The Epson DS-1630 Flatbed Color Document Scanner ($299.99) is a low-volume document scanner designed for small and home-based offices. It combines the versatility of a flatbed and a sheet-feed scanner with an automatic document feeder (ADF), and supports automatic duplex scanning. But unlike many competing models, including the same-priced HP ScanJet Pro 2500 f1 Flatbed Scanner ($552.28 at Amazon) and the more expensive Editors' Choice Canon imageFormula DR-2020U , the DS-1630 has only one sensor, making it slow at scanning two-sided pages. Even so, it's buoyed by its generous software bundle and competitively accurate optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities.
Design and Features
At 4.8 by 12.5 by 11.7 inches (HWD) and weighing only 9 pounds, the DS-1630 is compact and should fit comfortably on most desktops. On top of the scanner lid is a 50-sheet ADF for scanning multipage documents, and the lid's hinges extend to allow for scanning book and magazine pages on the flatbed. As mentioned, though, the flatbed contains the only contact image sensor (CIS); because there's not one in the ADF or the scanner lid, two-sided scanning is relatively slow (see the "Performance" section for more). Epson rates the DS-1630 at 1,500 scans per day, which is the same as the ScanJet Pro 2500, 500 more than the Canon DR-2020U, and 1,500 fewer than the HP ScanJet Pro 3500 f1 Flatbed Scanner ($0.00 at Amazon) (the ScanJet Pro 2500's $150-more-expensive sibling).
Compared with the other machines discussed here so far, the DS-1630 has a sparse, minimalist control panel consisting of just three buttons (Power, Cancel, and Start) and two status LEDs (Power and Error). All settings, such as scan resolution, file type, and destination (email, a file, or the cloud, for example) are handled through Epson's Document Capture Pro utility, discussed below. You can add network scanning with the optional Epson Network Interface Unit ($349.99), which in this case costs more than the scanner itself, and it supports only Ethernet, not Wi-Fi.
Setup and Software
Setup is mostly standard fare. The DS-1630's packing material was minimal and there was no assembly. There was no disc in the box (Epson reps told me this is normal), though, so I downloaded the drivers and utilities from the company's support site. Navigating the site and finding the right bundle was easy, and downloading and extracting it took less than a minute. As with most USB scanners, you don't connect it to your PC until the installation program asks you to. The DS-1630 supports USB 3.0 and comes with the proper cable. But as slow as this scanner is, USB 3.0 is probably overkill. That extra expense could be better put toward a second CIS to provide single-pass scanning, which would speed up duplex scanning more than a faster USB interface.
Similar Products
The downloadable software bundle provides everything you need for scanning and archiving scanned data—a good value for a $300 scanner. Epson Scan (a scanning interface utility) and Epson Document Capture Pro (a document management program) come with most Epson scanners and multifunction printers. Document Capture Pro is the primary scanning program, and what I used for testing. It allows you to create multiple profiles containing everything (such as resolution, destination, file format, and more). There's only one predefined profile (Save to PDF), but creating and saving more is straightforward and simple. Document Capture Pro's document management features, which consist primarily of allowing you to save your scans to a file, email, or the cloud, are also very easy to figure out. Rounding out the bundle are Abbyy FineReader, a state-of-the-art OCR program for making scanned text editable, and NewSoft Presto! BizCard, which allows you to scan and archive business cards as contact management data.
Epson DS-1630 Flatbed Color Document Scanner
Performance
Epson rates the DS-1630 at 25 pages per minute (ppm) in simplex (single-sided) mode and 10 images per minute (ipm) for duplex (double-sided) scans, where each side of a page is considered an individual image. On most document scanners nowadays, the duplex rating is double the simplex rating, but, again, this is not a single-pass device. (The HP ScanJet Pro 2500, for instance, is rated at 20ppm simplex and 40ipm duplex.) To perform two-sided scans, the DS-1630 scans the first side, then the ADF pulls the page back in to the mechanism, flips it, and scans the other side. Conversely, single-pass scanners scan both sides at the same time, not only saving time but also eliminating a few steps and possible points of failure. During my tests, the duplexer worked fine, but it considerably increased scan times. (I tested the DS-1630 via USB 3.0 with our standard Core i5 testbed PC running Windows 10.)
Without the lag time (the period between when the last page hits the output tray and the scan is subsequently saved to PDF), the DS-1630 matched its rated simplex time of 25ppm and scanned our two-sided test document at 12ppm, or 2ppm faster than Epson's rating. I got the same results when scanning and saving to image PDF format. When scanning our two-sided 25-sheet test document to the more versatile searchable PDF format, though, the DS-1630 took 4 minutes, 57 seconds, which was 29 seconds longer than it took to scan and save the same document to image PDF. Granted, nearly 5 minutes is a long time to scan and save 50 pages to searchable PDF, but still shorter than the ScanJet Pro 2500's 6:32. (This is due to the ScanJet's software taking an unusually long time to convert and save the document, not the speed of the scanner itself.) The Canon DR-2020U, on the other hand, took only 1:23 to scan the same pages to searchable PDF, and the Canon imageFormula DR-F120 ($380.00 at Canon) , another low-cost flatbed document scanner with an ADF, took only 1:38. Duplex scanning, then, is not the DS-1630's strong point.
Epson DS-1630 Flatbed Color Document Scanner
OCR and Other Tests
The DS-1630's best asset is OCR accuracy. At the default setting of 200dpi, it converted our Arial font test page to editable text down to 6 points without errors, and our Times New Roman page down to 8 points. When I increased the resolution to 300dpi, the Times New Roman page accuracy increased to 6 points (Arial stayed the same), without a noticeable speed difference. The accuracy scores at the default resolution matched those of the ScanJet Pro 2500 and were slightly better than the Canon DR-2020U's 8 points for both fonts. The DS-1630 also did a better-than-average job at converting our less-common and decorative font test pages.
I also scanned business cards directly into Presto! BizCard via the flatbed, as the ADF isn't designed to handle them, though you can lay several cards on the flatbed simultaneously. The BizCard software creates individual records for each card. As has been our experience with BizCard (and other business card archiving software), the accuracy of the OCR process and the subsequent populating of the various fields in each record depend primarily on the complexity of each card's design. I had more success with simple white cards devoid of graphics and backgrounds than with more complicated designs. With the fancier cards, I invariably had to edit the results. BizCard's color-drop-out and other filters helped, some, but they weren't able to perform magic.
Conclusion
When it comes to scanning single-sided pages and business cards, the Epson DS-1630 Flatbed Color Document Scanner performs well, with decent speed and accuracy for the price. But the lack of single-pass scanning makes two-sided scans almost gruelingly slow. HP's equally priced single-pass ScanJet Pro 2500 scans much faster, but its software is slower at saving to searchable PDF. Canon's slightly more expensive (by $100) imageFormula DR-F120 provides fast scanning and saving to searchable PDF, but it doesn't come with document and business card management software. Still, you should consider it if you want an entry-level scanner and speed is one of your primary criteria. But the DS-1630 is an inexpensive solution for accurate document scanning in a small or home-based office, especially if you don't mind waiting longer than usual for two-sided multipage scans.
Though it's slow at two-sided scanning, the entry-level Epson DS-1630 is a capable and reliable document scanner for the price, and it comes with a robust software bundle.
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Former Contributing Editor
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