Best Flatbed Scanner Reviews 2020

They say love makes the world go round, and in the same vein, we’ll say that technology makes the earth spin faster. Time passes with every turn of the earth around its axis, right? So, if technology makes long, arduous tasks faster and more like fun than work (and you know they say that time flies when you’re having fun), it can then be implied, in a figurative sense, that the techier the world gets, the faster our earth spins.

Let’s talk about the flatbed scanner, the reason for this review. The flatbed scanner, or flatbed, is a neat piece of technology that makes it possible to get digital copies of our documents, photos, and favorite books and magazines. It captures them just the way they are and presents them to us in a form that’s easier to store in our computer memory, on USB drives or in the cloud, and retrieve them just as easily and at any time of the day.

A flatbed scanner has a fixed, flat glass platen upon which you place the document, right-side-down, to be scanned. The scan head then moves, beneath the glass, up and down the document, taking incredibly detailed pictures of every inch of the paper. It then uses these pictures to create a digital or softcopy of the document or photo. They have an advantage over the desktop scanners, as they can be used to make digital copies of books and magazines. Flatbeds do not move the paper being scanned, which makes them a great option for fragile documents. They also produce great pictures and images.

The flatbed is quite versatile. It can be paired with a document or sheet feeder, and, just like that, your regular flatbed scanner becomes a sheet-fed scanner. Of course, you can buy some scanners that are already sheet-fed, like the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i Instant PDF Scanner. With this, you can convert those piles of paper documents containing records and other important stuff into digital copies, and create some space on your desk organizer for decorative items or plain old air.

You can also get some flatbed scanners that are much larger and can accommodate a lot of use per day. These are ideal for the workplace where multiple people will be using it. The Kodak i3250 Document Scanner is one like this which has a daily duty cycle of 6000 pages! Other scanners, like the HP Scanjet Enterprise Flow 7500 Flatbed Scanner are excellent middle men, for those wanting a functional, fast scanner for the workplace but at a reasonable price. This scanner can scan up to 100 pages at a time with a scan speed of 50ppm and 100ipm.