Review on 📸 Epson ES-50 Portable Sheets Document Scanner for PC and Mac - Workforce Edition by Eddie Gordon

I scan documents and receipts quite often at home with the Fujitsu ix-100 handheld document scanner, which I really like, but I also have Epson desktop and handheld scanners that they are good scanners. I ordered this Epson Workforce ES-60W handheld scanner to compare with a Fujitsu ix-100 handheld scanner of similar specification. Do not throw away), paper orientation guide, and printed Getting Started Guide. No software disk is included. Instead, Epson offers download links for the product software from its website, which includes OCR and network software and a detailed user manual in PDF format. The software needs to be installed before the scanner is plugged in for the first time and I found the firmware update among the optional software downloads which I also installed. The scanner itself is quite small and thin, much smaller and lighter than my Fujitsu handheld scanner. It is powered by either a USB connection or an internal USB battery and does not require an AC adapter. When I first tried to install the software, I couldn't see the scanner. When switched on, the display flashed and then went out after a few seconds. After several attempts and restarting the computer, I found that the USB cable was not fully connected to the scanner. At the end of the scanner, the USB connector is recessed, very narrow and a bit difficult to access, and the end of the cable needs to be pushed in firmly until it snaps into place. Once I figured it out, everything was easy to install. The battery must be fully charged to set up the scanner for wireless scanning. I plugged it into a USB power adapter and let it charge for an hour or two to fully charge. There is an indicator on the top of the scanner that shows the battery status when the scanner is powered on. The scanner has an on switch but no off switch. You can set the time in the configuration settings that the scanner stays on before it turns off automatically. The wireless scanning feature is also activated by a switch, but this is an on/off switch and the scanner will automatically turn off when you turn the wireless switch back off. After installing the software, I ran some test scans using the connecting cable and wireless. The scanner is really fast, although I had trouble getting perfectly straight scans and the deskew didn't seem to work very well to fix that. Unlike my Fujitsu scanner, you cannot configure the scan configuration settings until you have completed the scan. After scanning a document, you can configure various settings including a variety of scan resolutions, naming options, file location and more, and save them as a configuration profile. Unfortunately, the settings don't take effect until the next scan, so you'll have to scan your document twice if you need to make any changes. Like my Fujitsu scanner, this Epson scanner does not do duplex printing, so each document with information on both sides requires two separate scans, although they can be saved to a PDF file. There are options to save the scans as a PDF file, email them, send them to Microsoft Word or several other programs. Scanning over a cable or over a wireless network works equally well. Epson also has a free app (Epson DocumentScan) for Android or iOS that lets you scan wirelessly to your phone or tablet. I have an iPad so I downloaded and installed the app from the App Store. It was pretty easy to set up to use with my iPad, and there are several ways to do it within the app. This application is better than the windows software because it allows you to set up the scanning before scanning the document (why Epson didn't do this with the windows software is beyond me). However, the downside is that you can only save the scanned document in the application's files folder. You then need to open the document to forward it to another location. Also, there doesn't seem to be a way to correct the skew of the document when scanning, although you can rotate it 90 degrees at a time. But with the app, I was able to successfully scan documents to my iPad wirelessly. Overall, I like this Epson Workforce ES-60W scanner. It is very versatile and allows you to scan single-sided documents via USB or wirelessly very easily and quickly. The software supplied is a huge improvement over the software provided by Epson for an old DS320 scanner I own, although there still seems to be room for improvement, particularly in the area of document skew correction and the efficiency of the document scanning configuration settings. But its small size and light weight make it a very handy scanner for those who need mobility, and it takes up very little space in a briefcase. It compares very well to the Fujitsu ix-100 handheld scanner which offers similar features and currently the Epson scanner is around $30 less than the Fujitsu on Revain. I try to write informative product reviews. If you found my review helpful, please let me know by clicking the helpful link.