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Alex Tinker photo
Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur
1 Level
652 Review
23 Karma

Review on Efficiently scan on the go with Canon ImageFORMULA P-215II Mobile Document Scanner by Alex Tinker

Revainrating 2 out of 5

Great function but big design flaw: dark areas look striped

I really like this product, software and design was much better than the corresponding Fujitsu s1300 I own. The killer was that when scanning photos, all the dark areas of the photo showed numerous white stripes in the scanning direction. The scanner glass is not dirty, the photo is not dirty, and this is not a compression artifact (it happens with minimal JPEG, BMP, TIFF, .) compression. It's so obvious that it's hard to imagine how a product with such an obvious design quality issue even walked out the door. I say design because it is not a defective product. Switched to another and the other had the same problem on both sides of the scan (it's a 2-sided scanner). And it's not the photo - it's clean, plus the streaks stay in the scan direction when you scan a portrait photo. Canon support confirmed the problem and was surprised by it. We thought it was a defective product so I exchanged it (via Revain) but when the new one found the same issue it was clear it was a design issue. The pixels in the corresponding places are not "dead" because the bar is not completely white when zooming in at the pixel level (even in BMP, which has no block compression artifacts). My best guess is that there are large discrepancies between the light sensitivity levels of each pixel sensor at different colors, and it shows in this way. We're not talking about 1 or 2 such lines, maybe hundreds of them, but you only see them in the dark areas. It's amazing that (a) Canon, who have been making scanners for decades, could get something like this and (b) such an obvious flaw could go unnoticed at all stages of product testing! It still seems hard to believe, but the only other possibility is that a whole batch of sensor strips were defective and therefore many of these scanners have this problem (still a quality control issue that a company like Canon has). The other non-fatal issue is that the paper feed motor is much weaker (than my Fujitsu s1300) so the filing cabinet, which Fujitsu has no problem with, has to be straightened to get through the canon, which can result in warping or skewed scanning . (Plain paper will do, but of course there will still be a streaking problem).

Pros
  • Handy and portable: can be used anywhere: home office, classroom, remote office, etc.
Cons
  • factor set