Customer Reviews

Visioneer Strobe XP 220 600 DPI Portable Scanner with One Touch PDF and VRS Image Enhancement (SXP2205D-WU)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I had a heck of a time trying to get this running. The short story is go to the Visioneer web site to download the latest tools and utilities. I have it running fine on a Windows 7 notebook.

I have a standard flatbed scanner for photos that is my primary use, but for quick scans of bills, receipts etc., it's a great addition. I save everything to PDF and can shred most paper keeping the documents as files backed up on disc. For tax purposes, it's ideal. You have everything searchable and no digging through papers and file drawers. I am not almost completely paperless and this is the way to go.

The quality is pretty good, and everything textual is crisp and printable. Obviously not intended for photos or artistic use, even though it is a color scanner. I prefer my standard flatbed. This is merely a companion to my paper shredder.

The current (MSRP) list price is too high, but the sale price is currently 64% off. That's about right.

Summary: The Visioneer Strobe 220 has great specs, moderate performance and is absolutely 5-10 years behind in user interface. The installation even feels older. That said, it scans OK and the software bundle includes the excellent Omnipage Professional 15 and the venerable Paperport 11.

Pros:

Nice bundle with scanner hardware, drivers, OCR software (Omnipage Pro 15) and organizer software (Paperport 11). These appear to be full versions and work in their function.
Good price for the bundle.
The scanner is fast enough that it isn't an issue for a few pages (seemed like <10 seconds for a full page at 300dpi).
The scanner is quiet and does not seem any more noisy than the other sheetfeed scanners I have (Fujitsu ScanSnap, Brother 8660DN). Very tolerable.
The size of the scanner is small and does not take up a lot of desk space, for the scanner itself.
There are two settings for the output side of the scanner so that it can accommodate both thin and thick paper.

Cons:
Installation process is from Hell, or perhaps 1995. Probably in between as it uses the net, poorly.
** Don't bother with the Nuance registration, which is a lot of the problem. Just register later or send in the form USPS if you must. The online process is a mess.
For some reason, they needed two disks for the install; perhaps they used CDs.
The scanner unit is small, but the cable is HUGE. It is supposed to be USB, but it is a special Y cable that has a connection to the power brick integrated into it and a proprietary connector on the scanner side. The cable is about the thickness of most VGA cables.
The software has amazing issues such as making the default scan size 8.5" x 14" which is US Legal pad. It apparently cannot be set to default to US Letter. Stupid, just plain stupid.
Scan quality is just OK. Good enough to make the OCR work.

Summary:

This is less for less. Get something else that speaks Mac as well as PC. There are a lot of choices in this price range. In the bargain, you can get software from this decade, too. Most of the copyrights for this software included are in the mid 2000's.

The scanner I used in 1999 is better and easier to install than the Strobe XP 220.

Installation Process from hell
The installation process was a nightmare. Brought me back memories from hardware installations dating back to 1999, nay...1997. The scanner is connected through chunky Y cable; Y split from the power adapter for USB connection to the computer and connection to the scanner. It was cumbersome and annoying. The cable is heavier than the scanner itself and often made it tilt under the weight of it. The scanner took hours to install, 2 CDs, adding tons of bloated software to my computer and my waning patience finally snapping. After all of that, the scanner refused to work. I had no idea whether it was on since the designers of this product deemed an ON switch or light was not necessary. I left the Strobe-craptastic-scanner for another day.

Getting it to work
A week later I returned to the task of trying to make the crap-scanner work. It will work this time, sure it will, I mused trying to fool myself into wasting more time on scanner-fail. I connected the scanner to the computer and waited for my computer to recognize it. And I waited...and waited...and kept waiting. Since there is no ON button or nice green light to let me know whether this crapshoot was even on, I went onto prodding and clicking any and all buttons McCrappy had. Alas, there was only one greay button at the side. I pressed. Nothing. Pressed again. Nothing. Pressed and Held. Nada.

Finally, as if by some miracle, my computer recognized it and told me to calibrated. I hastened with a semi-victorious hope (maybe this will work!) and inserted the calibration page and waited...waited some more. Page aligned with the arrows? Check. Is the Crap-scanner on? No way to check. Grey button? Pressed. Nada. Check another electric plug? Nothing. Restarting the computer? Nothing worked. Finally, after the 10th unplug/plug back in of the cables...it worked!!!!

So, I quickly calibrated, before it decided to bail out on me again. Then I put in a test page for scanning.

Software
It has an unfriendly interface. Full of useless stuff and meager setting options.

Black and White scanning
The text was clear but lopsided. A LOT. I calibrated again. Lopsided again. Calibrated again and still lopsided. Black and white photo scanning had terrible quality.

Color Scanning
Let me laugh a bit here as I review the "color" scanning. Yes, there was color and there was scanning. Scanning the photo it looked like a pictured taken with a 1 MegaPixel camera, the ones you would find 10 years ago then scanned by a scanner of also 10 years ago. There were vertical lines running through the picture scan. It was bloody awful. Yes, I did scan on picture mode and played around with the settings to try to make It better. I checked the settings, the highest resolution was 600 dpi! (See shared pictures above.)

Conclusion
Bloody awful crap-tastic scanner. :D

I have had a series of Stobe XP Scanners over the past 8 years and I have been very happy with all of them. I had to buy a new Visioneer scanner because my XP 200 was not compatible with Vista. I had to return the first Strobe XP 220 because the paper feed jammed frequently. The second unit is not sensitive enough to sense thin paper or receipts. I will have to return this unit also.

Out of frustration I bought the ScanSnap S300. It is a great scnanner and worked perfectly right out of the box. The ScanSnap software is very basic compared to Paperport. I scan into the ScanSanp software but use Paperport to manage my documents. This adds several steps, but ScanSnap software does not have all the features you need to manage documents.

If you have Version 10 of Paperport with a Visioneer Scanner, you will disappointed with the Vista Compatible Version 11 of Paperport. Many of the best features of Paperport have been removed. I can no longer print to Paperport directly from many of my programs. Having said that, Paperport is still the best low cost document manager I have used.

To start with the good... The scanner has a small footprint, easily scans small items, is fast, and provides a good color scan. So yes, this scanner works like it promises, but the story is far from over.

The bad almost outweighs the good however... The installation is a pain and looks over a decade old. The registration process for software asks for a serial number which doesn't exist in the packaging, but is in the help menu of the software that isn't yet done installing. Since this is a straight through scanner, it means it will need periodic cleaning and calibration... this has always been a pain with this type of scanner and is only slightly better with this iteration, you still need to store the cleaning and calibration sheets somewhere you can find them later. The scanner only scans one page per file (you can merge them after the fact, but there is no add a page to this document feature). The scanner is single sided so two sided documents require twice as much scanning. There is no document feeding option so it can be laborious for multi-page documents.

If Visioneer is listening... For this price point, I hope they can modernize the software and user interface in later releases and add a flip-out document feed for at least 5 pages (preferably more). In a perfect world duplex scanning would be nice too, but I know I'm pushing it now... As it stands today, it's hard to recommend this scanner when you can easily get an all in one printer and scanner with a document feeder for less than half this price, for example: Canon Pixma MP530 Office All-In-One Inkjet Photo Printer. Now I know this solves a different need given its small footprint and direct no-nonsense access to scanning (especially for business cards and receipts), but with all the compromises that it's bringing along, it's hard not to look for alternative solutions.

Visioneere products are great, but they are obsoleted too quickly. I had XP200 and one of their flat bed that worked with Windows XP , but they would not provide software for Windows 7. I had to give them away and purchase the XP220. They supplied Nuance Paperport 11 sofware with the XP220 , but I had to spend $80.00 for Paperport 12 upgrade to make it suitable for my use.

Before you purchase this item - make sure you understand the difference between Paperport 11 & 12. PP 11 may be all you need, but the printer driver cannot be downloaded to PP 11. Get ready to pay about $80.00 to $100.00 for PP 12 upgrade.
Also, before installing make sure you read the instructions at least three times , and do exactly as they say, or you will be working several hours to correct the problems.

Using the Visioneer Strobe with Windows XP works fine for us; except the unit is much larger than expected and may not be practical enough in size to accompany business travel.

The technology in terms of size, speed, greater compatibility, and ergonomics could certainly be improved. However, quality of scans are slightly better than our all-in-one printer with the inclusion of "text capturing." In general, the strobe is recommended for those who appreciate the features it offers and only need to scan limited sized prints (e.g. papers, receipts, or photos).

This scanner is very different from the scanners I have used in the past. I am used to the "flat bed" type of scanner, which has a glass surface (that never stays clean), and it scans by the light passing underneath the glass. This scanner was moderately difficult to set up, but once done, it worked great with Windows XP. It is relatively simple and straightforward to scan any type of paper document, including photographs. This would be the ideal scanner for any type of small business, especially one that is attempting to go "paperless", as the PDF file output capability can make a searchable file out of virtually all types of documents. It is also fast, which can be important in a business situation with a high volume of documents. For home use, although the "flat bed" scanners have their problems, they do allow you to scan objects other than paper, such as jewelry, coins, etc. So, with this type of scanner, you would lose that feature, but, if that is not important to you, and you want a high quality paper document and photograph scanner, then, this is the scanner for you.

I liked the product but dispite doing all the suggestions and attempting to reach tech support it continued to have a black stripe down center, so had to return it. Needs better support.

The installation is so difficult and requires more time than I am willing to spend on a scanner that is supposed to be plug and play more like plug and throw away. Get something else that is easier to install. The website has very little in documentation for such a well documented problem, you would think this company would look at the Amazon site that reviews its products and resolve the installation problem. Looks like they are more willing to lose business than fix a problem.