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Review on I R I S 458743 IRIScan Hand Held Scanner by Charles Galan

Revainrating 5 out of 5

Works fairly well for a specific purpose

I was able to purchase my scanner from a nationwide retail outlet and didn't pay as much as I see online at the moment. The manufacturer didn't subsidize me, but I'll explain how this affected the cost. For my main purposes - scanning single sheets of color - it worked very well and much better than I expected. I took a sheet of paper and put it on the table using my special technique learned from practice and was able to create about 150+ sheets before the battery died. It could have been 200. It's a rechargeable built-in battery, which I didn't like at all, but I did have a USB chargeable battery. These are optimal scanning conditions. When I say technique, I mean it takes real practice. First, there's a small bumper at the top to keep the scanner level, rather than two sets of wheels. So if you're scanning from the top, the bumper will hit the top of the paper and there's a good chance you'll get a bad or corrupted scan at that point. What you need to do is tilt the scanner forward slightly. Once the bumper area is above the top of the paper, carefully lay it down. I was only a few millimeters above the paper. It worked fine. In the second part you have to switch where you hold the paper. While moving the page down, push down on the scanner and move your hand up under the paper to continue moving the page down. After a while I got pretty good at it. Scan to color PDF across multiple PDFs worked pretty well. If you use this for stapled pages, you will need to turn the scanner sideways. There is too much space between the sides to realistically get a vertical. You're probably scanning a book with the short end. I don't know how well this works, but I haven't seen it as a great option with sewn sides that don't even have an inch of space in front of the sewn part. What I scanned came out pretty good. Not great, but it worked well and looked decent. Also nice is the presence of a micro SD (4GB) and a cheap case. Also comes with a USB cable. In truth, it's probably better to have portable auto-feed scanners that pick up sheets like a copier than to do it by hand. But it worked well for a price that was a lot less. You also have the option of using it for bound items about 1 inch up, maybe printed materials. It was just very awkward to scan the end. You might be better off using your phone and making manual adjustments later.

Pros
  • Office electronics
Cons
  • Some cons