In most of our scanner reviews, we cite the manufacturer’s speed rating and then test the device to see if it can match or exceed that rating. That’s not possible with a hand-propelled wand scanner where the user determines the appropriate scanning speed.
Even so, how fast should you try to scan an A4-size page with the Book 7? IRIS cites the top A4 speeds for the Book 7 as 4 seconds when set to 300dpi, 7 seconds when set to 600dpi, and 11 seconds when set to 1,050dpi. Ideally, you would scan a page just a bit slower than that. However, I found that scanning at half that speed still yielded satisfactory results.
(Credit: IRIScan)
To scan a page, you’re instructed to place the document or picture on a flat surface. Hold the scanner’s target firmly. Press the Scan button once to start scanning. A scanning status icon will appear on the LCD screen to indicate that the device is ready to scan. Slide the scanner smoothly from the start line to the end line. Then, press the Scan button again to end the scanning process.
If your scan speed is too fast, you’ll see a red exclamation point on the scanning status icon, indicating that you should try again. After the scan is complete, you’ll see a small version of it on the LCD, which can give you an initial indication that you were successful. Because the screen is quite small, you won’t be able to see if the focus is off or if individual elements are missing. If you don’t scan smoothly, you may have lines that are scrunched up or elongated due to the unevenness of the downward motion. In addition, if you drift horizontally as you move down the page, your scan will be similarly distorted. Lapses like those will not only affect the look of the scans, but they can also dramatically increase the error count of the software’s OCR output.
It does require a steady hand, and you should expect to spend time practicing the manual scan process. In testing, I did get better at it with each scanning session. Bound books can be especially challenging, as you may not be able to hold them perfectly flat without damaging the binding. In theory, you can scan both facing pages of small books with a single swipe of the scanner. In practice, that can cause the words closest to the center of the book to be slightly out of focus. I found it best, in that situation, to scan the two facing pages separately.
How good is the OCR? Using the Readiris PDF app, I was able to convert text scanned at 300dpi to editable text without errors down to 8 points for both our Times New Roman and Arial test pages. Those are the same results that we got from the Readiris app when testing the Book 5, as well as several other portable scanners that we have tested.
You should consider those results to be the best-case scenario when your scans don’t have any visual irregularities. When my scanned pages showed a significant skew, scrunched or elongated lines, or missing characters, the OCR error count increased significantly. Or put another way, if you’re not able to smoothly scan a page by hand, you won’t have an accurate OCR outcome. I was able to quickly correct the few errors when the scan was only slightly off kilter. With scans that were much further off the mark, having to correct a multitude of errors was more trouble than it was worth.
