How to find a fast scanner?

[The 7th Taylor]

I'm looking to buy a new scanner (not because my current one is broken but it's so slow). It can be a stand-alone flatbed one or an all-in-one scanner/printer/copier/fax but I've got one major requirement: it's got to be FAST at scanning. A sales guy suggested to me the all-in-ones are faster than plain flatbed scanners but I think he said so simply because they've got paper feeds. Anyway, that will suit my needs so it's probably going to be one of those multifunction units.

I'm contemplating buying an HP Photosmart C7280, PhotoSmart Premium WiFi or OfficeJet Pro 8500 WiFi but am also open to other brands.

Now why oh why do manufacturers manage to list a page full of spec points but do they omit the scanning speed? The only speed they care to mention is the printing speed. I don't care if it's got 9600 dpi resolution or 2 million color gradients as I'll be mostly using it for documents with occasional photo scanning. I'm aware scanning speed can depend on a number of settings but so does printing so why don't they even specify a typical or best-case speed?

How do I find out which scanners are actually fast?

[Funkstar]

Canon list various scanning speeds on their website for each of their models.

http://www.canon.co.uk/For_Home/Prod...ex.asp?specs=1

Canoscan 8800f is about 7 seconds for a A4 @ 300dpi

[b0redom]

How fast does it need to be? I've got a cheapie all in one Lexmark from a couple of years ago which will scan a page in a few seconds, so you don't need to spend megabucks.

[Saracen]

A LOT depends on budget. There are some very high speed high-volume scanners designed for document scanning solutions, but they can be seriously pricey.

I assume if you want high speed, it isn't because you'll be scanning a single document from time to time and care if it takes 10 seconds or 20 seconds? I assume you'll be scanning documents in some volume?

If so, a good feeder is worth its weight in gold, if you're doing single sheets at a time, because it means you can load a stack and do something else wheile they scan. Otherwise, you'll be standing there changing documents every few seconds, whether it be 10 or 30.

In that context, I bought an HP 5590C, and am pretty pleased with it. It's NOT the highest quality, but I have an upmarket Epson for that. It doesn't do film, but I have Minolta, Microtek and Epson film scanners for that, and it's A4 not A3 (but I have an Epson A3 flatbed for that).

But for document scanning for archiving purposes, it does me fine.

[BobF64]

Cost and settings contribute a great deal i think.

Scanners set to greyscale or monochrome (suitable for text scanning) and low res, 300 or 600dpi, should be fast as long as you can just scan without it having to do previews or other crap.

If you want fast, high res colour scanning, it costs more, think more of drum scanners than flatbed ones.

As a previous poster said, how fast do you need? speed is relative after all.
Whilst most of us might be happy scanning an A4 photo, at high res in full colour in a few mins, someone else might think thats too long as they are more impatient.

[peterb]

I have a Brother MFC 8860DN multifunction printer - but if you don't need Fax, then a Dual Function (DFC) equivalent will do the job. If you are scanning documents, you should look at one with a sheet feeder, and you may want to consider duplex scanning (the machine I quoted has both - and has a network interface so scanning to a computer on a network is fast too). You can scan from books etc by placing the document on the flat bed - pretty versatile and scans an A4 sheet of text in about 10 seconds or less.

Have a look at this http://printerbase.co.uk/acatalog/brother_dcp8060.php

They also stock a range of other scanner/printers and I have found their service good and their prices pretty competitive.

[ed^chigliak]

I have a Fujitsu ScanSnap and it does double sided single pass scanning quickly with auto rotate for upside down documents and handles variable paper sizes with auto cropping. It's a no brainer document scanner that works quite well for me. It's not a flatbed but then you already have one of those. If you find opening and shutting the lid for a load of documents and scanning front and back seperately is waaaaaay too tedious then sheet feed and double sided scanning is what you need.