Fujitsu ScanSnap S1100 review

There are the usual options to save the output to image files or to multi-page PDFs, but built-in text recognition allows for more sophisticated choices, such as saving scans as PDFs with fully-searchable text. For printed originals, we found the text recognition to be accurate. Scans are satisfactory, with reasonable colour accuracy and sharpness, but evidence of compression was visible around sharp outlines. Changing the driver's compression setting to a higher quality eliminated the problem, at the cost of larger file sizes.

Interestingly, the S1100 also supports scanning to the cloud, with either Google Docs or Evernote selectable as an output destination. While cloud support is in its infancy in many devices, we were impressed by the ScanSnap's seamless integration with both services, uploading searchable PDFs to each without a snag.

In use, the S1100 is quiet, although there's a slightly harsh edge to the noise of its transport mechanism. Despite its diminutive size it's fairly swift, with a colour scan of an A4 page taking just nine seconds at either 150 or 300dpi. We experienced a minor jam during our testing, caused when a scanned sheet hadn't properly cleared the back of the scanner and impeded the next one. After this we took more care to keep scanned pages tidy and had no further problems.

So what's our verdict?

Verdict

Despite their similar price and features, the ScanSnap S1100 and HP's ScanJet Professional 1000 are surprisingly different. While the duplex HP comes with a soft case and feels built to last, the ScanSnap is easier to use and comes with an impressive and beautifully integrated suite of software. In practice, it's enough to give the ScanSnap a narrow edge for occasional travellers. For more mobile or demanding users, we'd only recommend the ScanSnap in partnership with its optional case, likely to cost around £25 when available in the UK.

Portable ADF scanner Optical resolution: 600x600dpi 24-bit colour Operating system required: Windows XP/Vista/7, Mac OS X 10.4 or higher