Best Portable Scanners

As much as portable document scanners are usually trailing behind stationary models, the Brother ADS1700W tells a different story. Walking the path that portable units are seldom walking, this model accelerates the scanning speed up to 25 pages per minute, while its wireless peers are usually capping at ~15 ppm and even then they're not always matching the advertised numbers.

Besides that, something this device also borrows from its stationary relatives is the sizable 2.8-inch screen that streamlines interactions with its settings and lets you navigate the features with effortless ease. Sure, the price reflects these changes as well, this is not some cheap device, but that also means that the company's staple tech is back, automatically detecting and adjusting inaccurate colors, rotating the image, preventing bleed-through, removing the background when necessary, enhancing the text, you name 'em.

Approaching from a different angle, the bundled software will efficient document management. The software also includes an accurate optical character recognition module. To give you the gist, people who are looking into travel scanners that can match stationary scanners and are fine paying the immodest price that these scanners cost will not be disappointed with the Brother ADS1700W.

The Canon ImageFORMULA P-215II looks sleek, elegant, almost stylish. But the looks are not selling this product, not quite. No, what's selling this product is the tech behind the attractive appearance.

This is the tech that enables two-sided scanning, making this model fast and efficient. This is the same tech that carries the company's countless proprietary features.

They are the features that make hard-to-scan documents more legible. They're also the features that are trimming, straightening, and removing shadows from scanned pictures. These features include the one that lets you scan mixed document and photo batches. They are not the features that exclude automatic resolution adjustment, we can tell you that much.

What else is there? Removing the proverbial middle man and working straight with cloud services like Dropbox, SharePoint, Google Drive, QuickBooks Online, OneDrive, and more? Check. A robust software bundle that includes document management tools and accurate OCR? Double-check. Sure, the 20-sheet ADF will 'capture' multiple papers sometimes but the fact that it is there in the first place is not to be taken for granted when you're talking about wireless scanners.

Bottom line, road warriors that work with/in healthcare, legal services, financial services, and more cannot go wrong with the Canon ImageFORMULA P-215II.

The Doxie Go SE works without computers and delivers simple scanning anywhere you go. This is not the most capable device output-wise, not even close. The model does not even reach 10 ppm, which is not great.

The good news is that, to go with the standard USB port, this portable unit adds an SD card slot, so you can work with those too. One 8GB card already comes with the package, which's great since you can use this card to store scans, with the card fitting at least 4,000 scans.

But its most defining characteristic is not that. No, the part that defines this unit is the rechargeable battery that produces ~400 scans on a single charge and lets you work off the grid, without one outlet in sight.

Of course, where scanning is concerned, quality always beats quantity, hence the intelligent automatic adjustment software that this device is bringing with it. Its features include automatic cropping de-skewing, and contrast adjustment, making the scans look gorgeous. Then, there's the ABBYY OCR module, recognising text and creating searchable PDFs from images.

Without going into unnecessary details and discussing everything that most portable scanners are doing nowadays, we'll conclude this review by saying that the Doxie Go SE is the smartest investment that people that work with scans and can be off-grid on a frequent basis can make.

The Brother DS-640 is not quite as productive as the company's first entry on this list, which's not necessarily surprising considering that this one costs twice less. Still, with its ~$100 price tag, this is one impressive device. To begin with, its scanning speed reaches 16 ppm, nothing to sneeze at as far as portable scanners go. To continue, the model adopts the same tech that detects and adjusts inaccurate colors, rotates the image, prevents bleed-through, removes background noise, enhances the text, and more.

Sure, this unit is not quite as good with worn and bent papers as the expensive scanners from the same company but this is an expected and understandable compromise. What's not quite as expected is the separate card slot that fits ID cards and business cards, so the device can work with them as well.

What else can this device do? Well, working with Windows, Mac, and Linux goes without saying. But the software that comes with this portable unit is not quite as expected, especially the part where you can choose multiple 'scan-to' destinations, not excluding email and cloud services.

In short, the Brother DS-640 is the less talented but almost as hard-working sibling that you can always rely upon when push comes to shove and you need fast yet quality scanning.

The Epson WorkForce ES-50 costs less than 100 bucks, meaning that we're not dealing with anything groundbreaking here. That being said, this is also not some no-frills, barebones, basic device that is not offering one interesting detail. No, this is not the case, not quite anyway.

While this is not the sexiest or flashiest part, the model measures 10.7 x 1.9 x 1.4 inches, even more compact than most portable scanners and easily fitting an average backpack. A little more enticing is the company's ScanSmart Software that lets you scan, review, save, and organise documents. Despite the model's low-end disposition, you can also go with a direct cloud route, going straight to online storage accounts.

Even cheap portable models these days include optical character recognition. In this case, we're working with Nuance OCR, which is not the most nuanced OCR module, the name's not fooling anyone, but it is better than nothing. With its help, you can make searchable PDFs from scans as well as editable Word or Excel files.

Without discussing where the Epson WorkForce ES-50 falls short, what we're working with here is more impressive than anything you can buy with less than 100 bucks, making the model an obvious tight-budget choice.