Xerox Duplex Travel Scanner - Review 2022

The Xerox Duplex Travel Scanner ($119.99) is like to the Editors' Choice Visioneer RoadWarrior X3 in features and functionality, except that the quondam can browse two-sided documents without you having to turn them over manually. Otherwise, both portable document scanners work without power cables, and they're both exceptionally like shooting fish in a barrel to use. There are another much more sophisticated portable document scanners out there, such as the $300 Epson WorkForce ES-300W Portable Wireless Duplex Document Scanner, but if all you need is to scan relatively brusk documents to your laptop on the route, the Duplex Travel Scanner is a terrific culling to the RoadWarrior X3—especially if those documents are two-sided.

Elegant Simplicity

Aside from its colour scheme (a two-tone, off-white chassis with a nighttime blue front end panel), the Duplex Travel Scanner looks a lot like the Visioneer RoadWarrior X3—which isn't surprising, since Visioneer makes Xerox scanners. The Travel Scanner measures one.6 by 2.6 past 11.v inches (HWD) and weighs one.1 pounds, making it a tad larger and heavier than the X3. The Epson ES-300W, on the other manus, is significantly bigger and heavier, just then information technology comes with a large battery, a 20-page automatic document feeder (ADF), and it supports wireless networking, every bit does the Canon imageFormula P-215II Browse-tini Personal Document Scanner (another top pick), though it lacks a bombardment and Wi-Fi networking. Both the Epson and Canon models support 2-sided scanning, though.

The Travel Scanner's daily duty cycle is 100 scans, compared with the more-expensive ES-300W's 500-scans-per-mean solar day rating, the same equally the P-215II'southward, whereas the X3's daily rating is the aforementioned as the Travel Scanner'due south. The Travel Scanner has, aside from a power push, no command console. Scans are initiated past inserting a page in the front of the scanner, which in turn feeds the page betwixt the two scanning sensors, and out the back of the device. You then insert the next page, the adjacent, then on—a simple, but potentially time-consuming and slow procedure if you accept a lot of pages to browse in one sitting.

In addition to the scanner, install disk, setup instructions, and a USB 2.0 cable, you lot also get a vinyl drawstring canvas bag for toting the Travel Scanner, similar to the ane included with the IRIScan Anywhere 5 Wi-Fi.

Unproblematic Setup and Strong Software Bundle

Bated from unboxing the scanner itself and installing the drivers and accompanying software, all that's left is to connect the scanner to your PC with the included cablevision. You don't even have to plough the scanner on. The software bundle is mostly the same as the 1 that comes with Xerox'southward and Visioneer'due south total-featured sheet-feed document scanners, such equally the Xerox DocuMate 6445.

The bundled programs include Nuance OmniPage Pro (a full-featured, manufacture-standard optical grapheme recognition (OCR) programme for converting scanned text to editable text), Nuance PaperPort (a popular certificate direction awarding), Nuance Power PDF (a PDF creating and editing program along the same lines as Adobe Acrobat DC), and Visioneer OneTouch with Acuity (the primary scanning interface utility).

This version of OneTouch with Acuity has all the same features every bit the iteration that comes with Xerox's professional person-grade scanners, except that it includes a workflow profile called Paper In that'southward preconfigured for working with this single-canvas portable scanner. The "with Vigil" part ways that OneTouch is combined with Visioneer Vigil, a utility like to Kofax VRS that enhances scans to ameliorate clarity, thereby improving scan quality and increasing OCR accuracy.

As I've said before nearly OneTouch, it'due south powerful on the backend where yous configure your workflow profiles' resolution, destination, format, then on, but the scanning interface itself is very easy-to-use. In fact, OneTouch is probably overkill for this very bones scanner; fifty-fifty then, information technology'south quite unproblematic to main. Nuance OmniPage Pro, while not quite every bit robust as the OmniPage Ultimate iteration that comes with Xerox'south higher-terminate scanners, is withal a highly capable OCR program. Dash PaperPort sorts and archives your documents, making them easier to keep track of and to find specific documents when needed.

And, finally, Power PDF allows you to do more than with the PDFs you create with the scanner than simply view and read them. You lot tin, for case, edit text, add and remove photos and graphics, and make several other meaning changes to your portable document format (PDF) files— edits you lot can't brand with Acrobat Reader.

The Mac software bundle, though, is significantly less comprehensive. Mac users get ICA, TWAIN, and Visioneer Scan Utility drivers.

Low Volume, and Then Some

If speed is one of your criteria for picking a portable scanner, my advice is that yous look elsewhere. While, as you'll see in the next section, the Xerox Travel Scanner is highly authentic, it certainly takes its time, which, frankly, for a scanner rated at 100 scans per day, isn't all that relevant. I should add, besides, that since then much of what this machine does depends on the user's power to align and insert pages into the scanning mechanism, one after the other, equally ane page finishes, it isn't really possible to come upward with a scientific, or controlled sample, speed rating.

The good news is that, dissimilar the Visioneer RoadWarrior X3 and the Anywhere 5 Wi-Fi, with the Travel Scanner you feed a folio only once to browse both sides. For my tests, I used half-dozen pages (12 sides, or images) from our ii-sided 25-page examination certificate, with the scanner continued to our standard testbed PC running Windows 10 Professional person and the OneTouch interface utility set to the Paper In profile. Without the lag fourth dimension (the time betwixt when the final page is scanned and the software subsequently processes and saves the file), I clocked the Travel Scanner at about viii pages per minute (ppm) in simplex (ane-sided) way and sixteen images per minute (ipm, where each page side is counted as an prototype) for two-sided pages.

Again, that speed is somewhat indicative of how efficiently I fed the scanner another page later on the one before it cleared the machine, and that requires i's full attention to the task at mitt. When scanning to image PDF, the Travel Scanner's speed dropped to 5.5ppm and 10ipm. That simplex speed is the same equally the 1 PC Labs got while manually feeding the Visioneer RoadWarrior X3, and somewhat slower than the IRIScan Anywhere 5's vii.5ppm. The Apparent Doxie Q, with its eight-page ADF, scanned and converted the same document pages (in simplex mode) to epitome PDF at 8.9ppm.

The Epson ES-300W, with its 20-page automobile-duplexing ADF, on the other hand, churned out image PDFs at 27.3ppm and 54.5ipm, and the Catechism P-215II managed about 2-thirds of that. Once again, while these numbers for the manually fed single-sheet scanners are only generally accurate, when scanning and saving to searchable PDF, the Travel Scanner did and then at about 20 per centum slower than when scanning and processing prototype PDFs, roughly 8ppm for 2-sided pages. As I said earlier, if speed is an important cistron when choosing a mobile scanner, a manually fed model is not your best pick.

When Accuracy Counts

Although the Xerox Travel Scanner doesn't browse chop-chop, among all the portable scanners we've tested lately, it is significantly more authentic than nearly of them. Almost of the scanners discussed here, except the Apparent Doxie Q and Canon P-215II, scanned our Arial font examination folio without errors downwardly to 8 points. Those two models managed a respectable 6 points, but the Travel Scanner was accurate down to five points—a terrific score for any scanner.

All simply the Travel Scanner and P-215II in this group scanned our Times New Roman font page at eight points without errors, whereas my Xerox examination unit was authentic down to vi points and the Canon model managed a marginal 12 points. While scanning speed is often important, in many scenarios, accuracy volition save you more time (with fewer errors to right) than scanning page after page in rapid succession.

Sometimes Unproblematic Works Best

The Xerox Duplex Travel Scanner is a somewhat dull but highly authentic portable document scanner designed for low-book scanning on the road. While it's a manually fed unmarried-sheet scanner, the fact that information technology tin can handle 2-sided pages automatically, without the user having to flip them manually, gives it a potent edge over competing models such as the Visioneer RoadWarrior X3. If you lot need fast, relatively high-volume scanning away from your home or office, you should consider the Epson DS-300W or the Canon P-215II.

Though I'm not thrilled with its slightly high list price, the Travel Scanner comes with a near-consummate software bundle (it lacks a business carte-archiving programme). It's worth noting, though, that at the time of this review, information technology was bachelor widely at a disbelieve that put it much more in line with the toll of the RoadWarrior X3. This software suite, along with its ease of use, to a higher place-average accurateness, and ability to scan two-sided pages in a single pass, is enough to elevate it to Editors' Pick for manually fed portable certificate scanners.