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June 24, 2008

Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 review

The Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 is a portable duplex document scanner.

Fujitsu's ScanSnap S300 takes the technology from the company's well-received desktop document scanners, such as the ScanSnap S510M, and puts it into a device that's easier to carry from location to location.

The Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 is a speedy scanner that's very easy to use, though it does have some limitations.

The Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 measures 770x284x95mm when the paper feeder is folded, and weighs 1.4kg, including the power adaptor. It fits in larger backpacks or briefcases, and feels sturdy enough to withstand daily travel; save some room for the power cable, which is attached to a sizeable power brick. The S300M can also draw power from a USB port and comes with a USB-to-power cable. However, if you use bus power, you need to use two USB ports on your Mac: one for the data transfer, the other for power.

The ScanSnap Manager is the main software interface for the scanner, and it's just like the software shipped with the desktop ScanSnaps. The software lets you save scans to a folder, scan and print, scan directly to your desktop, or scan to an application, such as the bundled Iris Cardiris software for scanning business cards.

You can also scan to an email, which automatically generates an email message with the scan as an attachment.

Unfortunately, Fujitsu doesn't bundle any OCR software with the Fujitsu ScanSnap S300. However, since you can scan to a PDF file, you can use Adobe Acrobat's OCR Text Recognition feature.

The bundled Iris Cardiris ends up being a useless program because of its inaccuracy. The software scans business cards and then performs OCR to add the entry into its own contact database, but of the dozen business cards we scanned, each and every one needed major corrections. Cardiris lets you export the contact data in vCard format, which you'll then have to manually import into your contact program of choice. But since you practically have to re-input the business card data after you scan a card, using Cardiris isn't much faster than creating a new contact in your address book and typing in the data.

Performance

When using the power adaptor, the Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 performs quickly at its default image quality settings (called Normal by the ScanSnap Manager software, which is 300dpi for black and white, 150dpi for colour).

The Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 took only 8 seconds to scan a single-sided 1-page text document, 59 seconds to scan a 10-page single-sided text document, and 14 seconds to scan a 2-page colour document containing both photos and text.

Speed takes a considerable hit when you use USB power-expect the Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 to take nearly twice as long to scan. It took 14 seconds to scan a single-sided 1-page text document; a 10-page single-sided text document took 1 minute, 54 seconds; and a 2-page colour document with photos and text took 27 seconds.

The Fujitsu ScanSnap S300, like the desktop ScanSnap scanners, has two image sensors, which gives the scanner the ability to scan a double-sided page with a single pass. That means it takes just as long to scan a single-sided page as it does a double-sided page: about 8 seconds.

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Independent customer reviews from

Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 scored:
9.0 out of 10 100% real reviews

The 2 most helpful reviews based on 20 reviews:

15 Sep 2008 Don, Lancs, England

7

Good Points

Small, lightweight, USB powered, duplex scanner. Produces PDFs of documents easily and quickly. The document feeder is useful, but I find that the stated 10 pages is usually too much, and 6 or 7 is safer to avoid feeder jams. .

Bad Points

Software is limited with no TWAIN support, so only the bundled software can be used. It's fine for the job in hand, but doesn't let you do anything else clever with the scanner: just produce PDFs of papers - but that is what you will be buying it for so you'll get over it quickly.

04 Jul 2008 Anonymous verified purchaser

10

Good Points

This is a really good scanner. If it cost a bit less, we would have several more in the office.

Bad Points

Slightly pricey

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Total reviews: 4,313

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Fujitsu ScanSnap S300

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