When scanning one- or two-page documents on a manual-feed scanner, capturing one side at a time isn’t so bad, but the more two-sided pages you scan, the more time-consuming and tedious simplex scanning becomes. Most scanners are duplex, though some of the lower-end portables scan only one side at a time. Two sensors allow the device to capture both sides simultaneously (duplex scanning), as opposed to scanning one side, flipping the page over manually, and feeding it back into the scanner to capture the other side (simplex, or manual-duplex). Nearly as important as whether a portable scanner accepts one or multiple pages is whether it has two sensors, one for each side of a two-sided page. If you don't need an ADF, there's no reason to shell out for one. Manual-feed scanners cost less than their sheetfed counterparts, sometimes a lot less. A few have lower capacity.Ī substantial majority of portable scanners, such as the PCMag top pick Epson DS-80W Wireless Portable Document Scanner and Editors' Choice–winning Brother DSmobile DS-940DW, are manual-feed or single-sheetfed machines. Most of these, including the Editors’ Choice–winning Epson Workforce ES-300W Portable Wireless Duplex Document Scanner, Brother ADS-1250W Wireless Compact Color Desktop Scanner, and Epson Workforce ES-300WR Wireless Document Scanner–Accounting Edition, come with ADFs that hold up to 20 pages. If some of your scan jobs consist of more than three pages, you should opt for a sheetfed model. Portable scanners come in two basic flavors: manual-feed (left) accepts only one sheet at a time and sheetfed (right) portables accept multipage scan jobs, usually up to 20 sheets.

Sheetfed scanners come with ADFs for scanning multipage documents. Manual-feed portables accept only one sheet, be it one- or two-sided, at a time. Portable scanners come in two basic types: manual-feed and sheetfed. On the other hand, if you mostly scan invoices, sales receipts, applications, and other short documents, a more costly portable with a 20-page automatic document feeder (ADF) is overkill.īefore delving into our top picks for specific scanning-on-the-road scenarios, let’s first take a closer look at what features make specific types of portable scanners best suited for particular tasks. If you're scanning documents, you'll need good optical character recognition (OCR) that converts scanned text to editable text if you scan at high volume, you'll want to consider the scanner’s daily duty cycle, which is the recommended number of pages it can scan per day. Frequent business travelers will need to balance wanting the smallest and lightest scanners with the need for particular features such as two-sided scanning, high resolution, and high scanning speed.

There are many factors to consider when choosing a scanner.

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