The 5 Best Handheld Document Scanners

What they Offer

There are as many uses for handheld document scanners as there are people. The most popular application is probably for anyone studying in public or college libraries. These devices save you the trouble of queuing for a photocopier and, of course, you can use your scans to get editable text from the printed page into a word processor- a massive time saving.

Other uses include scanning text from old books and magazines- recipes, old comic books, retro fashion, public and church records- the list is endless. This data can be be an invaluable resource when compiled in electronic media (beware of copyright laws, though, if you intend to publish!).

Any business that needs to copy records of any kind on the move or in people's homes will get great benefits.

What Kinds of Handheld Scanner are There?

Some hand held scanners are purely for text- the pen kind which reads a line at a time. Others like the Vupoint magic wand below will take everything on the page, including images.

Full-page handheld scanners will never be as quick as their desktop brothers but with a little practice, they give good results. And, of course, there are a thousand and one places where you can never take a full sized scanner.

Which Kind do You Need?

Pen scanners are great for lifting sections of text from any document and beat using a desktop scanner at home for simple quotations.

Wand scanners will take whole pages including images. If you do not want everything on the page, they can be a slow way of saving snippets.

Best Full Page Scanners

VuPoint Solutions Magic Wand

This is probably the most popular of all the handheld portable scanners, mainly because it was one of the first and it works!

It has a few quirks but with a little practice you can scan more or less anything accurately. The trick is to ensure that the document or image to be scanned is as flat as possible, then move in a steady way. If you pause for any reason, hit your elbow against something (or sneeze!), you will get shaky images and text.

Having said that, most people can soon master the tricks and produce quality results every time.

The data scanned is stored on a micro SD card. The scanner will handle pages up to 10 inches tall- A4 or standard letter size is perfect.

This model uses AA batteries- cheap enough, but if you are going to be using the device a lot, rechargeable batteries are a good option.

Wolverine PASS -100 Color or Black and White.

This is one of the newest devices on the market. It is amazingly lightweight and compact- the kind of thing you can carry around without even noticing.

It copies to an SD card so you can print or input to Mac or PC swiftly.

It also comes at a good price and feels solid in the hand.

HandyScan PS-410

This has a built in alarm to remind you to scan at a speed it can cope with - a useful feature to save on distortion.

A display indicates battery life and how much data storage remains.

Data can be transferred to a PC via an SD card or USB.

It will work with Windows 7 / Vista / XP and Mac OS10.4 or above and needs no drivers to be installed.

Best Pen Scanners

Pen scanners are increasingly popular and increasingly sophisticated.

Ectaco C-Pen

This is one of the older pen scanners but it has consistently delivered what people want over the years and still sells well.

It needs to be connected to a PC by its USB cable, which is a limitation. On the plus side it will never need a new battery!

Almost all languages are supported and it is quick in operation. Draw the pen across any line at the sort of speed you would highlight text and it will capture everything to your hard drive.

There are some kinds of text that will defeat it- very ornate or ancient fonts can come out garbled. Sometimes, underlined words can be a problem too. Having said that, any normal book or document is a breeze to scan.

IRISPen Express 6

This offers a similar level of performance to the Etaco and also needs to be connected to a PC by USB. The advantage is that it will scan small images and recognize lines for tables etc. It is exceptionally quick, too- better than 3 inches a second. The text will appear on your screen instantly.

An Alternative Mobile Scanner

Brother DSMobile Scanner (DS-600)

Ok, this is not a handheld scanner. It is worth mentioning though, as a reminder that there are other kinds of portable scanners.

This will not work directly with books, of course, but it will turn photocopies of books into editable text. It will also scan in letters and other documents a lot faster than any handheld.