Small enough to fit on your desk as a personal scanner but heavy-duty enough to handle all the scanning in a small office or workgroup, the Ambir ImageScan Pro 930u ($695 direct) delivers lots of capability. Between its fast speed, duplex (two-sided) scanning, and 100-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF), it can turn thick stacks of pages into PDF files for document management or into text files for editing in a hurry. If you need a scanner for either or both applications, it can easily be a good fit.
The 930u is similar in some ways to the more expensive Kodak i2400 . Both focus on document management and optical character recognition (OCR), both include an option to send scans easily by email, and neither includes software for other applications, like business card recognition.
Both also include ultrasonic detection for double-feeds, so you won't accidently skip a page in a scanned file. In my tests, I had to tape two sheets together to force a double feed, but the 930u caught it, stopped the scan, and gave me a warning, telling me to remove the pages and feed them again. Beyond these similarities, of course, the 930u offers its own distinctive mix of software as well notably different performance.
Setup and Scanning
Setting up the 930u is standard for a desktop scanner. Snap in the paper input tray, connect the scanner by USB cable, and install the software. In addition to a scan utility, Ambir provides Newsoft Presto! PageManager 9.21 Standard for document management, Abbyy FineReader 9.0 Sprint for OCR, and both Twain and WIA drivers, which will let you scan directly from most Windows programs with a scan command, including FineReader and PageManager.
For my tests, I relied on the scan utility, which lets you define up to nine scan profiles, or presets. Each one lets you specify a color mode, resolution, the format to save the file in, and more. Once defined, you can pick any preset from a list on screen or from the scanner front panel. You can also go back to the definitions easily to modify them as needed.
Unfortunately, like too many scanners, the 930u lists the presets only by number, letting you pick the number 1 through 9 from a window on screen or scroll through the numbers on the one-character front-panel LED before hitting the front panel Scan button.
Starting a scan would be a lot easier if the scan definitions let you add a text reminder to each number in the list showing on screen. Even better would be to replace the one-character LED on the front panel with a multi-character LCD that could show the text reminder as well. As it is, unless you're much better at memorizing arbitrary number assignments than I am, you'll either need a cheat sheet near the scanner to tell you which number is for which kind of scan, or you'll need to do what I did, and open the definitions window to see which number you want before you give a scan command.
Performance and Other Issues
Ambir gives two different speed ratings for the 930u. For scanning in grayscale or black and white, the rating is 40 pages per minute (ppm) and 80 images per minute (ipm) (with one image on each side of the page) at 300 ppi (pixels per inch). For color, the rating is not only somewhat slower, at 30 ppm and 60 ipm, but it's tied to a lower resolution, at 200 ppi.
For our standard suite of scans for black and white text documents, I ran all the scans in grayscale mode (which is what Abbyy recommends for OCR) at 300 ppi, and came out with speeds that are close to the rating. Scanning in simplex mode to an image PDF file, the 930u managed 38.5 ppm. For duplex scans, it slowed down just a hair, to 37.5 ppm and 75 ipm.
These count as impressive speeds. As one point of reference, the Kodak i2400 came in at 28.3 ppm for simplex scans and 53.6 ipm for duplex. Even the significantly more expensive Editors' Choice Kodak i2600 was only a little faster than the 930u, at 41.7 ppm for simplex scans and 76.9 ipm for duplex.
As fast as the 930u is for scanning to image PDF format, it slows down far more than either Kodak model when you add text recognition to scan to a searchable PDF file instead. For our 25-sheet (50-image) test document, the 930u took 2 minutes 36 seconds to scan, recognize the text, and save the file. Both Kodak scanners were significantly faster, at 1:34 for the i2400 and 1:16 for the i2600.
Quite aside from speed, the 930u earned high marks for OCR accuracy, reading both our Times New Roman and Arial test pages at sizes as small as 6 points without a mistake.
One other feature worth mention, for those offices that need it, is that the 930u can scan embossed plastic cards, like credit cards or IDs. To scan a card, however, you first have to open the scanner, remove a pad module, and then close the scanner. Of course, you have to put the module back in when you're done. Removing and reinserting the module each time you scan is inconvenient at best, making this a potentially useful trick for occasional use, but not a terrific solution for scanning plastic cards repeatedly on a daily basis.
The Ambir ImageScan Pro 930u clearly offers a lot to recommend it. It's impressively fast in scanning to image PDF format and reasonably fast scanning to searchable PDF format. It also offers excellent OCR accuracy, a 100-sheet ADF to handle large documents easily, and ultrasound double-feed detection to guard against skipped pages. It's not a clear winner on all fronts, unfortunately, with slower times scanning to searchable PDF format than either the Kodak i2400 or i2600. However the Amber ImageScan Pro 930u is a capable performer overall, and it's a potentially attractive choice for heavy-duty document management and OCR in a small office.
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