You'd think that by now most of the world's photographs would be digitized and saved on PCs, phones, tablets, thumb drives, and cloud sites. But the continued popularity of photo scanners like our Best of the Year 2018 winner, the Epson FastFoto FF-680W, suggests otherwise. Canon has a new competitor to the FastFoto with the ImageFormula RS40 Photo and Document Scanner ($479), an update to the ImageFormula R40 we reviewed in early 2020. Both the RS40 and FF-680W double as sheetfed document scanners, meaning they can serve a home-based business when not processing family snapshots. The Epson is more expensive but faster and more robust, so the ImageFormula doesn't take its place as our Editors' Choice award winner, but it may appeal to you nonetheless.
Sheetfed Photo Scanners: A Rare Breed
The RS40 is basically the R40 plus some tweaks and software improvements that boost its photo scanning and enhancement prowess. Apart from a bit of black trim on the older scanner's buttons, output tray, and automatic document feeder (ADF), the two are nearly identical in appearance, as shown below.
At 9.6 by 11.4 by 9.9 inches (HWD) with its trays closed, the ImageFormula RS40 is the same size as its predecessor, though a few ounces heavier at 6.6 pounds. The Epson FF-680W is two pounds heavier still, though more compact by a few inches in both height and length.
The Canon faces few sheetfed rivals apart from the Epson; most other scanners designed to digitize photos, except for the ClearClick QuickConvert 2.0 reviewed here last year, are flatbeds. They don't scan multiple photos or documents one after the other automatically, nor can they scan two-sided images or documents without you flipping the content manually.
Similar Products
If you're looking for a document scanner rather than a photo scanner, of course, there are scores of sheetfed competitors. Popular midrange document managers include the Raven Select and the Epson DS-790WN, both of which boast easy-to-navigate color touch-screen control panels. The Raven's, nearly tablet-sized, lets you view and edit scans directly from the device itself.
By contrast, the control panels of the RS40 (and the FF-680W) are much simpler. As you can see below, instead of a big, helpful touch screen, you get a small array of buttons—Job Select, Start (Scan), Stop (Cancel), and DFR (Double Feed Retry)—and a two-character LED for status codes.
The Job Select button and text display allow you to scroll through and choose from a list of numbers corresponding to workflow profiles managed via the bundled Canon CaptureOnTouch scanner interface software. (More about it in a moment.)
Hardware-wise, the RS40's maximum resolution is 600dpi (1,200dpi interpolated). The minimum document size is 2 by 2.1 inches and the maximum is 8.5 inches by 14 feet. Supported output formats include image and searchable PDF, Microsoft Word and Excel, TXT, JPG, and TIFF.
You send photos and pages to the scanner via the ADF, which holds 60 document pages or 40 photos (up to 8 by 10 inches). The Canon's daily duty cycle is 4,000 scans, matching the older ImageFormula R40. Epson's DS-790WN has a 100-page ADF and a daily limit of 7,000 scans; the Raven Select, by contrast, holds only 50 pages and is rated for a mere 2,000 daily scans.
Flatbed photo scanners, such as the Editors' Choice-winning Canon CanoScan LiDE 400 and LiDE 300, as well as several Epson Perfection models, like the V19, V39, and V550, don't usually have speed and volume (duty cycle) ratings, by dint of their manual operation.
The RS40's sole connection option is a USB 2.0 cable—no Wi-Fi or Ethernet—and its CaptureOnTouch software runs only on Windows or macOS computers, not phones or tablets. Handheld devices are supported only via cloud and social media sites, and as with most sheetfed scanners, both PC and control-panel operation depends largely on the bundled software.
Not only is CaptureOnTouch a decent scanning interface for both photos and text documents, but it automatically applies image enhancement such as red eye and fade correction to enhance old photos during the scanning process.
The same software handles the scanning of hard-copy documents and converting the scans to editable text. Canon also throws in TWAIN drivers for connecting the scanner to the hundreds of third-party applications such as Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat and Photoshop that support scanner input.
Testing the ImageFormula RS40: Living Up to Its Ratings (Barely)
Canon rates the ImageFormula RS40 at 30 photos or 40 one-sided document pages per minute (ppm), and 80 two-sided document pages or images (where each page side is an image) per minute (ipm). I tested the scanner and the others mentioned here over a USB connection to our Intel Core i5 testbed running Windows 10 Pro and Canon CaptureOnTouch.
First, I clocked the RS40 as it scanned a stack of 30 4-by-6-inch color snapshots, first one-sided and then two-sided to catch the writing on the back of some of the photos. The Canon breezed through the stack at an average rate of 33 photos per minute (ppm) and 53 two-sided images per minute (ipm) at 300dpi resolution; scans at 600dpi were 35% to 40% slower.
The two-sided figure is somewhat misleading because, when scanning the backs of photos, the software discards blank scans. Overall, these speeds are about half as quick as the Epson FF-680W's. Moreover, the duplex feature didn't work perfectly during my tests. CaptureOnTouch didn't always recognize the paper maker's name, logo, or other data on the backs of some images.
Next, I tested the RS40 and CaptureOnTouch as they scanned, converted, and saved both our one-sided (simplex) 25-page and two-sided 25-page (50 sides) text documents to image PDF files. The Canon processed the single- and double-sided pages at respective averages of 40.3ppm and 80.2ipm. Both scores barely matched Canon's rated speeds, slightly faster than the R40 and slightly slower than the Raven Select. The Epson DS-790WN beat all comers by at least 5ppm and 10ipm.
The last test entailed scanning our two-sided 25-page document and converting it to the more versatile, editable searchable PDF format used for document archiving. The ImageFormula RS40 did the job in 38 seconds, 3 seconds ahead of the R40 and Raven Select, but 5 seconds slower than the DS-790WN.
Passable Quality, Impeccable Accuracy
When it comes to image quality, there are inherent differences between sheetfed and flatbed scanner functionality. As smooth and accurate as sheetfed mechanisms are nowadays, there's no substitute for keeping the source stationary while a flatbed sensor passes below.
I let the CaptureOnTouch software correct faded images, scratches, and other aging flaws, and in most cases saw a definite improvement in overall image quality compared to the originals. As mentioned, however, I was unimpressed with how the software handled two-sided scans of photos, missing several company imprints on the backs and obliging me to delete blank pages.
On a happier note, the ImageFormula RS40 equals many modern document scanners in achieving error-free optical character recognition (OCR) down to 6-point type, which is far below what's needed in most small-business and home-office settings. The Canon R40 performed a bit better, matching the newer model's 6 points with Times New Roman text and reading Arial text down to 4 points, but most of the sheetfed document scanners mentioned here achieved the same 6-point accuracy with both fonts. The Epson FastFoto managed 8 points error-free with both the serif and sans-serif typefaces, which isn't bad either; odds are you won't run into many documents with type that small. (In addition, Epson has likely improved the FF-680W's OCR software since we tested it in 2018.)
The bottom line is that the RS40's OCR accuracy is average, which may not sound all that exciting but these days means it's excellent. We haven't tested a scanner with poor OCR performance in a long time.
Verdict: Scanning Stacks of Photos Efficiently
While this review was in progress, the price of the ImageFormula RS40 on Canon's website went from $479 to $379 and back again, while Epson discounted the FastFoto FF-680W from $599.99 to $499.99.
Amazon, B&H Photo Video, and a few other resellers continue to offer the RS40 for less than the Canon online store, so if you can live with its quirks, the RS40 can offer pretty good savings. Otherwise, the Epson scanner is a little faster and better developed than the Canon, but both are attractive depending on how many shoeboxes full of photos you have.
Canon's capable ImageFormula RS40 is an affordable sheetfed snapshot-photo scanner suitable for families and home offices. (It also doubles as a document scanner.)
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Sign up for other newslettersAbout William Harrel
Former Contributing Editor
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