Document Capture Pro software 296 x 169 x 167mm (WDH - closed) 3.6kg 1yr on-site service warranty Options: Flatbed scanner conversion kit, £150, Network interface unit, £255 (all exc VAT)

The ADS-2800W sits near the top of Brother's extensive family of desktop scanners, and delivers all the document digitising features an SMB could ask for. That includes both wired Ethernet and 802.11n wireless connections (plus plain old USB), along with a 40ppm scan speed and a user-friendly touchscreen interface - all for a very reasonable price.

Brother hasn't skimped on the software side of things, either. Along with the company's iPrint&Scan and ControlCenter4 scan management apps, the package includes Nuance's PaperPort 14 SE digital file cabinet and the ABBYY FineReader 12 Sprint and PDF Transformer+ OCR tools. A standalone remote network setup utility is included as well, with a system tray monitor that doubles up as a firmware upgrade advisor - and for low-level management the scanner has its own web console, too.

We set the printer up with a wired connection, and everything went smoothly. The installation utility automatically spotted the scanner on our network and loaded the entire software suite. This took around half an hour, but that's because the utility automatically downloaded the latest versions of all the various tools - and updated the scanner's firmware with the latest version, which unlocks its full 40ppm speed (this had previously been limited to 30ppm).

Once the software was set up, we were able to use the 9.3cm colour LCD touchscreen to fire off fast scans: any client with Brother's software installed will appear in the "Scan To PC" menu, and you can use the web console to configure 25 custom destinations, including SMB network shares, FTP servers, SharePoint locations and email addresses.

The Apps icon on the touchscreen also gives you the option to scan a document directly to Office, or export it in searchable PDF format. Scanning to cloud services takes a little configuration, but it's not hard to do: you simply need to visit Brother's Web Connect portal, choose from the various supported providers and register your account details. You'll then be given a unique 11-digit code, which you can enter at the touchscreen to complete the connection.

Scanning to mobile devices is also a slightly roundabout process, but it works well. Scanned documents are uploaded to Brother's website, where they can then be accessed and downloaded on your phone or tablet by scanning the QR code displayed in the panel.

If access security is a concern, it's possible to PIN-protect the scanner's settings; for more granular control, up to 100 named user profiles can be created, and you can decide which scan destinations each one is allowed to access. You can also enable Active Directory authentication, which requires users to enter their domain credentials to access the scanner's menus.

With a 3,000-sheet daily duty cycle, the ADS-2800W can take some punishment and we found that it delivered on its speed promises. The iPrint&Scan Windows app scanned a 30-page sheaf of bank statements at 40ppm at both 200dpi and 300dpi resolutions, in both colour and greyscale. Switching to 600dpi saw speeds tumble to 7.5ppm, but this isn't a big problem, as quality at 200dpi is easily good enough for document archiving. It didn't struggle with small receipts, courier flimsies, airway bills or registration cards either, and if a jam did occur, the scanner always stopped before its feed rollers damaged them.

It's all rounded off by strong OCR capabilities, with fonts as small as 6pt accurately converted into searchable PDFs. There's anti-skew, blank page skipping and image enhancement functions too, which can be handily included in one-click workflows.

The ADS-2800W provides a great combination of features, speed and value. Whether you're using it chiefly from a PC, a mobile device or as a walk-up, it'll make light work of your digitising tasks.

Verdict

Brother’s ADS-2800W provides a great combination of features, speed and value. Whether you’re using it chiefly from a PC, a mobile device or as a walk-up, it’ll make light work of your digitising tasks.

600dpi optical resolution

85ppm at 300dpi colour/mono

Simplex/duplex

100-page ADF

3.7cm colour LCD screen

USB 3

Maximum daily duty cycle: 9,000 pages

External PSU

Epson Scan 2, Document Capture Pro software

296 x 169 x 167mm (WDH, closed)

3.6kg

1yr on-site service warranty

OPTIONS

Flatbed scanner conversion kit, £150

network interface unit, £255 (exc VAT)

There are a fair few scanners out there with built-in wireless networking, but the fi-7300NX is one of the few to support 802.11ac Wi-Fi. That lets it deliver scans over the network at the fastest possible speeds a smart feature for a scanner that's capable of 60ppm. And for wired connections there's Gigabit Ethernet and high-speed USB 3, too.

The fi-7300NX's other standout feature is its software support: Fujitsu's extensive app bundle lets you choose between host-based, network or hostless operation.

For host-based scanning, you simply connect the scanner via USB to a PC and install Fujitsu's PaperStream Capture software. This provides scan workflow management and batch processing functions, and comes partnered with the basic ScanSnap Manager, ScanSnap for fi, ScandAll Pro and ABBYY FineReader OCR software. For network scanning, Fujitsu's PaperStream IP software integrates with the PaperStream Capture image-processing app to enable remote scan operations. Or, your third option is to install the standalone PaperStream NX Manager app on a server somewhere on your network and use this to remotely manage the scanner, and set up batch scanning and authentication services.

Whichever method you choose, you'll be pleased with the fi-7300NX's performance. Using PaperStream Capture over the network, we were able to scan in 30 double-sided bank statements at a solid 60ppm in both colour and greyscale, and at both 200dpi and 300dpi.

Even at 600dpi, the scanner still managed 12ppm although, as usual, you'll probably never need this mode, as output quality at 200dpi is easily good enough for document archival systems. We had no problems using OCR to produce accurate, searchable PDFs at this quality setting and when we tested the scanner with a mixture of till receipts and waybills, the paper-protection feature detected when two items overlapped and stopped the sheet feeder before an error or any damage could occur.

For convenient, consistent scanning, PaperStream Capture lets you set up profiles that combine scan settings, destinations and page indexing preferences. You can also choose between the local or network driver, select output scan settings and define destinations such as local folders, network locations, email and FTP or SharePoint servers although cloud locations aren't supported.

There's also a helpful set of document-separation options, which make it easy to scan lots of individual items in one go. The scanner can recognise blank pages, or split documents according to page counts, predefined OCR zones or barcodes. Add the paid-for Pro upgrade and you can automatically extract data from documents while they're being scanned.

Once your scan jobs have been configured, they can be set to appear on the scanner's 4.3in touchscreen for easy walk-up operation. If you need to restrict access, security options include Active Directory integration and custom group codes, which you can enter to gain access to specified scanning tasks.

The final feather in the Fujitsu fi-7300NX's hat is a powerful web console. From here you can create scan jobs, add them to groups and set them to appear on the scanner's touchscreen. You can even use Fujitsu's SDKs to create custom web apps, add NFC or external authentication and integrate scan functions with existing document management systems.

It really is an impressively comprehensive package; factor in those unbeatable connectivity options and great performance, and the Fujitsu fi-7300NX is a superb choice for businesses seeking a scanner that's fast and flexible.

Xerox's Duplex Combo Scanner (DCS) is ideal for businesses that want the best of both worlds. It combines a 25ppm automatic document feeder with an A4 colour flatbed, enabling it to scan almost any type of document or image. The two different scanning methods are neatly incorporated into a single low-profile unit, with the flatbed lid sitting on telescopic supports to accommodate large items such as books.

The DCS offers only a USB 2 connection, so you'll need a PC to host it. Getting set up on a Windows 10 desktop took around ten minutes, with the routine loading the drivers, installing the complete software bundle and checking online for updates. Along with the Visioneer OneTouch scan management utility, you get ABBYY's FineReader 12 Sprint document conversion, PDF management and OCR app, plus its business card reader software.

Once installed, the OneTouch utility runs constantly in your system tray, providing one-click access to the scanner's nine programmable presets. You can also initiate a scan by walking up to the scanner and using the very simple four-button control panel to select and launch a predefined job. The scanner's LED display only shows a single digit, however, so you'll need to keep a list nearby to indicate what each preset does.

To set up these actions, you simply choose a function number within OneTouch, pick a destination, select an output format and assign a configuration. Available destinations include local and network folders, printers, email addresses, fax numbers and FTP and SharePoint servers; you can also send the output directly to an app running on the host. Cloud destinations aren't available out of the box, but you can download free plugins from the Visioneer Connect website that add support for Google Drive, Dropbox and Evernote.

If you need to enhance and tidy up your scans, the OneTouch Acuity feature provides anti-skew, auto-crop, colour detection, despeckling, page rotation and blank page skipping. One notable feature is a redaction tool, which lets you obscure areas of a scan with coloured blocks; additional image manipulation tools can be found within the TWAIN Driver Plus interface.

Each time we started a scan job (whether from the host PC or the scanner's control panel) there was an initial pause of around five seconds before the scanning process began. After this, though, the DCS more than delivered its claimed ADF speeds, with duplex scans of 30 bank statements completing at 28ppm for 300dpi greyscale and colour settings. The DCS also did well at 600dpi, with our sheaf of statements scanning in at a respectable 8ppm - again, in both greyscale and colour.

Flatbed scanning isn't quite as fast, but it's still pretty brisk. The scanner automatically detected the correct input source, and our A4 colour page was scanned in 14 seconds at 600dpi and seven seconds at 300dpi.

Scan quality is good, from both the flatbed and ADF. Photos revealed a sharp focus and excellent colour balance, and document output quality at 200dpi will easily satisfy an archivist. We had no problems with OCR accuracy either, and could easily search for specific payees in our bank statement PDFs.

The lack of networking means you'll need to dedicate a host PC to the Xerox Duplex Combo Scanner, but what you get is a very versatile bit of hardware. Performance and output quality are good, the supplied scan management software offers plenty of features and small businesses will like the price.

Mobile workers that want a lightweight portable scanner will approve of Epson's WorkForce DS-80W as this slim plastic baton weighs a mere 300g. There's no extra baggage as it doesn't need an external power supply and uses its micro-USB port to charge its integral Li-Ion battery.

Along with local USB connections, it can link up with wireless APs using WPS or use WiFi Direct when wireless services aren't available. The lack of ADF means you'll need to feed each sheet in separately but Epson claims a good scan speed of 4 seconds per page.

The DS-80W handles a wide range of media and paper thicknesses up to 270gsm so it'll easily cope with laminated and embossed plastic cards. The only downside is this is a simplex scanner so to scan both sides of a page, you'll have run one side through and then turn it over for a second run.

The scanner has a small LED display panel on top which shows battery charge level along with the status of the automatic feed mode and the wireless connection. Down below are buttons for power, activating wireless and connecting to an AP using WPS.

The DS-80W is easy to install. We connected its USB port to a Windows 10 desktop and waited for 30 minutes while the utility downloaded the latest versions of Epson's Scan 2 and Document Capture Pro apps. It also installs a firmware update tool which checked the scanner and upgraded it to the latest version.

Epson's Scan 2 utility is easy to use, allowing us to quickly select colour, mono or grayscale scans, a resolution, document skew correction and blank page skipping. To scan both sides of a page, the automatic feeding mode waits for you to flip the page over after the first side has been scanned and insert it again.

Advanced controls include hole punch removal, text enhancement plus brightness and contrast controls. The app can scan to local or network folders, supports BMP, JPEG, TIFF, PDF plus searchable PDF (sPDF) output formats and lets you save scan profiles for quick access.

Epson's Document Capture Pro takes scan automation to the next level as you can create a range of jobs and save them for one-click access. Supported scan destinations are extensive; you can send documents directly to email, a printer, SharePoint, FTP and web servers plus Google Drive, Evernote and SugarSync cloud storage accounts.

We speed-tested over a USB connection and found that when starting scans with the scanner's button or direct from the host PC, there is a 3-4 second pause before the paper is drawn through. The actual page scan process is 4 seconds for greyscale and colour scans at 300dpi which drops to 9 seconds at 600pdi.

A minor issue is the paper must be pushed all the way into the scanner's feed slot until you can feel the rollers picking it up. Occasionally, it wouldn't sense lightweight 75gsm paper and courier waybill flimsies being inserted, which needed a helping hand when the scan was started.

Scan quality at 200dpi and 300dpi is easily good enough for a wide range of document types and for archival purposes. The OCR capabilities of both utilities are also impeccable and produced accurate searchable PDFs down to 6pt font sizes.

Swapping to a wireless connection is simple, and we quickly connected the DS-80W to our Netgear wireless AP using WPS. We installed Epson's utilities on a networked Windows 10 desktop where the scanner was discovered and set up ready for use. Epson's free DocumentScan iOS app also spotted the DS-80W and provided options to directly scan and store documents on our iPad as PDFs or JPEGs.

Mobile workers that need a lightweight portable scanner will find Epson's WorkForce DS-80W fits the bill nicely. It's great value, comes with a fine software bundle, supports USB plus wireless connections and is slim enough to slip comfortably into your briefcase.

Verdict

Mobile workers that need a lightweight portable scanner will find Epson’s WorkForce DS-80W fits the bill nicely. It’s great value, comes with a fine software bundle, supports USB plus wireless connections and is slim enough to slip comfortably into your briefcase.

600dpi A4 colour scanner

4s per page @ 200/300dpi colour/mono

Simplex

Single-sheet feeder

300 pages per day duty cycle

11a/b/g/n wireless

Micro USB 2

Li-Ion battery

Epson Document Capture Pro and Scan 2 software

TWAIN and WIA drivers

272 x 47 x 33mm (WDH)

0.3kg

2yr RTB warranty

Small businesses that want fast document scanning in the smallest of desktop spaces will find Brother's ADS-1700W fits the bill nicely. This plastic baton offers scan speeds of 25ppm for colour and mono documents at 300dpi, teams them up with USB 3, wireless and WiFi Direct support - all at a low price.

The ADS-1700W is small enough to take on the road although at 1.41kgs, it's a tad heavy and it needs an external power source, which adds more bulk. However, one feature you won't see on most other mobile scanners is the slick 7.1cm LCD colour touchscreen.

The scanner's 20-page ADF flips down to protect its innards when not in use and you can scan directly to its rear USB 2 port. There's no output tray so you'll need to leave some desk space in front to catch your documents.

The scanner has a micro-USB 3 port for a local connection, but Brother doesn't include a cable. We opted for the wireless route and used the touchscreen's connection wizard to get the scanner networked in seconds.

Software installation is lengthy as you have to download the driver and software package from Brother's support site. This discovered the scanner on our wireless network, installed Brother's iPrint&Scan Windows app and downloaded the free Nuance PaperPort 14 SE digital file cabinet and Power PDF OCR tool.

The iPrint&Scan app simplifies scan operations; it automatically discovered the scanner and supports workflows for quick scan operations. You use these to define your scan settings and can send them to local folders, cloud services or to specific apps.

For each workflow, you can set them to run with one mouse click and advertise them on the scanner's touchscreen. To access them remotely, you tap the 'to Workflow' menu, choose a host and browse its available workflows.

Cloud destinations include Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive, and we easily created workflows for each provider. The only slight niggle is you can't select an existing cloud folder, as the scanner creates a default 'Brother' folder.

The ADS-1700W delivered its quoted speeds with 200dpi and 300dpi colour and greyscale duplex scans of 20 bank statements returning an average of 25ppm with a 5 second pause at the start of each job as iPrint&Scan reached out for the scanner. Greyscale and colour speeds at 600dpi fell to 5.2ppm and 3.2ppm but you won't need to use this for general document archiving as scan quality at 200dpi is easily good enough.

It had no problems scanning our mix of statements, till receipts and waybills while its fast reactions to paper jams meant nothing was damaged on the odd occasion they occurred. We also found the OCR facilities produced accurate searchable PDFs down to 6pt font sizes.

You don't even need to load any software for basic network scanning as once Brother's web services drivers had been installed, our Windows 10 desktops popped up in the scanner's touchscreen for easy selection from its WS Scan menu. The driver is loaded from the Windows Devices and Printers app, where you add a new device and wait for the scanner to be discovered - simple.

The ADS-1700W has the same embedded web management console as Brother's larger desktop scanners. For scans to email, we provided our SMTP server details and used the 300-entry address book to add user's email details which could be accessed from the touchscreen.

Security is good as the touchscreen can be password protected while the User Restriction Function feature can control public access to any or all scan functions. You can also use it to force users to login to the touchscreen with a name and PIN to access permitted features.

Brother's ADS-1700W packs a lot into its modest dimensions and offers them at a very competitive price. It's simple to network and delivers good scan speeds and quality while the iPrint&Scan app is great for streamlining scan operations.

Verdict

Brother’s ADS-1700W packs a lot into its modest dimensions and offers them at a very competitive price. It’s simple to network and delivers good scan speeds and quality while the iPrint&Scan app is great for streamlining scan operations.

600dpi colour scanner

25ppm @ 300dpi colour/mono

Simplex/duplex

20-page ADF

7.1cm LCD colour touchscreen

Micro USB 3

USB 2 host;

11n wireless

WiFi Direct

Max daily duty cycle, 1,000 pages

External PSU

Brother iPrint&Scan, Nuance PaperPort SE 14, Nuance Power PDF software, TWAIN/WIA drivers

300 x 103 x 83mm (WDH – closed)

1.41kg

1yr RTB warranty

Stepping up to the pinnacle of Fujitsu's ScanSnap desktop scanner family, the iX1500 is designed to make scanning a swift one-tap operation. Aimed at home offices and small businesses, it offers a good speed of 30ppm for 300dpi colour scans, duplex operations and support for simultaneous USB 3 and 11n wireless connections.

It stands out from the other ScanSnap models as it has a 4.3in. colour touchscreen with a slick menu system. Even installation is a breeze as we connected the iX1500 over USB 3 to a Windows 10 desktop and followed the instructions provided by the touchscreen's wizard.

You can choose from two power modes: the fast option puts the scanner in standby when the ADF is closed while the normal mode powers it off. You can initially set it up for USB 3 or wireless connections and for the latter, the scanner can connect to an existing wireless AP or act as an AP for direct mobile connections.

We then visited the URL provided by the wizard and downloaded Fujitsu's ScanSnap Home and ABBY FineReader for ScanSnap software. You get four licenses for each of these, and the kit also provides download instructions and one license for the Nuance Power PDF Standard software.

ScanSnap Home is a cinch to use and opens with a list of all scanned documents and a handy quick search feature. It starts with three default scan profiles and custom ones are easy to create as the software presents a graphic of the scanner's touchscreen.

The Auto-Scan profile takes the leg work out of scanning. It detects whether they are standard documents, business cards, receipts or photos and automatically applies scan settings and organises them into separate folders on the host.

To create new profiles, we used existing ones as templates and tweaked their settings for resolution, colour, greyscale or mono scans, simplex or duplex operations and scan destinations. Output formats can be JPEG, PDF or searchable PDF and the latter two options can also be password protected.

The iX1500 delivered a perfect performance in our tests. Scans of a 30-page sheaf of bank statements returned 32.7ppm for colour and mono scans at both 200dpi and 300dpi while speed dropped to a very creditable 9.1ppm at 600dpi.

You won't need the top resolution for document archiving as we found output quality and OCR accuracy to be fine at 200dpi. Paper handling is impeccable and we were also impressed with how quiet the scanner is.

We loaded ScanSnap Home on a second Windows 10 desktop and it spotted the scanner via its wireless connection. Profiles for all users are displayed on the scanner's touchscreen so you'll want to customise their names to show which host a scan will be sent to.

Cloud scanning is outstanding - ScanSnap Home supports Dropbox, Google Drive and Photos, Box, OneDrive and Evernote. You can also send receipts directly to the Expensify and Shoeboxed cloud services for expense accounting.

To activate cloud scanning, just create a free ScanSnap Cloud account and log all instances of ScanSnap Home into it. We then created a new profile to send scans directly our Dropbox account and all we had to do was load our documents and select this from the touchscreen.

Fujitsu also offers free ScanSnap Connect iOS and Android apps. With it loaded on our iPad, it discovered the scanner, which displayed our device name on its screen and allowed us to pull in scans over the network.

The ScanSnap Cloud mobile app provides direct access to scans placed in your cloud repositories. We could even use our iPad to take photos of documents and send them as PDFs directly to our Dropbox account.

Small businesses will love Fujitsu's ScanSnap iX1500 as it delivers great performance and quality at a very good price. It's packed with useful features and the versatile ScanSnap Home software makes scanning a pleasure and not a chore.

Verdict

Small businesses will love Fujitsu’s ScanSnap iX1500 as it delivers great performance and quality at a very good price. It’s packed with useful features and the versatile ScanSnap Home software makes scanning a pleasure and not a chore.

600dpi A4 colour ADF scanner

30ppm at 300dpi colour

Simplex/duplex

50-page ADF

4.3in. colour touchscreen

USB 3

11n wireless

External PSU

ScanSnap Home, ABBYY FineReader 5.5 for ScanSnap (4 licenses), Nuance Power PDF Standard 2 (1 license) software

292 x 161 x 152mm WDH (closed)

3.4kg

1yr NBD advanced exchange warranty

The ADS-3600W sits at the pinnacle of Brother’s desktop scanner family – and, as you’d expect from such a premium product, it offers a comprehensive set of features. It can connect over USB, Gigabit Ethernet or 802.11n Wi-Fi, boasts fast 50ppm scan speeds and includes a software suite that covers every need.

That starts with Brother’s own ControlCenter4 scan management utility, which comes partnered with the iPrint&Scan Windows workflow app. On top of that, you get Nuance’s PaperPort 14 SE digital file cabinet, along with the ABBYY FineReader Pro 11 and PDF Transformer+ OCR tools, while mobile users can get in on the act with Brother’s free iPrint&Scan iOS and Android apps.

Cloud support is as good as it gets, with native support for scanning directly to Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, OneDrive and OneNote. Whichever service you’re using, it’s a cinch to set up: we simply entered our Dropbox credentials into Brother’s Web Connect portal, which then generated a unique 11-digit code for us to enter at the scanner’s large 9.3cm colour touchscreen.

Walk-up features are outstanding too. Any networked PC that has Brother’s software installed can be selected as a destination directly from the touchscreen, and you can configure up to 25 standard profiles for scanning to FTP and SharePoint sites, email servers and network shares. Tap the touchscreen’s Apps icon and you can even scan a document directly to Office.

Unauthorised use, meanwhile, can be blocked with the web console’s Secure Function Lock feature. This lets you restrict public access and configure individual privileges to block or allow each user to scan to PCs, FTP servers, the web and storage devices plugged into the scanner’s local host USB port.

For desktop use, the Windows iPrint&Scan app streamlines scanning with one-touch workflows that scan directly to local, cloud, email or other applications, with preset resolution and format options. The iOS app can also be used to remotely connect to the scanner and pull in scans to be saved locally or emailed as JPEG or PDF files. A built-in NFC chip enables mobile tap-to-scan operations, and can remember registered ID tags for fast swipe-to-scan manoeuvres.

In use, the ADS-3600W performed almost impeccably: we found it had no problems churning through our sheaf of well-thumbed bank statements, happily achieving the quoted scan speeds at 200dpi and 300dpi for greyscale and colour. Switching to 600dpi caused speeds to fall substantially to only 8.5ppm – but that won’t be an issue for most businesses as quality at 200dpi is absolutely fine for producing clear, readable and searchable PDFs.

The scanner coped gracefully with more awkward documents too. It happily accepted a mix of statements, till receipts and waybills, and while the odd jam did occur, this was immediately detected and the scan was aborted before anything could get damaged. The only thing the ADS-3600W couldn’t handle was passport scanning: it’s only designed to handle documents of up to 1.4mm thick, and when we tried with our passports it jammed every time.

Remote management is supported via a web-browser console, and you can also monitor the scanner (and all other Brother networked devices) using the manufacturer’s free BRAdmin 4 SNMP-based software. This took just a minute to install on a Windows 10 host: it then ran a quick network discovery process and immediately picked up the ADS-3600W, along with the lab’s Brother MFPs. Once installed, the software checks device status at predefined intervals, sends logs via email and can be used to access the scanner’s web console, reboot and remotely update the firmware.

As a general-purpose networked office scanner, the ADS-3600W is hard to beat. Passport scanning aside, it offers every feature you’re likely to need, with fast speeds and excellent output quality for a competitive price.

Brother ADS-3600W specifications

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

Fujitsu's fi-7160 workgroup scanner and its slick PaperStream IP technology allows SMBs to do more with their scanned documents. Designed to manage the entire scanning workflow and streamline batch processes, PaperStream IP comprises custom TWAIN and ISIS middleware drivers plus the PaperStream Capture image processing app.

With a 4,000-page daily duty cycle, the fi-7160 can handle a moderately heavy demand and looks great value as it boasts a top speed of 60ppm for 300dpi colour scans. It also incorporates Fujitsu's intelligent Sonic Paper Protection (iSOP) hardware which is designed to make paper damaging jams a thing of the past.

The fi-7160 is well built with an 80-page ADF that clips firmly on the back and a solid fold out paper tray at the front. Its small LCD panel and control pad can be used to scroll through a menu of scan functions, although the lack of backlight makes them difficult to see.

Installation on a Windows 10 desktop took 20 minutes as the utility loaded all PaperStream components plus the ABBY FineReader for ScanSnap OCR app and asked us to connect the scanner via its USB 3 port. The install utility also offers the ScanSnap Manager app which provides basic scan management features using profiles and a local agent allowing the scanner to be remotely managed via Fujitsu's free Scanner Central Admin server.

PaperStream Capture uses profiles that combine scan settings, destinations, page indexing requirements and automatic page separation using indicators such as barcodes. When you run a Capture profile, you merely view the scanned document, modify it if needed and release it to its final destination.

Profiles are simple to create using the wizard and combine scan settings such as colour, greyscale or mono output, resolutions, paper sizes and duplex or simplex. Destinations can be a local folder, a network location, FTP or SharePoint server but cloud locations aren't supported as Fujitsu's clunky Capture Connect app is no longer available.

PaperStream Capture profiles link up with the PaperStream IP driver profiles which add features such as hole filling, blank page removal and page rotation. Document separation for large batch scans can be implemented using blank pages, page counts, predefined OCR zones, barcodes and Fujitsu's patch codes.

You can even extract data from documents as they are being scanned with a profile's Meta Data option. We previewed a sample scan, drew a box round the area we wanted zonal OCR to be applied and could request the information within it to be exported as a TXT, CSV or XML file when the scan finished.

PaperStream profiles are assigned to the scanner's function buttons using the integral Administrator Tool Usability tab. The LCD panel supports 48-character profile names making it easy to show precisely what each one does and you can assign up to 9 profiles.

During testing, we were impressed with PaperStream Capture and didn't have to wait long for our batch scans either. Duplex scans of 50 bank statements returned 62ppm for colour and greyscale at 200dpi and 300dpi with speed dropping to 12ppm at 600dpi.

The scanner is remarkably quiet during operation and scan output quality at 200pdi is easily good enough for document archival systems. The iSOP feature worked perfectly with our till receipts and waybills and stopped the scanner when a page overlap was detected without damaging them.

Fujitsu's fi-7160 may only be a USB 3 model but it delivers great scan speed and quality at a tempting price. Fujitsu's PaperStream IP package adds even more value making the fi-7160 a great choice for SMBs that want to manage and streamline their entire business scan processes.

Verdict

Fujitsu’s fi-7160 may only be a USB 3 model but it delivers great scan speed and quality at a tempting price. Fujitsu’s PaperStream IP package adds even more value making the fi-7160 a great choice for SMBs that want to manage and streamline their entire business scan processes.

600dpi A4 colour ADF scanner

60ppm at 300dpi colour

Simplex/duplex

80-page ADF

USB 3

External PSU

Daily duty cycle – 4,000 pages

ScanSnap Manager, PaperStream IP TWAIN/ISIS drivers

PaperStream Capture, ABBYY Fine Reader for ScanSnap software

300 x 170 x 163mm WDH (closed)

4.2kg

1yr advanced exchange warranty

Xerox's WorkCentre 6515 multi-function printer (MFP) family aims to tempt small businesses with a range of enterprise productivity features at a price they can afford. It combines print, scan, copy and fax functions, teams them up with a fast 28ppm LED print engine and offers plenty of connection options.

We review the 6515DNI model which includes Gigabit Ethernet and Xerox's little wireless 11n dongle that slots in at the rear. Both connections can be active simultaneously, where the 6515DNI presents its own wireless SSID and it supports AirPrint and WiFi Direct plus NFC tap-to-print services for Android devices.

It's designed to be simple to install and the big 5in colour touchscreen kicks off with a setup wizard to help configure the network connections, access security and apps. The touchscreen's tablet-style menu is very similar to that offered by its VersaLink stablemates but it doesn't support Xerox's ConnectKey technology so you can't access the App Gallery and install more apps.

That said, the 6515DNI comes with a good range of preinstalled apps, which include ones for scanning to SMB and FTP network destinations, fax, email and a local USB stick. The Scan to Desktop icon allowed us to push scans directly to our Windows 10 PCs that had the WSD (web services device) driver installed.

The 6515DNI isn't bereft of cloud support either; you can use the well-designed web interface to register it with Google Cloud Print. With LDAP authentication configured, users can also scan directly to their home directory once they've logged in at the control panel.

Mobile users will love Xerox's free Mobile Link app as they can create one-touch workflows for automating common tasks. We had no problems using the iOS app on our iPad and created workflows that sent scans directly to four different locations simultaneously.

This is probably the best mobile print app we've seen, providing a wealth of document capture, storage and sharing features. We could send scans to and print documents from multiple accounts including Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, Box, Office365 and SharePoint.

The MFP uses plenty of consumables and offers a choice of toner cartridge capacities - but avoid the standard ones at all costs as these deliver a mono page for 3.5p and a colour page for a gob-smacking 22.5p. The extra high yield versions drop mono and colour costs to a more palatable 2.3p and 12.3 per page -- still a tad high for MFPs in this price range.

Print speeds are perfect with our 28-page Word document dispatched in 58 seconds at both the standard 600dpi and enhanced 1200 x 2400dpi resolutions. Our challenging 24-page DTP colour document also returned 28.8ppm at both resolutions while the time to first page was never more than 10 seconds for all tests.

The integral duplexer delivered on Xerox's promises as our 28-page test document was printed on both sides at the quoted 19ppm. Copy operations are equally efficient as the 50-page duplex ADF completed 10-page single-sided and duplex-to-duplex copies at 13ppm and 8.2ppm.

For a budget-priced MFP, print quality is nothing short of exceptional with razor-sharp text down to 4pt fonts -- even on cheap 75gsm paper. Our performance chart showed why the 6550DNI is so good at this as it revealed the minute 0.1pt gaps in our black block test -- something many more expensive lasers can't do.

The chart also showed super-smooth transitions across complex colour fades which translate to punchy, eye-catching graphics and marketing material. Colour printing is a real strength as our photos were sharp with excellent detail and only the tiniest hint of banding in large single-colour blocks.

Small businesses that want an affordable, feature-packed and easy to use colour MFP won't go wrong with the WorkCentre 6515DNI. Comparatively high running costs limit it to occasional colour use but it makes up for this with superb output quality, great performance and the best mobile print and scan apps.

Verdict

Small businesses that want an affordable, feature-packed and easy to use colour MFP won’t go wrong with the Xerox WorkCentre 6515DNI. Comparatively high running costs limit it to occasional colour use but it makes up for this with superb output quality, great performance and the best mobile print and scan apps.

600dpi A4 colour LED

28ppm A4 mono/colour

600dpi duplex colour scanner

1.05GHz dual-core CPU

2GB RAM

5in. colour touchscreen

Gigabit

11n wireless

NFC (Android only)

USB 3

33.6Kbps fax/modem

Duplex

250-sheet paper tray

50-sheet bypass tray

50-sheet ADF

Rec. monthly duty cycle, 3,000 pages

420 x 506 x 500mm (WDH)

30.7kg

Lifetime on-site warranty (with yearly toner purchase)

RUNNING COSTS

Epson's EcoTank system has always been a promising concept. Instead of costly, wasteful ink cartridges, EcoTank devices have big tanks, come with generous bottles of ink, and slash print costs to a fraction of their previous level. It's a great idea, but we've been frustrated that we're yet to see it fitted to a particularly good printer or multifunction peripheral (MFP). The EcoTank ET-4750 finally changes that.

It's immediately clear that Epson has improved the EcoTank system itself. This MFP's ink tanks are neatly integrated into the front where you can view their levels at a glance - it's important not to let them run dry. More significantly, Epson has overhauled the filling system, introducing keying to eliminate the risk of misfuelling. The new system appears to be more leak and splash proof: now you just slot a bottle onto the tank and leave it for a minute to disgorge.

For anyone printing moderate amounts, the financial arguments for the ET-4750 are compelling. It's around 320 more expensive than we'd expect for a typical MFP with its specification, but Epson says it comes with enough ink for 14,000 black pages and 11,200 in colour. Most inkjets arrive with ink for only a few hundred pages, after which they might typically cost about 7p per page: you'd only need to print about 5,000 pages over the lifetime of an inkjet MFP for the ET-4750 to prove better value.

The ET-4750 delivered our mono text test at 16.3 pages per minute (ppm), and reached 5.2ppm on our colour graphics test - both competitive results for the sub-100, office-biased MFPs that make up its true competition. Photos were quite slow - postcard-sized prints took about two and a half minutes each - but the results were surprisingly good given the office bias. Plain paper prints weren't quite as bold as we'd have liked, but they were free of obvious artefacts like banding.

Unfortunately, it seems the ET-4750 is cursed with a slow scanner. At either 150 or 300 dots per inch (dpi), A4 scans took 28 seconds -- at least twice what we'd expect. A 1,200dpi postcard photo scan needed almost two minutes. Suspecting a slow network interface we repeated the tests via USB, but got near-identical times. At least the results were excellent, quality-wise.

The slow pace extends to photocopies. Single-page jobs were acceptable at 14 and 32 seconds respectively for black and colour, but copying 10 pages using the 30-page automatic document feeder took two and a half minutes in black, and four minutes in colour. Again, the results were good, if a shade too dark by default.

It may be a bit slow to scan and copy, but the ET-4750 finally feels like a half-decent EcoTank MFP. It's well equipped, with a touchscreen, fax modem, automatic double-sided (duplex) printing, and support for wired and wireless networking. And yet, nothing about it is particularly special, tactile or nicely designed: for 400 we don't think a little surprise and delight is too much to ask. So, while we can finally recommend an EcoTank MFP, we can't shake the feeling that Epson could make a still better one than the ET-4750.

Verdict

It may be a bit slow to scan and copy, but the ET-4750 finally feels like a half-decent EcoTank MFP. However, while we can finally recommend an EcoTank MFP, we can't shake the feeling that Epson could make a still better one than the ET-4750.

In its largest assault on the SOHO and small business printing markets, Brother has launched ten affordable mono laser and multi-function (MFP) printers. The MFC-L2750DW sits at the top of its new MFP range and boasts 4-in-1 print, scan, copy and fax functions, integral duplexing, 34ppm print speeds, connection options galore and a sub-200 price tag.

Along with USB 2, 10/100 Ethernet or 11n wireless, the MFC-L2750DW offers AirPrint and WiFi Direct plus NFC for tap-to-print mobile operations. Cloud features include built-in functions for scanning to and printing from services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote and OneDrive.

Brother's installation routine discovered the printer on our network and preconfigured the generous software bundle on our Windows 10 desktops. This includes a System Tray status monitor, TWAIN driver, ControlCenter4 (CC4) scan and print utility, Nuance's PaperPort SE 14 OCR conversion and document management software and a new Windows iPrint&Scan app.

Brother's Web Connect portal makes light work of registering the printer with selected providers; we supplied our Dropbox account details, entered the unique 11-digit code at the printer's 6.8cms colour touchscreen and PIN-protected access. After choosing the 'Web' option at the touchscreen, we could browse our Dropbox account, print files directly from it and send scans to the cloud.

Scanning to email doesn't get any easier either. Selecting the Easy Scan to Email app at the printer allowed us to register and PIN-protect multiple email addresses for sending documents to and there's no need to provide SMTP server details.

The printer has apps for sending scans directly to Word, Excel or PowerPoint formats and saving them to a cloud account or email address. The Scan to Mobile app scans a document, sends it to Brother's web site with PIN protection and displays a QR code on the touchscreen for you to scan in from your mobile and retrieve the document.

We used Brother's iPrint&Scan app on our iPad to print files and pull in scans. The new Windows app also provides these features but the iOS app goes further as it includes a firmware update tool and options to print from iCloud, Google Drive, Evernote, OneDrive and Dropbox.

Tough access security includes Brother's Secure Function Lock 3 which applies local user lists and function profiles to decide what print, scan, copy, fax and Web Connect services each one can access. LDAP and Active Directory authentication are supported, while the printer driver can be used to assign a PIN to a job so it can only be released by entering it at the printer.

The printer performed well - our 34-page Word document was swiftly despatched at both 600dpi and 1,200dpi resolutions in 60 seconds with a time to first page of around 12 seconds. The integral duplex unit halves speed, with the same document printed on both sides in 120 seconds.

Our challenging 24-page DTP document was also delivered at 34ppm at 600dpi but occasional pauses at 1,200dpi dropped overall speed down to 19ppm. The colour flatbed scanner is the duplex variety and using its 50-page ADF saw a 10-page single-side document reproduced in 34 seconds while a duplex-to-duplex copy took 93 seconds.

Print quality for text is great with super-sharp fonts right down to 6pts on both 80gsm and 100gsm paper weights. Reports with graphs and charts are equally clean but although graphics and photos are detailed, their overall impact is marred by an unpleasant banding in backgrounds.

The only consumables are the toner cartridge and 12,000-page drum unit. After exhausting the 700-page starter cartridge, we recommend using the high-yield version as this delivers a page for 2.8p although even this is at the expensive end of this market sector.

The MFC-L2750DW offers small businesses a wealth of multi-function features at a very tempting price. It's fast and easy to use, print quality for general office use is acceptable and you won't find more cloud and mobile features anywhere else.

Verdict

The MFC-L2750DW offers small businesses a wealth of multi-function features at a very tempting price. It’s fast and easy to use, print quality for general office use is acceptable and you won’t find more cloud and mobile features anywhere else.

1,200dpi A4 mono laser MFP

1200dpi colour flatbed scanner

34ppm

600MHz CPU

256MB RAM

6.8cm colour touchscreen

10/100 Ethernet

11n wireless

USB 2

NFC

33.6Kbp fax/modem

2 x RJ-11

Duplex

250-page feeder

50-page ADF

Rec. monthly duty cycle -- 2,000 pages

410 x 399 x 319mm (WDH)

12kg

1yr limited warranty

Options: 2yr warranty extension, £30 ex VAT

RUNNING COSTS

Stepping up as the replacement to Brother's venerable ADS-2600We desktop scanner, the ADS-2700W delivers a 45% boost in scan performance to 35ppm. It's offering a lot for its modest price tag as along with USB, wired or wireless connection options, it has a 7.1cm colour LCD touch screen for walk-up operations and supports a good range of network scan destinations.

With a 3,000 page daily duty cycle, this scanner is aimed at moderately demanding workgroups. There are some compromises in the search for value, as it doesn't support NFC and has a less generous software bundle than Brother's excellent ADS-3600W.

The ControlCenter4 (CC4) scan management tool isn't included but you do get Nuance's PaperPort 14 SE digital file cabinet and PDF Viewer SE 7.2 plus the Presto! BizCard 6 card management tool. The ADS-2700W has an embedded web management console and comes with a remote network setup tool and wireless configuration assistant.

Installation starts by downloading the full driver and software package from Brother's support site. With a wired network connection, we ran the package on our Windows 10 desktops, watched it discover the scanner, load all the drivers and offer download links for the PaperPort and BizCard software which adds a further 15 minutes to the process.

Brother doesn't state what resolutions the top speed is achievable at but we can report it'll do it for all the ones that matter. In fact, it's slightly faster as scans of our well-thumbed sheaf of 35 bank statement reached 38ppm at both 200dpi and 300dpi with greyscale or colour output selected.

As expected, speeds tumbled at 600dpi with greyscale scans of our statements mustering 10.1ppm and colour scans dropping further to 7.7ppm. No matter though, as output quality even at 200dpi will satisfy most document archivists and PaperPort's built-in OCR tool is capable of producing accurate searchable PDFs.

One glitch we found with PaperPort was Brother's TWAIN driver would only work in duplex mode if we enabled the 'scanner dialogue box' option, as without this this, it would only scan one side. When the scan was started, it popped up a window where we could tick the two-sided scanning option. No such problem with Brother's WIA2 driver as the PaperPort scan profiles offered a 'Duplex ADF' option in the source setting.

The ADS-2700W is paper friendly and it handled our mix of statements, till receipts and waybill flimsies with aplomb. On the rare occasion a jam did occur, the scanner stopped before damaging anything and we could also scan small stacks of embossed credit cards when they were inserted long side down.

Network scanning is a cinch; once Brother's web services drivers have been loaded, our Windows 10 desktops popped up in the scanner's LCD screen for easy selection. The Scan to PC option sends the document as a PDF to the default Windows Pictures directory while the WS Scan option uses the device event settings on the client allowing them to load an app of their choice to handle incoming scans.

The web console is used to set up multiple network destinations which appear as quick links on the scanner's display. These range from SMB shares and email servers to FTP/SFTP hosts and for the latter, you can create up to 25 profiles on the scanner.

Cloud provider support is conspicuous by its absence but if you want these features, you'll find Brother's ADS-3600W has them in abundance. Security is just as tough though, as the Secure Function Lock feature offers 100 usage profiles which force users to login to the LCD panel to access their assigned scan destinations - which includes the local USB port.

The ADS-2700W is great value - you'll be hard pushed to find another desktop scanner with wired and wireless connections for a lower price. It delivers its top speed at all popular resolutions and combines classy output quality with impeccable paper handling.

Verdict

The ADS-2700W is great value - you’ll be hard pushed to find another desktop scanner with wired and wireless connections for a lower price. It delivers its top speed at all popular resolutions and combines classy output quality with impeccable paper handling.

600dpi colour scanner

35ppm @ 200/300dpi colour/mono

Simplex/duplex

50-page ADF

7.1cms colour touch screen

USB 2

USB 2 host

10/100 Ethernet

11n wireless

WiFi Direct

3,000 pages per day

External PSU

Presto! BizCard 6

Nuance Paperport 14 SE and PDF Viewer Plus SE 7.2 software

TWAIN/WIA drivers

299 x 206 x 178mm (WDH with input tray)

2.6kg

1yr RTB warranty

The paperless office may be a pipe dream, but SMEs can still reduce their impact on the environment and slash operating costs by investing in a multi-function printer (MFP). Printing is traditionally a core function of all business operations but the ability to digitize documents using the same device can reap rewards in terms of reduced paper usage, less equipment and improved efficiency.

Combining print, copy, scan and fax functions into a single device brings many other benefits. Productivity can be enhanced by integrating scanning into your workflows so instead of printing a document, you could send it by email, as a network file or even to the cloud.

By centralizing document printing and processing, an MFP makes it easier to manage the use of these facilities. Left unchecked, printing and copying costs are a big drain on company profits so it pays to implement strict controls. Many businesses are already seeing the benefits of MFPs and this increased demand is driving costs down, making them an affordable option for SMEs.

Defined benefits

Before purchasing, determine clearly what you want the MFP to achieve and how many users it will be supporting. An MFP with slow print, copy and scan speeds has the potential to become a bottleneck as staff queue up to use it.

Many MFPs claim print speeds ranging from 20ppm (pages per minute) to 31ppm but we found these could only be achieved at all resolutions when printing simple text-based documents. You'll have to accept compromises when producing quality colour marketing material as almost all are slower when printing at their highest resolutions.

Double-sided printing, or duplexing, should be on your check list as this will halve paper usage. However, staff must be encouraged to use it as we've yet to see an MFP (or a printer for that matter) that can enforce this mode.

Most MFPs come with good-quality colour flatbed scanners but if you anticipate a high scan volume, you'll need one with an automatic document feeder (ADF) which can handle large quantities of documents. For increased performance, check that the ADF supports duplex operations allowing it to scan both sides of a page in one pass.

When duty calls

How much do you expect your MFP to be used for printing and copying? We suggest estimating your expected monthly print volume and choosing an MFP with a recommended (not maximum) duty cycle that's at least two times higher leaving you with plenty of headroom to cater for increased demand.

When selecting an MFP, don't be seduced by a low purchase price. Vendors will claw back these savings by making their consumables more expensive and in a high-demand print environment, this will increase running costs massively.

Choosing the right printing technology is just as important but don't discount inkjets, as today's business models have shaken off the perception that they're expensive to run. We've reviewed laser, LED and inkjet models and running costs are all in the same ballpark.

Inkjets are a natural choice for photo printing but lasers and LEDs are less choosy about paper quality. We found they produce far better results than inkjets on cheap 75gms recycled paper, helping to cut costs further. Also, encourage staff to use the driver's draft mode to print internal documents where quality isn't so important as this will also save on consumables.

Well connected

A networked MFP is a must-have in a shared office environment and with wireless now all-pervasive, it makes sense to specify this as well. Not all MFPs include wireless as standard so check they can be upgraded and for how much, as costs for add-on modules vary considerably.

Workforces with Apple mobile devices will appreciate AirPrint support as this allows them to print documents directly over the network. NFC (near-field communications) is another boon for mobile users as they can walk up, tap their device on the MFP's operator panel and pair it for quick printing.

Vendors are focusing even more on mobile device support with many offering free apps for iOS and Android devices. These let users remotely print to the MFP with some also allowing them to access the scanner over the network and pull images directly to their mobile.

Cloud support is very variable across different vendors, so it pays to check what features are available. How useful would it be to email a document to the MFP and have it print immediately or scan a document using the MFP's touchscreen and send it straight to shared cloud storage?

Security first

Internet-connected MFPs can be easily hacked so change all default passwords immediately. If you're handling confidential information, look for driver features that provide extra security such as assigning a PIN to print jobs so they can only be released by walking up and entering it at the touchscreen.

Some MFPs can enforce user authentication from their web interface, allowing you to strictly control access to print, scan, copy and fax functions. Unfettered access to cloud storage is another back door so ensure accounts set up at the MFP as scan destinations can be secured with a password or PIN.

Many businesses are unaware of just how much uncontrolled personal use is costing them so it pays to lock this down. Look for management features that place page limits on colour usage or block it completely, restrict access to the copier and provide job accounting facilities so you can see who is using them.

An MFP is more than just a printer and copier, as it combines all the features SMEs need to streamline their document management workflows. The best MFPs are affordable options for SMEs and can help you reduce costs, increase productivity and be more environmentally friendly.

Targeting busy workgroups of up to five users, Brother's MFC-L8900CDW laser MFP aims to please them all with its versatility, speed and output quality. It's well connected too, as it supports USB, Gigabit wired, 11n wireless, Wi-Fi Direct, AirPrint and NFC for tap-to-print services.

The big 12.6cm colour touchscreen and clear icons makes it very accessible. Even better, we could customise the display by adding four extra screens each with eight shortcuts to copy, scan or fax functions linked to various destinations.

Paper capacity can be expanded hugely with a four 520-sheet cassette base unit and although there are lot of consumables, running costs are reasonable. Once the standard starter cartridges are exhausted, switch to the super high yield versions which drop mono and colour printing costs to 1.3p and 9.4p per page.

Brother's software package comprises a System Tray status monitor, TWAIN driver, ControlCenter4 (CC4) network scan and print utility plus Nuance's PaperPort SE 14 OCR conversion and document management utility. Installation is swift as Brother's routine discovered the MFP and loaded the apps plus driver on our Windows 10 desktops preconfigured for network access.

The driver allowed us to assign a security PIN to confidential jobs so they could only be released by entering the code at the printer. Access security is a key feature; we used Brother's Secure Function Lock 3 to restrict public access, create lists of local users and dish out privileges.

Function profiles allow or deny access to print, copy and scan operations, set page limits, restrict colour printing and much more. The printer uses the logged-in user name at a PC to enforce security but it would be useful if the driver advised users when they are trying to access blocked features as this could avoid unnecessary support calls.

Cloud support is extensive and easy to set up using Brother's Web Connect portal. Choose from the eight supported providers, add your account details and enter the unique 11-digit code provided at the printer's panel.

The CC4 app provides remote access to the scanner so documents can be pulled in and converted to images, Office files and searchable PDFs. You can also push scans from the MFP to any PC with CC4 loaded and selecting the email option loads the resident email client with the file attached.

The MFC-L8900CDW delivers a good overall performance with a 31-page mono Word document printed promptly in 60 seconds at both true 600dpi and 2,400dpi x 600dpi interpolated resolutions. Colour speed dropped slightly as our challenging 24-page colour DTP test document took 62 seconds at both resolutions but in all cases, the time to first page was never more than 10 seconds.

The printer's integral duplexer halves speed with a double-sided print of the Word test document averaging 15.5ppm. Copy operations using the scanner's ADF were slightly faster with a 10-page single-sided copy mustering 18ppm.

Output quality is a winner as 12pt fonts, even on cheap 75gms recycled paper, are pin-sharp. Mono photos also revealed plenty of detail, although shaded areas at 600dpi had a slight cyan tinge which disappeared at 2,400dpi.

Colour photos are equally detailed, with good contrast and bright colours translating to eye-catching reports with almost no banding in large single-colour blocks. The scanner also returned good results. Photos and glossy magazine covers revealed plenty of detail and good colour rendition.

There's a lot to like about Brother's MFC-L8900CDW as it's a highly versatile MFP that we found very easy to use. It isn't the cheapest but it combines good speed and output quality with reasonable running costs and provides great access security and cloud features.

This review originally appeared in PC Pro issue 279

Verdict

There’s a lot to like about Brother’s MFC-L8900CDW as it’s a highly versatile MFP that we found very easy to use. It isn’t the cheapest but it combines good speed and output quality with reasonable running costs and provides great access security and cloud features.

600dpi A4 colour laser MFP;

1200 x 2400dpi duplex colour scanner

800MHz CPU

512MB RAM

31ppm colour/mono

12.6cm colour touchscreen

2 x USB 2

Gigabit Ethernet

11n wireless

NFC

33.6Kbps fax/modem

2 x RJ-11

Duplex

250-page input tray

70-page ADF

50-page MPT

Ave. monthly cycle -- 4,000 pages

495 x 526 x 549mm (WDH)

28.7kg

1 year on-site warranty

RUNNING COSTS

Extra high yield: K toner (9K pages), £98;

C,M,Y toner (6.5K pages), £182 each;

drum unit, (50K pages), £93;

belt unit (130K pages), £38;

waste bottle (50K pages), £15.

Overall cost per A4 page: mono, 1.3p; .colour 9.7p

The DocuMate 6440 from Xerox is geared up for SMBs faced with a paper mountain, combining a fast 60ppm scan speed with a big 80-page ADF and 6,000-page daily duty cycle. Teaming this USB 2 scanner up with Xerox' OneTouch on the host PC also makes light work of automated scanning and offers an impressive range of control features.

Xerox claims 60ppm at 200dpi and 40ppm at 300dpi but in our lab tests, we found the 6440 did noticeably better than this. At 200dpi for grayscale and colour output, it scanned both sides of our 25-page sheaf of bank statements in only 22.5 seconds for a near 67ppm average.

Moving up to 300dpi, we timed our scan test at 33 seconds for an equally impressive average of 45.5ppm. Only at 600dpi did it shows signs of stress with scan speeds dropping to a pedestrian 6ppm.

It's a winner for output quality too; 200dpi scans for both greyscale and colour are detailed enough for document archiving systems, OCR performance is great and we could easily find specific payees in the searchable PDFs of our bank statements.

The scanner's raked paper input tray offers a slightly flatter path than most other upright desktop scanners resulting in perfect paper handling. The 6440 took all our small receipts, tissue-thin courier waybills and customer registration forms in its stride without any jams occurring and it had no problems scanning small stacks of embossed credit cards.

The input tray has a latch that quickly sets the paper guides for A4 or Letter sized documents and flipping them down allows the scanner to handle dot-matrix paper and documents up to 3 metres long. Other nice touches on the output tray are a drop-down paper catcher at the front and an adjustable flip-up stop in the middle for smaller documents.

The price includes a generous software bundle that'll cover most business document management needs. Along with the OneTouch utility, you get Nuance's PaperPort Professional v14 for solid document and image management, OmniPage Ultimate v19.1 and its OCR tools plus Power PDF for creating PDFs from other file formats.

OneTouch links the scanner's function button to nine different actions. The panel's LED display only shows a number so you'll need to keep a list handy so users know what each one does.

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

OneTouch suits any scanning occasion with configuration options for a resolution plus colour, greyscale or mono output, while specific tabs are added for the selected destination. To add cloud support to OneTouch, we used the Visioneer Connect web form to request plug-ins for Box, Evernote, Dropbox, filesanywhere, and Google Docs.

It's easy to scan multiple, separate documents to a single file by setting the manual feed timeout in seconds which causes OneTouch to wait while you insert the next page. The integral OneTouch Acuity feature provides anti-skew, auto-crop, page rotation plus blank page skipping and a handy option to redact selected areas of an image with coloured blocks during the scan.

The DocuMate 6440 may not have network support but Xerox's versatile OneTouch software goes a long way to make up for this as it provides simple, one-touch scanning manoeuvres to a wide range of destinations. Add in its fast scan speeds and classy output quality and you have an ideal choice for high-demand environments.

This review originally appeared in PC Pro issue 278

Verdict

The DocuMate 6440 may not have network support but Xerox’s versatile OneTouch software goes a long way to make up for this as it provides simple, one-touch scanning manoeuvres to a wide range of destinations. Add in its fast scan speeds and classy output quality and you have an ideal choice for high-demand environments.

600dpi A4 colour ADF scanner

60ppm @ 200dpi colour/mono

Simplex/duplex

80-page ADF

USB 2

Max. daily duty cycle – 6,000 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)

4.2kgs

1yr standard advanced exchange warranty

Small businesses seeking a low-budget scanner will find Plustek's SmartOffice PL4080 fits the bill nicely. It teams up a fast 40ppm duplex ADF and A4 colour flatbed scanner with Plustek's intuitive DocAction software - and all for a very pocket-friendly price.

The PL4080 has a small footprint so it won't take up much desk space, but it only has a USB 2 connection so you'll need a Windows desktop to host it. The scanner feels solidly built but the hinges for the flatbed lid aren't telescopic, making it a poor choice if you want to scan pages from thick books.

The lack of output tray means the ADF just spits pages out of a slot at the side but upsides are the PL4080 can scan multi-folded documents and long sheets up to 1,270mm in length. The PL4080 comes with Plustek's standard software bundle comprising its DocTWAIN driver, DocAction scan configuration tool and ABBYY FineReader 12 Sprint OCR and image editing software.

The PL4080 is easy to install; we connected its USB 2 port to a Windows 10 desktop and had the software loaded in 10 minutes. The scanner supports three operational modes as you can use the three function buttons on its front panel, acquire scans using the DocTWAIN interface or execute them directly from the DocAction interface.

The DocAction app is very versatile and is used to assign profiles to the scanner's buttons. Opened from the System Tray, the app's sidebar has links for each button which can be customised to suit.

Selecting a button profile reveals all its configuration options in the main pane alongside, allowing us to easily select colour, mono or greyscale, choose an output file format for each one and opt for simplex or duplex scans. Seven scan destinations include local or network folders, an app of your choice, FTP servers, local MAPI-compliant email clients and direct to a printer.

The scanner doesn't sense where a document is loaded so profiles must specify the ADF or flatbed. There are plenty of other scan options as we could select a resolution up to 600dpi, adjust brightness or contrast and activate features such as punch-hole removal, RGB colour channel dropout, auto-crop and deskew.

DocAction has no integral cloud provider support so the best we could do was send scans to our local Dropbox, Evernote and Google Drive sync folders. Plustek did attempt to resolve this a year ago with its free ScanToCloud app but this ultimately flawed product has now been withdrawn.

The PL4080 delivers its claimed speed only at 200dpi, with our 25 bank statements scanned on both side in 38 seconds for both colour and greyscale output. Selecting 300dpi from DocAction saw speeds drop to 26ppm and fall further to 6ppm at 600dpi.

The flatbed is no slouch, with an A4 colour photograph scanned in 21 seconds at 600dpi and only 5 seconds at 300dpi. We were also impressed with scan quality as our photos revealed a sharp focus and excellent colour balance while statements scanned at 200dpi will be easily good enough for archival systems.

The ADF's flat scan path also provides excellent paper handling with our collection of receipts, courier flimsies and customer feedback forms causing no problems for it. It'll also handle ID and embossed credit cards but, of course, any that are too thick can simply be scanned in from the flatbed.

The lack of networking means the PL4080 won't be ideal for every business but its combined ADF and flatbed makes it a very versatile scan package. Overall performance and output quality is good and small businesses on a tight budget will love its low price.

This review originally appeared in PC Pro issue 278.

Verdict

The lack of networking means the Plustek SmartOffice PL4080 won’t be ideal for every business but its combined ADF and flatbed makes it a very versatile scan package. Overall performance and output quality is good and small businesses on a tight budget will love its low price.

600dpi A4 colour ADF/flatbed scanner

40ppm @ 200dpi colour/mono

Simplex/duplex

50-page ADF

USB 2

Max. daily duty cycle – 3,000 pages

External PSU

ABBYY FineReader 12 Sprint, Plustek DocAction and DocTWAIN software

418 x 326 x 101mm (WDH)

3.98kgs

1yr RTB warranty

SMBs that want more control over their document scanning processes should pay close attention to the SP-1425 as this USB 2 device teams up a 25ppm ADF and colour flatbed with Fujitsu's innovative PaperStream Capture software. The latter is designed to manage the entire scanning workflow by automating batch scans and streamlining image clean-up and processing.

It works in tandem with Fujitsu's PaperStream IP drivers, allowing you to group scanning and document processing settings together in profiles. These enable features such as recognition of barcodes, OCR zones and Fujitsu's patch codes which can be used for document separation or data extraction during scans.

Profiles also define standard scan settings such as colour, greyscale or mono output, resolutions, paper sizes and duplex or simplex operations. Destinations can be a local folder, a network location, FTP or SharePoint server. We found one glitch though, as this is the Lite version which only supports BMP, TIFF and JPEG output.

To create image-based and searchable PDFs you'll need to cough up 240 for the full Capture version or use the bundled ABBY FineReader 12 Sprint. You can run it manually on the host PC, select the TWAIN driver and let it convert scanned documents for you.

Another option is to create a PaperStream Capture profile with FineReader defined as the destination. It worked for us as after entering the executable's location in our profile, we fired up a scan and on completion, FineReader loaded with the images ready for conversion.

Capture profiles link up with the TWAIN driver where you can enable a heap of extra features. These include hole filling, page rotation, blank page removal and front/back merging, where images from duplex scans are merged into a single page.

The free Capture Connect app adds the ability to send scans to cloud providers such as Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive. This isn't included in the software bundle and must be downloaded from Fujitsu's support site.

To use Capture Connect, you must specify it as the destination in a profile -- don't run it separately as it will fail. When the profile loads it for the first time, Capture Connect presents an interface where you choose your provider, enter login credentials and browse for a cloud folder to store the scans in.

We had no problems using it with Dropbox and on subsequent runs, the profile sent the scans directly to our account with no further interaction required. Other handy Capture Connect features are options to send copies of scans to a local folder and an email address.

Quick scans can be run by clicking on a profile in the Capture interface or assigning one function to the scanner's button using the integral Administrator Tool Usability tab. The interface took around 6 seconds to load after which the SP-1425 delivered on Fujitsu's speed promises.

Mono and colour scans of 25 bank statements returned 28ppm at both 200dpi and 300dpi, dropping to 8ppm at 600dpi. Flatbed speeds are good, with an A4 colour photo scanned in 10 seconds at 300dpi and 23 seconds for 600dpi.

Greyscale scans at 200dpi produce perfectly searchable PDFs for document archiving while the flatbed delivers sharply-scanned colour photos with plenty of detail and excellent colour balance. The ADF also handled our document mix test well with no jams occurring.

Fujitsu's PaperStream Capture Lite software adds new dimension to the scanning process but the poorly-written help file steepens the learning curve and its lack of PDF conversion is a drawback. The SP-1425 does deliver good scan speeds and output quality but there simply isn't enough here to justify the comparatively high price.

Verdict

Despite interesting and useful features combined with speedy and good-quality scanning, the Fujitsu SP-1425 simply doesn't do enough to justify how expensive it is.

600dpi A4 colour ADF/flatbed scanner

25ppm @ 300dpi colour/mono

Simplex/duplex

50-page ADF

USB 2

Max. daily duty cycle – 3,000 pages

External PSU

PaperStream IP TWAIN/ISIS drivers

PaperStream Capture Lite, Presto PageManager 9

ABBYY FineReader 12 Sprint software

454 x 331 x 129mm (WDH)

4.3kgs

1yr advanced exchange NBD warranty

Targeting mid-sized and large workgroups, Brother's ADS-3000N combines USB and Gigabit network connections with a good combination of speed, quality and value. For less than 400, you get a fast 50ppm scan speed, a robust 5,000-page daily duty cycle and a generous software package.

Along with Brother's ControlCenter4 (CC4) scan management tool, the package includes Nuance's Paperport 14 SE digital file cabinet plus ABBYY FineReader Pro 11 and PDF Transformer+ OCR tools. A remote network setup utility and system tray monitor are also provided and the scanner has an embedded web management console.

Build quality is impressive and the paper input and output trays are reassuringly solid. The input paper guides are firmly held in friction mounts and we found they won't move even when scanning a big bundle of 50 well-thumbed bank statements.

Using the scanner's Gigabit network connection, we watched the installation routine on our Windows 10 desktop discover the scanner and load everything for us. It did take 40 minutes, but only because the Nuance and ABBYY products are downloaded on demand by the install utility.

The monitoring tool ran a quick check on the scanner and offered an immediate firmware upgrade. This loaded a separate utility to handle the update which also refreshed the CC4 software with a new version.

The ADS-3000N is great for bulk scanning as its paper handling is beyond reproach. It had no problems with our mix of statements, waybill flimsies and till receipts while its lightning-quick reactions to paper jams meant nothing was damaged.

Scanning a 25-page sheaf of bank statements using the CC4 app revealed the claimed 50ppm speed is only achievable at 200dpi for mono and colour. Upping the resolution to 300dpi saw colour and mono speeds drop to 35ppm and tumble to 9ppm at 600dpi.

No matter, as scan quality at 200dpi will keep your document archivists happy with text sharp and clear. Brother's OCR capabilities are equally good with fonts as small as 6pts correctly converted for searchable PDF output.

CC4 provides plenty of scanning controls including anti-skew, blank page skipping and image auto-rotation. Punch-hole filling isn't available and scanning embossed credit cards requires this mode to be set first from the CC4 option panel.

The three programmable buttons on the front panel can have profiles assigned for direct scans to network shares or FTP, SFTP and SharePoint servers. We created a 'Scan To FTP' profile from the web interface and assigned it to the first button which duly illuminated to show it was active.

Profiles can be assigned for one-button scans to networked desktops, as those with CC4 installed and registered appear in a drop-down list for selection in the web interface. The two other front panel buttons are for quick scans to local USB sticks (which can't be disabled) and a USB-connected PC.

Cloud support is absent so if you want to use services such as Dropbox, OneDrive and Evernote, consider Brother's ADS-2600W or ADS-3600W models. There are some workarounds though, as we used CC4 to send scans to a local shared Dropbox folder after which they were synced to the cloud.

Mobile users have a say in the scan process as Brother's iPrint&Scan iOS app worked fine on our iPad. It spotted the scanner on the network and allowed us to remotely initiate scans, pull down documents to our iPad, edit and email them.

Wireless connectivity and cloud support are conspicuous by their absence but the ADS-3000N makes up for this with decent scan speeds and classy output quality. Scan-hungry SMBs that want a networked desktop scanner with a super software bundle should put Brother on their shortlist.

Verdict

Wireless connectivity and cloud support are conspicuous by their absence but the ADS-3000N makes up for this with decent scan speeds and classy output quality. Scan-hungry SMBs that want a networked desktop scanner with a super software bundle should put Brother on their shortlist.

600dpi A4 colour ADF scanner

50ppm @ 200dpi colour/mono

Simplex/duplex

50-page ADF

USB 3

USB 2 host

Gigabit

Max. daily duty cycle – 5,000 pages

External PSU

ControlCentre4, Nuance Paperport 14 SE, ABBYY FineReader Pro 11 and PDF Transformer+ software

TWAIN/ISIS/WIA drivers

306 x 258 x 250mm (WDH, closed)

4.45kgs

1yr RTB warranty

Aimed at professionals on the move, HP's OfficeJet 250 Mobile AIO cleverly combines colour print, copy and scan functions in an portable package. It offers both USB 2 and wireless support, with a lithium-ion battery that HP reckons will print 225 ISO pages on a single charge, and sells for less than 200.

At 3kg, it isn't something you'll want to carry with you everywhere you go, but it folds up into a neat package measuring 380 x 198 x 91mm (WDH) that can be transported in a large bag or briefcase. When it's time to print, the top cover opens up into a 50-page input feeder, with a 2.65in colour LCD touchscreen popping up at the front. The scanner and its ten-page ADF are concealed beneath a flip-out cover further forward.

The OfficeJet 250 uses standard HP 62 or 62XL black and tri-colour ink cartridges, which snap in to holders under the front cover. Running costs are reasonable for this class, with the high-yield versions delivering mono and colour pages for 3p and 4.8p.

Installation is easy. Along with USB and wireless, the OfficeJet supports Wi-Fi Direct. After we'd set up a wireless connection on the printer's control panel, HP's Easy Start utility automatically downloaded the latest drivers, and following a few simple questions about the printer, it handled the basic setup. On our Windows 10 laptops, that included loading HP's AIO Printer Remote app for printing photos and documents. We also loaded HP's Scan and Capture app for scanning in photos and documents, and the HP TWAIN driver as well.

For mobile devices, there's support for Bluetooth Smart and Apple AirPrint, which worked perfectly on our iPad. Availing ourselves of HP's ePrint iOS app gave access to a super set of features, including options to browse and print files directly from the cloud and web services such as Box, Dropbox, Facebook, Evernote, OneDrive, iCloud and Instagram.

Management is simple, too, thanks to the 250 Mobile's embedded web server, which provides information about status and consumables. You can keep an eye on battery capacity here, and scan documents directly to a web browser or email address.

Then there's the HP Connected portal service that assigns it an email address so you can send documents to it from anywhere. If you're in a meeting with a client and they want to print something, they can simply send it as an email attachment without having to load any drivers.

Top printing speeds aren't quite as fast as HP suggests. It promises "up to" 20ppm in draft mode when plugged into the mains, and 18ppm running on battery power. In fact, our 20-page test Word document was delivered at 15ppm on AC power, while our colour DTP document fell to 11ppm.

We saw no such problems in the standard printing mode, though: both tests were completed at the claimed 10ppm and 7ppm. In battery mode, we found speeds dropped marginally by around 10%.

Output quality is impressive. Text is nice and sharp in Normal and Best quality modes, with only a slight dusting on smaller fonts. Both mono and colour photos revealed plenty of detail in darker areas, while graphical reports showed excellent detail, with no hint of banding or edge bleeding.

The touchscreen provides plenty of scan options, too. You can make copies of documents, scan them directly to registered systems as images or emails, or send them to a removable storage device plugged into the secondary USB port at the side of the printer. Double-sided scanning isn't supported, but speeds are as quoted, and we found output quality at both 200dpi and 300dpi to be very good.

The OfficeJet 250 is an innovative and highly portable all-in-one. With its integrated battery and wireless support it's great for those who work on the road, and is a worthy IT Pro award-winner.

This review originally appeared in PC Pro issue 267

Verdict

The OfficeJet 250 is an innovative and highly portable all-in-one. With its integrated battery and wireless support it’s great for those who work on the road, and is a worthy IT Pro award-winner.

Fujitsu's fi-7480 is a versatile scanner. It can handle double-sided documents in sizes from A8 to A3 - plus folded A2 sheets - and take heavyweight paper up to 413gsm. It won't keep you waiting long either, with a top A4 speed of 80ppm at 300dpi colour.

Scan operations are sped up with Fujitsu's slick PaperStream software. Designed to streamline the scanning workflow, this builds clean-up and image-processing features into the TWAIN and ISIS drivers.

Tipping the scales at a meaty 7.6kg, the fi-7480 feels reassuringly solid, and has a capacious 100-sheet ADF, which clips securely at the rear. It has an equally large A3 output tray, and an LCD panel and control pad that can be used to quickly select scan profiles.

Installation on a Windows 10 PC took around 20 minutes. The routine automatically loaded the PaperStream components and asked us to connect the scanner via its USB 3 port to set up the driver - it isn't a network scanner.

The latest version of the Fujitsu PaperStream Capture software sees some big improvements over previous releases. Profiles let you combine scan settings such as colour, greyscale or mono output, resolutions, paper sizes and duplex or simplex. The software also allows you to scan directly to a local folder, a network location, or to an FTP or SharePoint server. The free Capture Connect app adds the ability to upload scans directly to various cloud services, including Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive.

Capture profiles also link up with the PaperStream IP driver, where you can enable a heap of extra features. These include hole filling, blank-page removal, page rotation and front/back merging, where images from duplex scans are combined onto a single page. You can use blank pages, barcodes or patch codes to apply document separation for big batch scans.

The metadata option adds even more versatility, allowing you to use OCR to extract information from specific areas in each page. This is straightforward to use: after previewing a sample scan, you draw a box around the area from which you want to capture the information, then choose whether you want it stored as a text, CSV or XML file.

Once you're set up, you can use the integral Administrator Tool Usability tab to store it as a scan profile. In this area, the fi-7480 goes way beyond your average desktop scanner. You can specify up to 50 profiles, and the scanner's three-line LCD panel supports 48-character names, so you can find the right one and launch a scan directly from the scanner itself. Alternatively, you can double-click it in the PaperStream Capture interface.

Your scan won't take long: this scanner delivers on its speed claims. We timed mono and colour duplex scans of our 50 pages of well-thumbed bank statements at an impressive 83ppm at both 200dpi and 300dpi. A4 pages scan slightly more slowly in portrait than landscape, but our four scan tests still came out at 68ppm across the board.

Fujitsu's intelligent sonic paper protection (iSOP) feature delivers impeccable paper handling. On the rare occasion we had a paper jam or double-feed, the scanner stopped instantly before any paper damage occurred. The ADF's independently movable, lockable paper guides also help when it comes to ensuring that big batch scans go off smoothly.

Quality, meanwhile, is crisp and clean in both greyscale and colour. 200dpi PDFs came out more than clear enough for archival - so you won't need to waste storage on higher resolutions. OCR capabilities are also exceptional, with fonts as small as 6pt recognised correctly.

With a price close to 2,000, this scanner is overkill for businesses that need to scan only the occasional document. But it delivers on its performance promises, and Fujitsu's superb PaperStream package adds even more value, making this the perfect choice for those seeking uncompromising speed and scan quality.

This review originally appeared in PC Pro issue 267

Verdict

With a price close to £2,000, this scanner is overkill for businesses that need to scan only the occasional document. But it delivers on its performance promises, and Fujitsu’s superb PaperStream package adds even more value, making this the perfect choice for those seeking uncompromising speed and scan quality.

A3 desktop scanner

600dpi colour optical resolution

80ppm @ 300dpi colour/A4/landscape

Simplex/duplex scanning

100/50 A4/A3-page ADF

USB 3

External PSU

ScanSnap Manager, PaperStream IP TWAIN/ISIS driver

PaperStream Capture, Scan to SharePoint, ABBYY Fine Reader for ScanSnap software

380 x 209 x 168mm WDH (closed)

1yr advanced exchange warranty

Visioneer's Patriot D40 is an affordable USB desktop scanner offering simple, fast, one-touch scanning and versatile paper-handling abilities.

When not in use the Patriot folds up into a compact cuboid: this unfolds like a Transformer to present a generous 80-page ADF at the rear and a segmented lower paper tray at the front. The ADF has a handy latch that quickly sets the paper guides for A4 or Letter-sized paper. The output tray has a dropdown paper catcher at the front that helps stack standard documents, and an adjustable flip-up stop in the middle for smaller documents. Fold this away and the scanner can handle dot-matrix paper and documents up to 3m long.

Setup on our Windows 10 host took ten minutes, including the installation of a generous software bundle. This includes Visioneer's own OneTouch scan-management utility, Nuance's excellent PaperPort Professional 14 for document management, OmniPage Ultimate with its OCR tools, and Nuance Power PDF for creating PDFs from other file formats.

Once installed, OneTouch sits quietly in the background and links the scanner's function button to nine configurable actions. The panel's LED display shows only a number, so you'll probably want to print out a list so users know what each one does. Available actions include scanning to an application, to local and network folders, to an FTP or SharePoint server, and to a printer, email or fax.

Helpfully, on installing OneTouch it scanned the applications on our desktop and automatically set up destinations for Word, Excel, Photoshop and more. With Outlook loaded on the host, we were also able to scan a document and open a blank email with the scan already attached. Visioneer provides add-ons for a wide range of enterprise document-management platforms too, including Xerox DocuShare.

The actual scan is a simple process: we loaded our documents, chose an action and watched OneTouch pop up and start the scan and conversion process. The scanner has simplex and duplex buttons that can be used to override presets. Documents can be scanned to Office file formats, or as text, BMP, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, PDF or searchable PDF. For cloud scanning, we used the Visioneer Connect web form to request add-ons for Box, Evernote, Dropbox, FilesAnywhere and Google Drive.

The Patriot impressed us with its performance. Visioneer claims 60ppm at 200ppi and 40ppm at 300ppi, but the scanner did rather better in our labs tests. At 200ppi, it quietly scanned both sides of our 50-page sheaf of bank statements in just 45 seconds, regardless of whether we chose 8-bit greyscale or 24-bit colour - an average of 67ppm. At 300ppi, the same test completed at an average of 45ppm, again for both greyscale and colour. Even when you factor in the six-second delay at the start of the process while OneTouch initialises, these are excellent speeds.

Scan quality is good too. At 200ppi, results are exceptionally clean, and will satisfy any document archiving system. OCR performance is great: we could easily search for specific payees in the PDFs of our bank statements. The OneTouch Acuity feature provides anti-skew, auto-crop, page rotation plus blank-page skipping and a handy option to redact selected areas of an image with coloured blocks. For images, we switched to 600ppi. This caused speed to drop sharply to just 6ppm, but our colour photos were reproduced very well with sharp focus, good colour balance and no graininess.

We can't fault the Patriot's paper handling, either. It took all our small receipts, courier flimsies, airway bills and registration cards in its stride without a single jam. It had no problems with plastic ID cards and embossed credit cards either, happily scanning stacks of them.

In all, Visioneer's Patriot D40 is a terrific package. The combination of faultless performance, impeccable paper handling and a big software bundle makes it a perfect choice for small businesses with big scanning demands. It's our new A-List scanner of choice.

This review originally appeared in PC Pro issue 264

Verdict

Visioneer’s Patriot D40 is a terrific package. The combination of faultless performance, impeccable paper handling and a big software bundle makes it a perfect choice for small businesses with big scanning demands.

600ppi colour scanner

60ppm @ 200ppi mono/colour

40ppm @300ppi mono/colour

Simplex/duplex l 80-sheet ADF

6,000 pages per day

USB 2

External PSU

TWAIN and ICA drivers

Visioneer OneTouch with Acuity, Nuance PaperPort, OmniPage and Power PDF Windows software

316 x 195 x 170mm (WDH, closed)

316 x 239 x 680mm (WDH, open)

4.2kg

1yr RTB warranty

Canon's compact imageFormula DR-C240 measures less than 30cm across but packs in fast scan speeds - 30ppm in colour at 200dpi, 45ppm in mono - and a generous 60-page capacity ADF. If you're short on desk space, it's a tempting option.

As it comes, the device connects only via USB and hence requires a host PC. It can, however, be networked with an optional 85 Silex SX-DS-4000U2 USB device server. You can also broaden its versatility by adding Canon's A4 FB-101 (331 exc VAT) or A3 FB-201 (557 exc VAT) flatbed scanners, which connect directly to the DR-C240 via USB.

Setting up the software on a Windows 10 desktop took 15 minutes. We also loaded the eCopy PDF Pro Office 6 tool and used the second disc to install Kofax VRS (VirtualReScan) image-enhancement software.

It's important to note that this bundle doesn't include document-management software, so you'll need to source this separately. But otherwise, it's a good set of software. CaptureOnTouch is great for setting up quick-scan operations, allowing us to use its well-designed interface to create multiple shortcuts, linking different scan modes with a choice of destinations.

To do this, we created document profiles. First we chose from colour or mono, then selected a resolution, simplex or duplex modes, and enabled tools such as blank-page skipping, anti-skew and image rotation. We then linked these to output profiles to determine where our scans were sent. Local or network folders are supported, as well as printers, SharePoint and a local email client.

A range of cloud providers is supported too, including Dropbox, OneDrive, SugarSync and Evernote. We had no problems sending scans straight to our Evernote account; for Google Drive, we just pointed the software at our local sync folder. Working with CapturePerfect, the Kofax VRS software proved very capable at cleaning up images, although we had to download software from the Kofax support site before it would recognise the scanner.

The eCopy software also loads Nuance's Cloud Connector. The Starter Edition doesn't support cloud backup, snapshots or sync, but it does let you create a virtual scan directory and link it up with an FTP server or a cloud provider such as Amazon S3 and Microsoft Azure.

It also allows you to create (just) one cloud connection where its virtual directory is mapped to a local drive letter. We linked to our remote FTP server and set up the new virtual drive in a CaptureOnTouch scan shortcut.

In line with Canon's official specification, scanning performance depends on your choice of mono or colour. In greyscale, our duplex scans of 50 bank statements produced a searchable PDF at a rate of 47ppm at 200dpi and 38ppm at 300dpi. Selecting a 24-bit colour profile saw speed drop to 30ppm at 200dpi, while a 300dpi profile pulled us down to 16.5ppm.

If you want to try the maximum 600dpi colour resolution, prepare for super-slow performance: our sheaf of statements was processed at just 3ppm. The good news is that greyscale 200dpi quality is perfectly adequate for document archiving, with the embedded OCR feature producing excellent, accurate results from fonts as small as 6pt.

Paper handling was decent, too. The scanner handled our thin courier waybills well and the anti-skew feature proved effective. Single embossed ID and credit cards can be scanned, but you must use a profile with the ultrasonic jam detection turned off.

The DR-C240's space-saving design is a definite plus, the CaptureOnTouch utility makes it supremely easy to use, and the price looks like good value. Just remember to factor in the additional cost of network support if you need it, plus document-management software.

This review originally appeared in PC Pro issue 263

Verdict

The DR-C240’s space-saving design is a definite plus, the CaptureOnTouch utility makes it supremely easy to use, and the price looks like good value. Just remember to factor in the additional cost of network support if you need it, plus document-management software.

600dpi colour scanner

45ppm @ 200dpi mono

30ppm @ 200dpi colour

Simplex/duplex

60-sheet ADF

USB 2

External PSU

4,000 pages per day

Canon CaptureOnTouch and CapturePerfect, eCopy PDF Pro Office, Kofax VRS software

TWAIN and ISIS drivers

291 x 253 x 231mm (WDH, closed)

1yr exchange warranty

At first glance, Plustek's little SmartOffice PS456U looks unremarkable. But underneath its glossy, white plastic exterior lurks an astonishingly fast 80ppm scan engine. Thanks to its duplex capability, that equates to a file-cabinet-busting 160ipm. The big 100-sheet ADF and 8,000-page daily duty cycle confirm this is a scanner that's up for heavy-duty digitising.

The key thing that's missing is network support. Still, the PS456U is a cinch to install on a dedicated host PC; we connected its USB 2 port to our Windows 10 workstation and had all the software apps loaded in less than ten minutes.

It's an impressive software bundle. Along with TWAIN, ISIS and WIA drivers, you get the slick DocAction scan-configuration tool, ABBYY FineReader 9 Sprint for OCR duties and NewSoft's Presto! PageManager 9 SE document-management utility.

The DocAction tool is extremely versatile, allowing you to assign up to nine different jobs to the scanner's Function button. Its sidebar lists all nine available job types, which include scans to local or network folders, searchable PDFs, FTP servers, a local MAPI-compliant email client, and direct to a printer.

Selecting one opens all its configuration options in the main pane, so you can easily select colour, mono or greyscale, opt for simplex or duplex scans, and choose an output file format for each one.

From the same screen, you can pick a resolution, adjust brightness or contrast, and activate features such as punch-hole and blank-page removal, auto-crop, deskew and individual rotation settings for each side of a page. We confirmed the effects of our selections as we went along by popping a page in the scanner, selecting the preview button and checking the resulting image.

DocAction lacks support for direct cloud connections, so we could only send scans to our local Dropbox, Evernote and Google Drive sync folders. Plustek's ScanToCloud app is free, but we couldn't get it to work: although we could use it to send documents directly to our remote FTP server, it refused to log in to any of our cloud provider accounts.

In our tests, we actually beat the scanner's cited 80ppm top speed: the PS456U ripped through our sheaf of 50 bank statements in 37 seconds at both 200dpi and 300dpi resolutions for a tidy average of 81ppm.

Note that this was all in mono -- colour scans are slower, but still impressive. In our tests, the PS456U averaged a better-than-claimed 46ppm in colour at 200dpi and 30ppm at 300dpi.

Even at 600dpi, the PS456U is no slouch, with mono and colour scans averaging 24ppm and 5ppm respectively. Output quality at 200dpi is perfectly adequate for document archiving, and FineReader did an excellent job of correctly converting every word on our statements, even down to 6pt type.

We can't fault the document feeder's paper-handling skills. It dealt with our statements, flimsy courier waybills and till receipts without complaint. However, although it can scan smooth plastic ID cards, we don't recommend you try embossed credit cards, as these often caused jams.

The PageManager software offers useful document-management features, allowing us to neatly organise our scan folders, inspect selected documents and send them to other applications using drag and drop. It links up with Plustek's TWAIN driver, which pops up when a scan is requested, so it's easy to access too.

The lack of network and cloud capabilities may discourage some, but the SmartOffice PS456U's mighty scan speeds are persuasive. If you need a high-volume, heavy-duty desktop scanner at an affordable price then the SmartOffice PS456U is the one to choose.

This review originally appeared in PC Pro issue 263

Verdict

The lack of network and cloud capabilities may discourage some, but the SmartOffice PS456U’s mighty scan speeds are persuasive. If you need a high-volume, heavy-duty desktop scanner at an affordable price then the SmartOffice PS456U is the one to choose.

600dpi colour scanner

80ppm @ 300dpi mono

40ppm @ 200dpi colour

Simplex/duplex

100-sheet ADF

USB 2

External PSU

8,000 pages per day

Plustek DocAction, ABBYY FineReader 9 Sprint and NewSoft Presto! PageManager 9 SE software

TWAIN, ISIS and WIA drivers

319 x 231 x 228mm (WDH, closed)

2yr RTB warranty

Are stacks of paper records filling your office? You can make big savings in time and money by digitising statements, invoices and legal paperwork. Not only does this reduce wasted office space, it also makes documents much easier for staff to locate. Your original hard copies, meanwhile, can be sent off to secure archival storage.

Scan sensible

Before investing in scanning hardware, think carefully about your requirements. Some scanners are designed for fairly light use, while others can handle thousands of pages per day. Check the manufacturer's recommended daily usage numbers to ensure the scanner can handle your demands.

Speed is an important factor to consider, too. Some manufacturers quote performance in pages per minute (ppm), while others cite images per minute (ipm). An "image" is one side of a page, so a duplex scanner that scans both sides in one pass will have an image-per-minute rating that's exactly twice its ppm.

When it comes to resolution, don't become too obsessed comparing numbers. Today's business desktop scanners can all produce perfectly legible digital copies at 200dpi; stepping up to 300dpi provides slightly better readability, and may produce more accurate results if you want your documents converted into searchable PDFs. Resolutions of 600dpi upwards come into their own only when scanning artwork.

USB or network

At first glance, a USB scanner looks the best value. But you'll need a host PC to control it and, unless you only intend to scan very occasionally, this will probably have to be a dedicated workstation.

Network scanners aren't much more expensive, and they offer significant advantages. Since you don't need a host PC, you have more flexibility in where to locate the hardware. Installing drivers and software only on the systems you want to connect to the scanner also provides a degree of access control.

Wireless network support is often a bonus, providing more freedom to put the scanner where convenient. Note, though, that most scanners can't run simultaneous wired and wireless connections. If you have a mixed environment, you may need to do some configuring to help wired clients talk to a wireless scanner.

Final destination

Choosing a destination for scanned documents may sound trivial, but it's something that should be standardised across the company - your digital documents will be impossible to locate and manage if they're scattered across a dozen folders or on different computers. While you can always scan to a local folder, all good scanners can also send scans directly to shared locations such as network drives.

Remember, now your documents are digital, they need to be treated like any other business data - and that means backing them up. This is especially important if you're dealing with company accounts, invoices and financial records, which must be retained for at least six years from the end of the last financial year. You should keep your originals in a safe facility anyway, but losing access to digital copies would be a headache.

The cloud is an ideal solution for centrally sharing documents, and it has the added bonus of providing off-site storage so they can be accessed from anywhere. Services such as Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive don't even need built-in support from the scanner: you can simply scan documents into synchronised folders and let the service automatically send them to the cloud.

All the same, it's easier if the scanner has integral support for cloud services. Check to see if your chosen services are on the list. Along with the three mentioned above, some offer direct support for Evernote, Microsoft SharePoint and SugarSync.

Plan to scan

The most popular format for scans is PDF - and for good reason, as Adobe's free Acrobat Reader makes them very accessible. The PDF specification also allows you to search the text within scanned documents - hugely useful when it comes to quickly locating relevant documents - and many scanners come with good OCR (optical character recognition) software to make this possible.

There are drawbacks, however. Searchable PDFs take up additional storage space. In our tests, we found a duplex mono scan of 50 bank statements at 200dpi produced a 6MB standard multipage PDF; producing a searchable PDF increased this to around 30MB.

Another option that consumes space is colour: a 600dpi duplex scan of our statements producing a 182MB searchable PDF. If you create many large files then it may impact on your storage and backup costs, especially if you're scanning to the cloud, so play with scan resolutions and colour or mono to see which works best for you.

It's also worth noting that the OCR conversion process is quite resource-intensive. We found that a 300dpi duplex colour statement took around five minutes to process on an old office PC, running on a 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo PC with 2GB of RAM. Moving up to a brand-new Core i7 with 16GB of RAM slashed the OCR time to 1min 8secs.

Digitise to survive

We've seen the benefits of transforming your paperwork mountain into an online archive of searchable digital documents: you can reduce costs, increase productivity and greatly improve response times to customer and supplier enquiries. If your filing cabinets are bursting at the seams, it's worth putting in the time to discover the scanner that's right for your business.

This article originally appeared in PC Pro issue 263

Kodak's i1190 is built for substantial scanning jobs: along with a big 5,000-page daily duty cycle, it promises a scan speed of 40ppm in both colour and mono scans - and not only at 200dpi, but at 300dpi as well.

Our lab tests confirm the truth of Kodak's claims. Our mono and colour duplex scans of 50 bank statements averaged a perfect 40ppm at both resolutions. Like all scanners, the i1190 slowed down considerably at 600dpi, with mono and colour scans both dropping to 10ppm - but this remains better than many rivals.

Scan quality and accuracy at 200pdi is perfectly acceptable for document archiving purposes, however. Kodak's OCR capabilities are also impressive, with the i1190 producing highly accurate searchable PDFs and RTF files from our sheaf of statements.

On the top of the i1190 sits a highly legible backlit colour LCD panel. Unlike the Brother's display, this isn't a touchscreen, but it's still useful for showing the job selected and its name. Scan jobs are easy to select using the up and down soft-touch buttons; tap the right-hand arrow to start scanning. The i1190 also has a generous 75-page ADF, and its output tray can be stowed away when not in use.

Before using the scanner we had to download the Windows 10 drivers and firmware update tool from Kodak's support site. For Windows 10 hosts, we recommend using the latest full CD image instead of the older version in the box to avoid USB connection issues.

Once everything is installed, Kodak's Smart Touch utility sits in the background and strides into action when the scanner's start button is pressed. It streamlines scanning operations by assigning up to nine profiles, each with their own settings, such as simplex or duplex, colour or mono, resolution, anti-skew, hole-fill and blank-page skipping.

There are plenty of destination options to choose from, including scanning to local folders, creating searchable PDFs and sending output to local, network or fax printers. Email and SharePoint are also supported, while cloud destinations include Box, Evernote and Google Drive.

We had no problems registering a Smart Touch profile with our Google Drive account and choosing the cloud folder to which we wanted our scans sent. Although Dropbox isn't on the list, we were able to create a profile to scan directly to the local sync folder on the host PC.

Paper handling is impeccable, providing our tissue-thin courier waybills were inserted long side down. During all our statement-scanning tests, it jammed only once, but the ultrasonic detection was so quick that nothing was damaged.

Smart Touch can also detect barcodes and create a separate file each time it encounters one. The bundled Kodak Capture Pro Limited Edition software provides enhanced batch-scanning and document indexing, but you'll need the full version if you want more barcode-related features.

Alas, Windows users don't get the Nuance PaperPort and OmniPage document-management software with this model; Kodak includes it with only the i2420 model and above. The Smart Touch software doesn't support Macs at all, but to make up for this, Kodak offers the NewSoft Presto PageManager and BizCard Xpress software.

For the price, we'd have expected a better Windows software bundle, but the i1190 can't be faulted for speed and output quality. It's very easy to use, its smart colour LCD panel makes light work of walk-up scanning, and Kodak's generous three-year hardware warranty can't be ignored either.

This review originally appeared in PC Pro issue 263

Verdict

For the price, we’d have expected a better Windows software bundle, but the i1190 can’t be faulted for speed and output quality. It’s very easy to use, its smart colour LCD panel makes light work of walk-up scanning, and Kodak’s generous three-year hardware warranty can’t be ignored either.

600dpi colour scanner

40ppm @ 200dpi and 300dpi mono/colour

Simplex/duplex

75-sheet ADF

5,000 pages per day

USB 2

External PSU

TWAIN, ISIS and WIA drivers

Kodak Smart Touch and Capture Pro LE Windows software

330 x 162 x 246mm (WDH, closed)

3yr replacement warranty

Brother's ADS-3600W has every document-digitising feature a small or medium-sized business could possibly need. It offers a fast 50ppm scan speed and a generous 50-page ADF - and it will take some stick, with a 5,000-sheet daily duty cycle.

Hooking it up is easy: there's support for direct PC connection via USB 3, or your choice of Gigabit Ethernet and 802.11n wireless connections. There's also NFC support, so you can connect a compatible mobile device with a tap.

At the front, the ADS-3600W's onboard controls are accessed via a 9.3cm LCD colour touchscreen. We found it effortless to get connected to our wireless network via WPS. There's also an embedded web-management console that can be used for configuration - although you can't have wired and wireless networks active concurrently.

Stepping through the installation routine on our Windows 10 desktop was largely automatic. The software discovered the scanner and loaded a spread of support software for us: you get Brother's ControlCenter4 (CC4) scan-management tool and Nuance's PaperPort 14 SE digital file cabinet, plus ABBYY FineReader 11 Pro and PDF Transformer+ OCR tools.

These latter two products are downloaded on demand, stretching the installation process to a lengthy 22 minutes, but we were pleased to see the routine also updated the CC4 software and the scanner's firmware.

Since the software is installed on each PC in your office, it registers that computer as a destination in the scanner's Scan to PC menu, so you can send digital documents direct to your desktop.

A USB host port also lets you scan directly to a local storage device, and from the web console you can configure scans to email servers, FTP sites and network shares, which all then appear as destinations in the LCD panel. If you want to send a scan directly to an individual, there's an address book for 300 email entries, and integration with LDAP and Active Directory authentication.

The embedded Scan to Mobile option is another smart feature. This scans a document and uploads it to Brother's website with PIN protection, then displays a QR code on the LCD panel. You can then use a mobile app (Windows Phones' Bing Vision, in our case) to scan the QR code and download the file to your device.

An alternative for iOS users is Brother's iPrint&Scan iOS app. We found this spotted the scanner on the network right away, and let us remotely initiate scans and pull down documents to our iPad.

Even better is the ability to assign scan shortcuts to NFC ID tags: we registered an ID tag with a scan-to-Dropbox shortcut, and on swiping it over the scanner the menu option popped up, ready to go.

Supported cloud services include Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, OneNote, Evernote and Box. We used Brother's Web Connect portal to set up our Dropbox and Google Drive accounts in less than two minutes.

So what about the fundamentals? We're happy to say we found the ADS-3600W's paper handling highly creditable. We fed a mix of till receipts, statements and bills through the ADF with few problems. On the rare occasion a jam did occur, the scanner stopped before causing any damage. We were also able to scan embossed credit cards, providing they were inserted short side down.

What's more, the ADS-3600W's claimed 50ppm scan speed is perfectly achievable - 200dpi duplex scans of our sheaf of 50 bank statements took precisely 60 seconds. The same speed is attainable for 300dpi mono scans, but here we found the speed fell to 32ppm when we switched to colour.

At 600dpi, mono and colour speeds tumble to 24ppm and 8ppm, but there's rarely a need to use such a high resolution: 200dpi is fine for creating document archives and searchable PDFs.

It adds up to a comprehensive set of business scanning features. Speed and output quality are impressive, as is cloud support - and the price is very tempting indeed, making this our SMB desktop scanner of choice.

This review originally appeared in PC Pro issue 263

Verdict

Speed and output quality are impressive, as is cloud support – and the price is very tempting indeed, making this our SMB desktop scanner of choice.

600dpi colour scanner

50ppm @ 200dpi colour/mono

Simplex/duplex

50-page ADF

9.3cm colour touchscreen

USB 3

USB 2 host

Gigabit Ethernet

802.11n wireless

NFC

Wi-Fi Direct

5,000 pages per day

External PSU

Brother ControlCenter4, Nuance PaperPort 14 SE, ABBYY FineReader 11 Pro and PDF Transformer+ software

TWAIN, ISIS and WIA drivers

306 x 258 x 250mm (WDH, closed)

1yr RTB warranty

There's no shortage of desktop document scanners around, but the vast majority are sheet-fed only, which isn't much help if you need to capture unusually shaped or sized media. Another common limitation of most document scanners is a 600-dots-per-inch (dpi) maximum resolution, which is plenty for typical office jobs, but may not be enough to get the best capture of a photograph or other detailed original.

HP's ScanJet Pro 2500 f1 is a neat flatbed scanner with an automatic document feeder (ADF) built into the lid. It's a squat device, looking much like the top section of a small office multifunction peripheral. On the front panel are a collection of customisable shortcut buttons covering the most common scan-to-PDF and scan-to-image functions, while the back has ports for power and a USB connection - there's no network capability.

Although it undercuts some of our favourite desktop scanners on price, the ScanJet Pro 2500 f1 doesn't compare too badly on specifications. It's rated for 20 pages per minute (ppm) at 300dpi, and with dual sensors it's able to capture both sides of an original in one pass, for a potential output of up to 40 images per minute (ipm).

Design and software

The scanner's lid and ADF section is mounted on strong hinges, stiff enough to prevent it crashing down onto the platen glass. These telescope upwards by a couple of centimetres, allowing the lid to close flat on thick originals such as a magazine or book. While the 50-page ADF doesn't seem quite as bullet-proof as we'd like, it's up to the job on a scanner rated at a maximum 1,500 pages per day. Pulling up at the right-hand edge of the top mechanism releases a large section of the cover, which ought to make retrieval simple in the case of a paper jam.

HP has designed the ScanJet Pro 2500 f1 with no lip at the front edge of the platen, so you don't have to risk snagging the edges of original documents as you fumble to retrieve them from the scanner. Unfortunately, the bezel at the other three sides isn't quite flush with the glass, and we found it was possible to tuck the corner of a photograph under the plastic if we weren't careful when positioning it.

Devices at this price rarely come with advanced scan management software, but even so this is probably this scanner's weakest area. HP ships the ScanJet Pro 2500 f1 with TWAIN drivers and a tweaked version of its regular scan software. It can handle formats including JPEG and searchable PDF and can scan to destinations such as files, email and the cloud. Options for the latter are limited: while there's DropBox and Google Drive, Evernote and SharePoint are absent. Automatic page orientation is also missing, and users will need to configure blank page detection manually. The scan interface itself is an improvement on the inflexible and over-simplified version that HP's consumer products get, at least.

Cloud options are comparatively limited - there's no SharePoint or Evernote support

In use

Anyone used to the hushed mechanism of higher-end document scanners is in for a shock when they first power up the ScanJet Pro 2500 f1. While the scan head itself sounds smooth, you can hear the friction as paper passes through the ADF - the paper mechanism is lined only in plastic. We wouldn't necessarily expect better at this price, but the U-shape path means that the paper guides do more work, generating more noise, than in a device with a J-shape paper path. This could also prove an issue if you need to scan stacks of thicker or smaller than usual media. Although 6x4in photos weren't bent after passing through the ADF, it could only feed them reliably if we loaded them with a portrait orientation.

Whether scanning from the platen or ADF, speeds are competitive. This was especially true at low resolutions: we captured an A4 page at 150dpi in just six seconds, and over 50 single-sided pages we measured 18.1ppm including the time taken to save out the result. HP's software was slow to process more complicated jobs that included OCR: our 10-page, 16-side torture test took two minutes and 47 seconds in total at 200dpi.

The detailed settings are neatly laid out

With the auto-exposure feature disabled by default, both document and photo scans were a touch dark with a cool colour bias. With it enabled, we were more than happy with all of our results. Even when using the ADF, photos were unusually sharp for this class of device, and 1,200dpi scans from the platen were especially sharp.

Conclusions

The ScanJet Pro 2500 f1 is cheap for a desktop document scanner, but perhaps the only area where this shows is in its basic software. While neither fast nor robust enough to cope with multiple users or high volumes, its platen and ADF give it welcome flexibility for a single user facing a range of tasks in a small office. It's a niche product, perhaps, but it could prove ideal where there's not the space or need for an MFP or faster, higher volume document scanner.

Verdict

A good desktop document scanner

The PageWide Pro 477dw is a small workgroup colour printer, with key features including a 500-sheet paper tray and 50-page multi-purpose feed, a 10.9in colour touchscreen, and a 50-page duplexing automatic document feeder (ADF). Its standard interfaces include USB and a USB host port supporting walk-up scans and prints, but while dual band (2.4/5GHz) 802.11n WiFi wireless networking is built in, the wired Ethernet port is 10/100 Mbit/s only.

In most inkjets, ink droplets spray from a small print head which traverses the page as the paper is passed underneath - the need to step the paper in time with the head movements limits the maximum throughput speed. However, HP's PageWide system employs a single, large print head spanning the entire width of the paper path. This can apply ink continuously as the page passes through uninterrupted, resulting in a far higher engine speed: here HP claims up to 55 pages per minute (ppm) in black or colour.

The 477dw is a direct replacement for the X476dw, and the changes aren't revolutionary. The most obvious difference is that the new printer reverts from black to more conservative cream and grey plastics, but there are some useful improvements under the skin. The ADF now has dual image sensors for single-pass duplex scanning, so complex scan, copy and fax jobs should be much faster. Improvements to the print engine mean that the default 'Professional' quality now comes at 40ppm rather than 36ppm. There's now direct wireless printing with NFC support, so office visitors can print without needing network access.

NFC-enabled direct wireless lets office visitors print without network access. Here we're using HP's ePrint app on Android

Casing and installation

Colour change aside, we're happy to report that HP has mostly stuck with the strong external design of the outgoing model. As you'd expect, the 477dw is a fair deal smaller and lighter than an equivalent colour laser MFP, but it's also unusually stylish: we particularly like its right-hand panel, which curves over to form the paper output tray. Underneath there's a covered shelf, with more than enough room for a spare ream of paper. It's great that HP has upgraded the ADF, but a shame that the hinges holding the scanner lid don't extend upwards: you won't be able to close it flat on a magazine or book.

This MFP's print engine runs sideways on, and its multipurpose feed is at the left rather than the front panel, which may limit where you can position it. In the base, the main paper tray feels up to job, with stiff paper guides and some metal reinforcement, but it's more flexible than you might expect in this class of device. Printed sheets emerge from behind a flap which motors open at the start of each job - the first page of a new job emerges more quickly if this is still open from a previous print.

HP Printer Assist provides a useful toolbox, but there's also a conventional web admin interface

This MFP's touchscreen is so big, that it looks as if someone has forgotten their phablet while collecting a print job. It's mounted on a stiff hinge and supports taps and swipes, so it's generally very intuitive to use. While ahead of most rivals, it's a shame that the menu system in HP's commercial products isn't quite as swish as its consumer devices: to a degree that's inevitable as there are more options to handle, but the interface also seems more prone to lag.

If you'd expect a 55ppm printer to make plenty of racket, the 477dw will confound you. It's by no means silent, with plenty of motor, air and paper transport noise, but there's little clunking, and nothing like the overall volume of a laser. Equally, with no fuser to warm up there's little of the heat you'd expect - the few necessary cooling vents are clustered around the interfaces at the rear.

Speed

A few years on from the first PageWide devices - and the Lomond EvoJet which beat them to the UK - it's still novel to see an inkjet print this quickly. Tested at the default print quality setting, the 477dw delivered a first page of text in just seven seconds, and almost reached 35ppm over our 25-page test. After sitting idle for an hour, the first page emerged in 17 seconds - still quicker than most comparable laser printers. With the quality dropped to the lowest 'General Office' setting, the printer hit 37.5ppm over 25 pages, and reached almost 45ppm over 100 pages.

As with all inkjets, there's a trade-off between speed and quality. The default 'Professional' setting combines both

Colour speeds were slower, but chiefly due to the long spool times involved in our graphics-heavy test: we measured a rate of 21.2ppm over 24 pages. Ignoring the spooling time, pages actually emerged from the printer every other second. Photocopies were quick, with 10 mono A4 pages needing just 34 seconds, and 10 colour pages 44 seconds.

Given that the 477dw doesn't have Gigabit Ethernet, we were surprised at the network scan times we recorded. A full page preview, an A4 scan at either 150 or 300 dots per inch (dpi), and even a 6x4in photo scan at 600dpi were each completed within eight seconds - one of the most consistently quick performances we've measured. Even a 1,200dpi photo scan needed just 27 seconds.

Quality

As with all inkjets, the 477dw forces a compromise between speed and print quality, but it's not such a stark choice as you might expect. Even at the lowest print quality, graphics and text were perfectly acceptable for most internal documents - and leagues better than the draft setting on a typical home inkjet. Paper choice made a far more noticeable difference, with colours looking drab on our usual low-quality test stock, and far more punchy on the thicker, whiter paper HP provided. Photocopies were above average, too, although again the paper stock made a difference.

Quick shortcuts cover everyday print jobs, but there's more control available

HP's recently improved scan interface software now includes auto exposure, which improved the quality of document and photo scans, but it isn't enabled by default. We were content with our test images, although we noticed artefacts in our 600 and 1,200dpi photo scans which suggested they had been sharpened.

HP's TWAIN scan interface isn't our favourite, but recent updates have improved it

Conclusions

With quick scans, copies and printing, a fast warm up and good results, it's hard to find many negatives about the 477dw. Throw in a peak power consumption of just 58 watts and print costs of around 0.8p per mono page or 3.2p for colour, and you'd have to be pathologically set on a laser to overlook it. For us, it's the perfect small office or workgroup MFP.

Verdict

HP's latest inkjet MFP combines great quality with laser-shaming speed and running costs

HP Inc has blamed Windows 10 for a 12 per cent drop in its latest financial revenues to $12.2 billion (8.76 billion) year-over-year.

Dion Weisler, CEO of HP Inc since HP split into two divisions (the other being Hewlett-Packard Enterprise) last year, claimed a lack of demand for Windows 10 products has hit HP's hardware business.

"I still believe [Windows 10 is] a tremendous operating system," Weisler told investors on conference call this week, transcribed by Seeking Alpha.

However, he added: "We have not yet seen the anticipated Windows 10 stimulation of demand that we would have hoped for, and we're carefully monitoring any sort of price developments that could further weaken demand."

HP Inc sells PCs and printers, both markets that are experiencing declines in demand as the adoption of smartphones and tablets has continued to rise.

And Wiesler's claims are supported by a Gartner report last month that found a lack of Windows 10 uptake at the end of 2015 contributed to a year-on-year drop of 8.3 per cent in the PC market.

Principal analyst Mikako Kitagawa said at the time:"On the business side, Windows 10 generally received positive reviews, but as expected, Windows 10 migration was minor in the fourth quarter as many organizations were just starting their testing period."

However, Microsoft claims the operating system now runs on 200 million devices.

HP Inc reported a 13 per cent fall in its personal systems revenues which encompass notebooks, desktops, workstations and other devices taking $7.46 billion in all, compared to $8.56 billion in the same quarter last year.

It experienced a further 17 per cent fall in revenues from its printers across supplies, commercial and consumer hardware taking $4.64 billion in all, compared to $5.59 in the same quarter last year.

Weisler said the company had warned investors about the increasingly tough market conditions, saying: "We expected that. We outlined that at the security analyst meeting and we expect it for several quarters ahead."

But that did not stop HP's shares falling by 1.5 per cent to $10.66 on the New York Stock Exchange in the wake of its results.

HP Inc's results for the three months ending 31 January 2016 is the company's first financial report since Hewlett-Packard was split in two.

Analysts originally predicted that last year's launch of Windows 10 wouldcounteract the steadily decline of PC sales.

But so far, it has not helped HP, which faced an equally stormy time during its late 2015 results, and continues to face challenges selling its products to enterprises and consumers.

Weisler referenced the HP Elite X3, a hybrid mobile product showcased at Mobile World Congress this week, as an example of how he believes the company is adapting to changes in the computing market.

"The PC lines are being redrawn at the moment," said Weisler during the investor call. "We continue to take costs out of the system. We continue to drive innovation into the system, and we're not after share for share's sake."

Following its disappointing first 2016 quarter results, Weisler said the company will be examining "productivity initiatives and accelerated restructuring" in the coming months.