It was also noted that if the vendor’s instructions are followed precisely, the resulting image is actually upside down.įor its size and cost, double-sided scanning is great to have. Of course the folded page must be placed very carefully in order to ensure both sides are precisely parallel with the carrier envelope. Impressively, the ix500 is able to scan both sides of a page simultaneously, without any obvious impact on speed.Ī folded A3 sheet is placed in the supplied carrier envelope and the two A4 halves of the sheet are automatically scanned together by the device to form a single image. At this resolution, during our testing, it achieved fairly poor handling of fine black lines. Scanning at 1200dpi is restricted to just black and white. Black lines spaced at 75 lines-per-inch are quite distinct they began to blur together by the time we reached 150 lines-per-inch.
With its ability to scan at 600dpi, the handling of very fine grids is reasonable.
It is, of course, recommended that if sticky notes are attached to pages, the sticky edge should always enter the scanner first. At no stage during our testing were there any delays or jams resulting from the mixed weights or sizes. On occasion, some colours were too pale, however, for the most part it reproduced colour with reasonable consistency.Īs far as handling the different media, it was impressive. Again, this isn’t bad, most scanners we come across struggle in this grey-scale range. The device is generally very good at handling image contrast, although during a grey-scale assessment, any shading at 5 per cent grey became indistinguishable from white after scanning. It scanned onionskin paper without an issue and even picked up the watermark, albeit faintly. Mixed media: various paper weights sizes, colours and ink typesįor the mixed media test we threw a big range at the Fujitsu ix500. In the real world this equates to 26.7 pages per minute – which is great – especially when factoring in the overall price of the unit and its output quality. The total time it took to scan all 40 pages was 90 seconds. Our first test – scanning a 40-page, A4, single-sided, 300dpi document featuring both monochrome and coloured sections (both text and images) – gives a readily comparable assessment of the performance of the unit under the most common scanning requirements. We also subjectively evaluated the images quality against predefined reference targets for scanners.įinally, we looked at the device’s bundled Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. Our evaluation includes consideration of its performance for double-sided scanning and its ability to handle business cards.
Fujitsu scansnap ix500 scanner for pc and mac review series#
To put the scanner through its paces, Enex TestLab performed a series of independent tests, including measuring its performance at managing a 40-page document, and handling a mixture of media exhibiting different paper weights, sizes, colours and ink types. In terms of warranty the ix500 carries a one year Return To Base (RTB). It can handle a diverse range of paper weights and sizes, from business cards right up to folded A3, but because it is not a flatbed scanner, it won’t handle pages with staples or other types of binding. Though small, this machine is fast and flexible.