Plustek MobileOffice S420

By Tony Hoffman

The Plustek MobileOffice S420 is very fast for a manual-feed portable scanner, and comes with a dock that allows it to be shared between two PCs. This scanner, which is geared to business use, lacks features like duplex (two-sided) scanning and an automatic document feeder (ADF), but it's highly portable and has two programmable one-touch scan buttons.

The dock lets the S420 be shared between two computers, to which it connects via USB. In back are the two USB ports, a jack for the AC power adapter, and an on-off switch. On the side are short USB and power cables that connect to the scanner.

Also at the back of the dock is a hinged plastic paper guide, good for positioning a sheet before scanning, though it won't automatically feed multiple sheets?it's not an ADF.The paper guide's position requires that the scanner sit backwards (with the paper slot facing away from the user), which seems awkward at first but works rather well. The dock is most useful for the paper guide, as you can still share the undocked scanner between two PCs, though only by unplugging and plugging in a USB cable each time you switch.

This is a different beast than the Editors' Choice Xerox DocuMate 3115 and several similar dockable scanners we've reviewed. Although they're portable when undocked, they're primarily desktop scanners and are heavier, pricier, and more full-featured than the S420. Other, dock-less portable scanners such as the Editors' Choice Canon imageFormula P-215 Scan-tini Personal Document Scanner do include an ADF and duplex scanning.

The undocked S420 measures a svelte 2.0 by 11.6 by 2.0 inches (HWD) and weighs just 0.9 pounds (the same weight as the dock). The top can easily be opened for cleaning the optical element. Although you could use the AC adapter for portable use, you can power it entirely from a laptop (or other computer), provided your computer has two free USB ports. One takes a normal USB (type A to mini B) cable, while the other takes a special USB cable that plugs into the scanner's power jack. (Both cables are supplied.)

Software bundled with the scanner includes NewSoft Presto! PageManager 7.10, ABBYY FineReader 9.0 Sprint, Hotcard BizCard Finder 3.0, Plustek DI Capture, Plustek DocAction (which lets you program the scan buttons), and a Twain driver, which lets you scan from nearly any program on your computer that has a scan command.

Speed Testing
Scan times for manual-feed scanners are inexact at best, as a lot depends on how fast one can feed the paper?and this scanner is fast enough that it often was ready for another page before I could position it in the paper guide. I used the default settings for the Scan button (200 dpi grayscale). The time for the scan itself averaged 5.9 seconds?a little short of Plustek's 12 page-per-minute rated speed?with another second spent in processing the scan before it would accept another page. This works out to 8.7 seconds per page, very fast for a manual-feed portable scanner. One caveat: when I was able to get a sheet ready before it was done with the previous scan, I had to be careful not to feed it too quickly. If I tried to scan too soon, the scanner would beep and stop, and I'd have to reset it.

Text Reading (OCR)
The combination of scanner and FineReader did well at OCR accuracy. Apart from one mistake at 8 points, it read our Times New Roman test page perfectly at sizes down to 5 points, and was perfect with Arial as small as 6 points.

To scan business cards to BizCard Finder, I had to reprogram the Scan button from Plustek's DocAction program. The step is easy enough (once you check the User Manual PDF that installs when you first installed the scanner software) select the program you want to scan to from a pull-down menu (other choices include copy, email, file, OCR, DI Capture, and PDF utilities). Within each utility, you can tweak settings such as resolution?the maximum is 600?and scanning mode (color, grayscale, black). Business-card scanning was lackluster; a couple of cards were error free, but most contained several errors. In addition to business cards, the S420 can scan thicker plastic cards.

The Plustek MobileOffice S420 is lightweight and speedy for a manual-feed scanner, and easy to recommend. The dock is an added value, particularly for its paper guide?though it would be much more useful with an ADF. Dockable desktop scanners such as the Editors' Choice Xerox DocuMate 3115 do have an ADF, are faster and more full featured, but they cost much more. The Editors' Choice Canon imageFormula P-215 Scan-tini portable scanner provides duplex scanning and an ADF, but the Plustek costs a good deal less.

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