Customer Reviews

Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 Instant PDF Sheet-Fed Mobile Scanner (PA03603-B005)

5 star:		(198)
4 star:		(51)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

The ScanSnap S1300 rocks and this page doesn't do it justice.
BTW, the difference between the ScanSnap S300 and S1300 is simple.
S1300 works with PC and MAC. S300 only works with PC. Get the S1300.
It scans FAST and PDFs pop up on my PC immediately. It does OCR in the background while the PC is idle.
Great, great quality. My old Epson Perfection 1240 never scanned docs with such clarity.
One drawback...you can't use TWAIN with the ScanSnap series. So no "import from scanner" in Photoshop.
But this things will scan a JPG that can you later open in Photoshop. No worries.
As a designer, I'm not impacted since I rarely scan anything in color these days.
(It does scan in full color, btw...really nice quality).
I'll let the video show you real-world usage.
Personal stuff has been blurred. ;)
You can watch it at you of the tube
and search for the following kB7268TGEng.

I was thinking about the 1500M but then realized that the software was for Mac only and that making it work with a PC using the great software that is bundled would not be possible. Sure you can get the scanner to work but not all of ease of use features with profiles etc.

I like the Scan Snap software, it is easy to use. I did not use the manual to figure it out(beyond checking what needed to be installed).

You simply select active Profile for your scanning task and then it is a one-click affair.

Scan to a file
Scan to Evernote (I had to configure, very easy to-do)
Scan to email
Scan to Card-Iris
Scan to Word
Scan to Excel
etc.

Could this get any easier?

Page Per Minute:
8 supposedly but if you turn on the special PDF feature to make the document SEARCH-ABLE then the PPM goes down or at least the post-scan processing takes slightly longer.

Small size benefits:
* I like the ability to take it with me to a meeting where I know I will want to share notes
* small footprint on my desk (I like this)
* when you fold up the trays the 1300 is just a tiny little box

Small size issues:
* the paper tray cannot hold as many sheets as the larger models
* guide rails are small and papers can sometimes get fed in at an angle if your paper is curling up a little, I have to assume that with bigger guide rails that would help keep the paper straight
* if you have the space and you want to be able to do large batches of scans I have to assume the larger SCAN SNAPS would be a better choice (they can process more PPM too).

power from USB:
* the option to power form two USB ports is pretty nifty
* this feature is useful for people that travel and do some serious word warrior computing


Lastly, my use case (so that you can determine if my advice applies):
* I am a GTD user and scansnap is part of my process of processing my inbox (getting to zero).
* I scan a lot of stuff to evernote (magazine articles/notes/project related documents)
* I scan all my bills and tax related documents to an encrypted folder
* I scan business cards and use card iris to send to entourage
* My goal of FILING less stuff is a success thanks to the EASE of use of the Scan SNAP
* my goal of shredding old files after scanning is a success

I own other scanners, and they are PERFECT for scanning a few important documents for a task but not for BULK SCANNING jobs. WAY too many steps and too slow! I strongly recommend SCANSNAP scanners.

Update 7/8/11: It's been working quite well. Software is poor, but I'm more or less used to it. To their credit Fujitsu has provided 10.7 driver updates, so I bumped the review from 3 to 4 stars.

I've been looking for this scanner for 15 years. It's good enough. It could be better, but it's good enough. If it lasts for two years I'll happily buy it again at the same price.

The hardware is essentially perfect. It's a bit annoying that you need two USB cables if you want to avoid the generic (mediocre) power brick, but blame that on USB. We should all be using either old style firewire or never coming USB 3, but we're stuck with USB 2. It scans both sides of paper at once. Yes, DUPLEX.

Although it's primarily a document scanner, I've used it scan color prints. The results were not professional quality, but they were darned good and fast.

The documentation is excellent.

The software is mediocre. Some of the bundled OS X software is so old it's non-native on Intel machines, fortunately you can omit that. Unlike the higher end machines you don't get Adobe's superb PDF/OCR combination (yes, once Adobe was competent), you get a much less efficient product called ABBY FineReader. Even so, it does produce PDF images with searchable OCRd text indices.

Most importantly, OS X Spotlight WILL index the text associated with these PDF image files.

The mediocrity extends to the ScanSnap Manager UI and workflow. Clearly this was a low bid contract. Don't expect much in the way of upgrades or future products. The scans, however, can be sent to products like DevonThink Pro ($150) for processing.

The scanner uses proprietary drives. This is perhaps the most lethal problem. If they're not upgraded we can be sure that within 3 years they won't work on OS X. Fujitsu, notoriously, does not provide new versions of ScanSnap Manager without a hardware purchase.

There are other problems with the software, but so far it hasn't been unstable.

In summary, 2 star software, 5 star hardware, gives a 3 star review. Surprisingly, I still love the product. If Apple were ever to produce a scanner, it would be a lot like this, though with a better power adapter and infinitely better software.

Even though I have flatbed scanners and a wand scanner, I decided I needed something faster that the flatbed with less tweaking than the wand scanner (fast and OK for images, iffy for documents). I've been wanting to buy either the S1300 or the S1500 based on the great Amazon reviews, but couldn't decide which.

Pros for the S1300 were:

Support for both Mac and PC (have both)
Portability
Price

Cons were:
10 sheet ADF limit
Slower speed (10 ppm versus 20 ppm for S1500)
Lacks full Adobe Acrobat product

Ultimately I decided to "settle" for the S1300, but I'm very happy.

First, it turns out you can actually put far more than 10 sheets in the ADF. The important thing is that the first few pages feed well. The additional pages will fall into place if you've taken moderate care to stack them neatly. I've scanned documents at least 35 pages long with no trouble.

The "slower" speed hasn't been a problem for me. In the past few days I've already scanned inches worth of documents (7" stack is waiting to be shredded) - I anticipating being entirely paper free at work in a week. Ironically, work finally (after months of waiting) got me set up with a XEROX Workcenter 7346. I think the S1300 is actually faster for me, because I can multi-task while the S1300 chugs at my desk (fwiw, I am using a netbook to ingest the scans while working at my "work" desktop).

While I do love having a complete version of Adobe Acrobat, the software included with the ScanSnap lets you do most stuff that's really important - OCR, rotating pages, deleting pages, etc. I have found it's useful, when scanning a stack of documents, to take a moment after each scan to name the thing (e.g., yymmdd description). Renaming is a snap, just hit F2 and start typing the new name. No need to add the ".pdf" extension, that gets added automatically.

The business card software is nice as well, though I find I have to go through and QA the OCR "guesses." Since I haven't had a business card scanner before, I don't know how this compares.

Lastly, this little unit works great if you have a need to use it on the road. I had two multi-hour flight delays this week. I went ahead and set up the ScanSnap with my netbook and chugged through stacks of paper I'd been dragging around for far too long. So awesome that I could do so without any access to power (though I did find outlets so I wasn't draining my netbook).

Definitely recommend the S1300 for anyone who wants to go paperless!

I purchased this a few weeks ago and I run on a Mac Book Pro laptop.
1. The setup was super easy
2. the foot print is small
3. Pay attention to the fact that scanner ADF only supports 10 pages. Anything above that will stick together.
4. Once you are connected, put the paper in and press the blue button, it is a snap, no pun intended.
5. The software works well and is easy to use.
6. The scanner does align crooked paper. I have put business cards, receipts, airline tickets, cab receipts and they all work great.

I have owned numerous hand held, flatbed, and multifunction scanners over the last 20+ years and the S1300 is the best one yet. In the two weeks I have owned it I have scanned in a stack of paperwork and documents 28" high and a 4" stack of business cards. Of those thousands of pages I've experienced about 10 paper jams and 2 double-feeds. All of them were because of the documents and not the scanner. Clearing jams and double-feeds is easy and the scanner automatically rejects the scan so you can feed the docs right back in. The specifications indicate the sheet feeder holds 10 pages, but 12 pages of normal weights will feed through easily. The sheet feeder doesn't wrap or bend the documents like most sheet-fed scanners so cardboard stock and business cards pass through easily and aren't bent in any way.

The bundled software is what really makes the scanner shine. ScanSnap Organizer and ScanSnap Viewer make it extremely easy to edit the PDF documents and convert them to email or Word, Excel or PowerPoint. The Viewer allows you to rotate individual pages, change the page order, delete pages, and even crop out anything on a page you don't want. When scanning in duplex mode the software does a great job of detecting and discarding blank pages.

The only negatives I can think of are the included documentation is very sparse, even the documentation on the CD. The software is so easy to use there's really no need for extensive documentation though. The business card software is not quite as good as the ScanSnap software, but does a fair job of OCR and picking out name and address information. I found about 40% of scanned cards need to be manually edited. The only complaint with the hardware is visible white streaks when scanning images at the higher resolution settings to .JPG format. Cleaning the scan heads helps but it appears the streaks are caused by the sheet feeder leaving slight impressions which are picked up by the sensitive scan heads.

We have 2 ScanSnap 300Ms here, several 1500s and now I have the 1300 on my desk. This scanner works flawlessly.

It did take a little time for the rollers to work in, it wasn't gripping paper right at the beginning, but after about a 100 scans everything fell into place.

Colors are good, resolution is great.

As a desk scanner - this is about as good as it gets.

Wish your S1300 would scan faster? Here's a tip that'll speed things up significantly. I use a Mac so this is not advice for PC users.

-Go to your Dock and click on the ScanSnap Manager icon to make it the front running application.
-Click on the ScanSnap Manager Menu Item
-Select "Settings".
-In the settings window uncheck "Use Quick Menu".
-Select the "Scanning" tab.
-Click on the "Image quality" button and set it to "Better" (instead of "Best" or "Excellent").

If "Image quality" was previously set to "Best" by default you'll now see your scans speed up quite a bit and you'll still have sufficient detail should you ever need to print any of your scanned documents.

Another tip: I highly recommend Mariner's Paperless software to store your scans -- it's been working very well for me. Of course, you can simply use the Finder to store and sort through your docs for no extra cost, but Paperless has some great features, such as combining separately scanned docs. Give it a look:)

After too many years to count, my Card Scan 700 from Card Scanner finally gave up the ghost and I decided a scanner that afforded the flexibility of handling larger documents would be an ideal replacement. The Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 eventually rose to the top of my selection list after an exhaustive online product comparison. The scanner was easy to install and simple to operate. I was creating high quality scanned documents within minutes of opening the box. However, if you're looking primarily for a business card scanner - this is not the product for you. After working with Fujitsu's `CardMinder' software for about two hours, I finally came to the realization that the software is not sufficiently robust to support a business application. It only captures four fields (name, company, phone number and email address) in the database and typically gets those all messed up. I never did figure out how to export the contacts to Outlook. I reluctantly ordered a CardScanner Executive to handle my business card and contact management requirements and will keep the S1300 for larger document scanning needs.

I had this up and running in less than 10 minutes. Scanned over 200 pages in less than a 1/2 hour. It is a lot smaller than I expected, but that just leaves more room on my desk. Great product, can't say enough about it. I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit with no problems.