The Epson DS-70 Portable Document Scanner ($109) is a bare-bones scanner for simple, on-the-go scan jobs. It doesn't have wireless or mobile support, so you'll have to hook it up to a PC to use it, but it's small and light enough to toss in a bag with your laptop and head to a meeting. You can take a step up to the Editors' Choice DS-80W, but you're going to have to shell out an extra $60 for that more advanced travel-friendly features.
The Smallest and Lightest?
Epson claims that the DS-70 is the smallest and lightest single-sheet-feed document scanner, but it says the same thing about the DS-80W. According to Epson's spec sheets for both products, though, at 1.3 by 10.7 by 1.8 inches (HWD) and 0.59 pounds, the DS-70 is about an inch narrower from front to back and weighs about 0.07 pound less, making it, at least, the smallest manual-feed scanner I know of.
The Editors' Choice Xerox Duplex Travel Scanner ($125.39 at Amazon) , another single-sheet-feed model, for example, is about an inch wider and 2 inches deeper and weighs almost twice as much as the DS-70. Visioneer's RoadWarrior X3 is also bigger and more than 1.5 pounds heavier than the DS-70, while the IRIScan Anywhere 5 WiFi is about the same size as the DS-80W yet weighs more than both of the Epson devices.
It's also important to note that neither the X3 nor the Anywhere 5 support single-pass two-sided scanning, which the two Epsons and the Xerox do. In other words, to scan two-sided pages with the Visioneer or the IRIScan models, you must scan one side, turn the page over, then scan the other side. With all these feature and capability nuances, it's important to know what you'll be scanning before pulling the trigger on a portable document scanner purchase.
Similar Products
If you often scan multipage documents, it's important to note that all of the models discussed here are single-sheet-feed devices, meaning you'll have to load each page, wait for it to scan, and then load another. The more documents you scan, the less practical the DS-70 and its ilk become, and the more you should consider paying more for a multi-sheet-feed device with an automatic document feeder (ADF), such as Epson's own WorkForce ES-300W ($289.00 at Amazon) .
The scanner itself has only one button (a Start/Stop toggle), and Automatic Feeding Mode and Ready lights. Everything else is handled by the bundled software, which I'll discuss in a moment.
The mini USB port (used for powering the DS-70) resides on the machine's right end cap, shown here…
You can scan fragile documents by placing them in the included protector sheaf (shown in the image above), and the left side of the paper path is configured to accept credit- and business-card-width documents, shown here…
Finally, the DS-70 can scan 8.5-inch-wide documents up to 72 inches long, allowing you to digitize even the longest contracts. Its daily duty cycle is 300 sheets.
It's All in the Software
In most cases, all the scanner actually does is take pictures, or images, of documents. Except for some higher-end desktop and enterprise models that have optical character recognition (or OCR, for converting scanned text to editable text) built-in, it's the software that determines important factors, such as file resolution and type and destination (folder, email attachment, and so on). Here, though, because of the lack of network support, destination choices are few.
Even so, it's the bundled software that you download from Epson's support site, Epson Scan 2, Document Capture Pro (Windows), and Document Capture (Mac), that determines how to configure the scan and where to save it.
Epson's scanning utilities are more than sufficient for most scan jobs and environments, especially for a basic device like the DS-70.
Timing the DS-70
Epson rates the DS-70 at 5.5 seconds per page, which comes out to about 10.9 pages per minute, or about 20 to 22 images per minute (ipm) when scanning two-sided documents where each page side is an image. The problem with all this is, of course, that these numbers rely on your finesse as you load the scanner manually, one page at a time, after each preceding page finishes. This is easy when scanning short documents, but the process becomes tedious and time-consuming with longer documents or bigger stacks of originals.
As I said about the DS-80W, obviously, these little single-sheet-feed portables aren't designed for long multipage scan jobs. In fact, the higher the stack of originals, the more impractical the DS-70 becomes. I tested the DS-70 over USB 2.0 using Epson Scan 2 on our standard Intel Core i5-equipped testbed PC running Windows 10 Professional.
When printing our 25-page Microsoft Word text document, the DS-70 scanned each page in about 5 or 6 seconds, matching its rating. What varied was how fast I got the next page ready and fed in to the scanner. In order to maintain a good clip, I couldn't look away for more than a second or two and definitely couldn't multitask. With that in mind, my best score for single-sided pages about was 8.2ppm, and my top score for two-sided pages was 18.7ipm.
The good news here is that, like its DS-80W sibling, Epson's software processed the scans, saving them as either image or searchable PDF, and kept up with me and the scanner nimbly, with little-to-no lag time between when the last page exited the scanner and the file showed up in Windows Explorer.
As Accurate as It Gets
It would be a shame, of course, if, after patiently feeding the DS-70 page after page, you then had to correct a bunch of errors. Luckily, the DS-70 scanned our Arial and Times New Roman font test pages error-free down to 6 points each, matching the DS-80W. Of the group of portables discussed here, only Xerox's Duplex Travel Scanner, at 5 points for Arial and 6 points for Times New Roman, performed a little better. The other two, the IRIScan Anywhere 5 ($99.00 at Amazon) and the Visioneer Road Warrior, managed 8 points mistake-free for both fonts.
Know Before You Go
If you're considering the Epson DS-70, you should have a specific task in mind before committing. For quickly and accurately scanning one- or two-page documents while connected to a PC, it's more than up to the task. If you frequently scan multiple pages at a time, and need to send them directly to your mobile device, you'll want to look elsewhere. To go truly mobile with a scanner that includes a battery and wireless connectivity, the DS-80W will get the job done for a bit more cash. Adding an ADF for the easy multipage scanning you'll get with the WorkForce ES-300W will push the price up even further. The DS-70 is, like we said earlier, a basic device, but sometimes simple is best.
The Epson DS-70 is a fast and accurate no-frills single-sheet-feed portable document scanner. It's easily portable and doesn't cost too much.
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Sign up for other newslettersAbout William Harrel
Former Contributing Editor
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