Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I bought this scanner hoping for a reasonable Windows 7 compatible solution for trying to a keep a paper-less home office with regards to personal papers. I have a Fujitsu ScanSnap with IRIScan software which was wonderful for fast multi-sheet high quality scanning straight to PDF on Windows XP, but almost immediately obsolete when Vista came out and turned out to have terrible customer service. I also have an HP LaserJet all-in-one which does great quality JPGs at a very slow rate. So when IRIScan offered a great sale I tried out their new Anywhere 2 scanner.
Pros:
- Portability: It does scan without being plugged into a computer or the wall. This is wonderful when I'm going through the backlog of mail and other debris that accumulates in our kitchen.
- Compatibility: Because the SD card can pull out and be put in a card reader, and you can hook up the scanner to a computer via USB and have it recognized just as a USB drive, it will continue to be useful even when operating systems change.
- Software Compatibility: The software does run on Windows 7 64 bit as advertised (as well as on other operating systems).
Cons:
- Poor scan resolution. Although the JPG files are the same size as those created for the same document from my HP scanner, the quality is much poorer. When I print the document back out there is highly visible pixilation. The documents are still usable, but are closer to a poor photo-copy.
- Poor scan brightness. Documents printed on white paper and scanned come out with a gray background. Pictures scanned come out too dark to see all parts of the photo. The scans also show every little wrinkle in a piece of paper.
- Marginal battery life. I fully charged the scanner, unplugged it and started working through my backlog of mail. I scanned roughly 20 pages over 2-3 hours, with the scanner powering off automatically after timeouts between scans. By the end of the 2 hours the scanner was declaring low battery. Standby shouldn't take too much battery, so this suggests it may only make it ~30 pages before the battery dies.
- Picky sheet feeder. If the edge of a paper is bent at all, it's incredibly difficult to get it to feed in. And while you're trying to get the paper to catch, the wheels are turning and the feeder is counting that as part of the page scan. So when I had one page finally catch after 2 seconds, it scanned 2/3 of the page then stopped with the paper still in the scanner.
- Doesn't scan anything larger than 8 1/2 x 11.
- No multi-sheet feeder.
- Notable delay (10+ seconds?) while saving one scan before it can start the next.
- The software to convert JPGs to PDF (as well as Word and other formats) must be done one document at a time. The version that came with my ScanSnap could be set to automatically convert any PDF that landed in a directory to an OCR, text-searchable PDF. It would be great if there were a similar "convert everything" option for the Iriscan Pro 12 software so all the documents I scan could be quickly converted to PDFs.
I will probably keep the scanner, because the portability and convenience of something compatible with my computer will make the difference on me keeping up with all the paperwork around here. But it really is a poor substitute for the ScanSnap, and there is no way I will ever scan photos on this.
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