For most people, a simple multi-function printer/scanner/copier is almost certainly enough. You’re probably not dealing with reams of paper at your house at least, unless you run a small business or home office. That type of user has bigger demands, and some independent contractors or remote workers can go through as many documents as students or academics, from legal filings and briefs to real estate contracts and other professional paperwork. That’s why they have heavier-duty printers, and a standalone scanner to match.
The Visioneer Patriot D40 Desktop Scanner is a serious machine- weighing in at nine pounds, build to handle multi-person workloads, worthy of a massive 6000 pages a day duty rating. It’s a high speed, duplex color scanner that can grab 120 images per minute in duplex mode, and boasts an eighty-page automatic document feeder with the ability to automatically scan documents into searchable PDF files. You might recognize Visioneer from past coverage- they make the Xerox scanners we’ve seen and liked in the past.
The D40 isn’t much to look at, with a fairly large non-descript body. We’ve seen models that are slicker, more compact, better for travel, and ones that offer wireless, mobile, or cloud functionality. But while this one plugs in via USB and requires power, it can handle a wider variety of sizes and types than most- from business cards to legal size papers, even plastic ID cards and photographs. It offers nine preset, customizable profiles for quick sending to specific applications, though they aren’t as easy to use as we’d like. The software suite, for PCs if not Macs, is great- including Nuance PaperPort, Power PDF, OmniPage Pro for top-of-the-line optical character recognition (or OCR).
For many use cases, the Patriot D40 is impressively speedy- rated at up to 60 pages per minute for simplex scanning, though we saw closer to 40 pages from start to finish. Searchable PDF creation was a bit slower than some on the market, so if that is your primary need, you might want to consider an alternate option. Images were crisp and clear, and colors nicely balanced. The Visioneer Patriot D40 is available now, and one of the most sturdy and stable scanners in this class. Expect to spend around $495 online and in stores.
