Epson's WorkForce ES-865 Color Duplex Document Scanner ($749.99) is a sheet-fed, high-volume desktop scanner aimed at small to midsize offices and workgroups. A small step down from (and $50 cheaper than) the recent Editors' Choice, the Epson DS-870, the ES-865's capacity, speed, and accuracy are about the same. The primary difference between these two high-speed workhorses is in their software bundles. The DS-870 packs a full version of Epson's robust document management and archiving program, Document Capture Pro. The ES-865's bundle includes Epson ScanSmart, a versatile scanner interface that supports various (often optional) plug-ins. These include the company's Accounting Edition module, which allows you to scan into Microsoft Excel and a few bookkeeping and tax-prep programs, making it a good value for enterprises with varied high-volume scanning needs.
A Digitizing Workhorse
At 8.5 by 11.6 by 8.3 inches with its trays closed and weighing 7.9 pounds, the WorkForce ES-865 is the same size as the DS-870. It's also close in size and girth to many of its medium- to high-volume competitors, which include the Visioneer Patriot H60, the Brother ADS-3600W, and the Canon imageFormula DR-M260 (the first two are PCMag top picks).
Also like the DS-870, the ES-865 comes with a 100-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF), which is larger than most of its rivals'—the Canon's ADF holds 80 pages, and the less robust but more versatile Brother's holds just 50. The Visioneer's feeder is tops, holding 120 sheets.
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A drawback of both Epson scanners (as well as the Canon and Visioneer models) is their sole USB 3.0 connectivity. To get Ethernet, you must spring for Epson's Network Interface Panel for $349.99—a significant increase to the overall price. The Brother ADS-3600W, on the other hand, supports USB 3.0, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and two peer-to-peer protocols, Wi-Fi Direct and Near Field Communication (NFC), for scanning to mobile devices without either them or the scanner being part of a network. However, its capacity, speed, and volume ratings are significantly lower.
You can run the ES-865 from the bundled software (discussed soon) on a PC or from the control panel on the front of the device. The fairly robust panel features a small color LCD; you navigate, set up scan jobs, or select scan job profiles from an array of buttons that include Scan, Cancel, Back, and Home.
Maximum resolution is 1,200dpi. The minimum document size is 2 by 2 inches, and the maximum scanning area is 8.5 by 240 inches (20 feet) at 200dpi and 8.5 by 215 inches (17.9 feet) at 300dpi. As with the DS-870, the ES-865's daily duty cycle is 7,000 pages. That's 1,000 pages more than the Brother, 500 fewer than the Canon, and 3,000 pages fewer than the Patriot.
Robust, Expandable Software
As with most scanners, you get the standard ISIS and TWAIN drivers. They expand compatibility to third-party applications such as optical character recognition (OCR) and back-end document-management and archiving programs.
You also get Epson ScanSmart, a highly capable, expandable scanner interface that includes the company's popular Scan 2 utility, as well as Nuance OCR, a state-of-the-art text-recognition program, built in. In other words, you get just about everything you need to scan and convert pages to editable text, as well as some of the company's Document Capture Pro basic document-management and archiving features.
ScanSmart also supports plug-ins including Epson's Accounting Edition add-on, also known as Receipt Manager. Receipt Manager recognizes and extracts data from scanned receipts, invoices, and other financial documents and then saves it in its own built-in database. It can export the data to an ever-growing list of financial and tax prep programs including QuickBooks (online and desktop versions) and TurboTax, as well as to Microsoft Excel-compatible files that you can then import to one of many other bookkeeping apps. You can add the Accounting Edition plug-in for a one-time upgrade fee of $100.
Lickety-Split Scanning
As with the DS-870, Epson rates the ES-865 at 65 simplex (one-sided) pages per minute (ppm) or 130 duplex or two-sided images per minute (ipm), where each side counts as an image. I tested it over USB 3.0 using Epson ScanSmart on our standard Intel Core i5 testbed PC running Windows 10 Pro.
When testing just the scanner—without, that is, the lag time between when the last page in the ADF hits the output tray and the software finishes processing and saving the file—the WorkForce ES-865 scanned our 25-page one-sided text document at a rate of 67ppm and our 25-page two-sided document at 136ipm, a bit faster than its ratings.
Much more important than how quickly pages zip through the scanner, however, is how fast its supporting software digitizes and saves documents to usable file formats (for our testing regimen, that's image and searchable PDF). While scanning and converting those same two 25-page documents above to image PDF, I clocked the ES-865 at an average speed of 60.7ppm and 125.1ipm.
That's still close to Epson's ratings, but a little behind the company's DS-870 (by 0.8ppm and 1ipm). The ES-865 is also slower than the Visioneer H60 by 5.9ppm and 5.3ipm, but quicker than the Canon DR-M260 by 1.6ppm and 9.9ipm, and the Brother ADS-3600W by 10.8ppm and 25.4ipm.
Document management and archiving, though, requires an editable format such as searchable PDF. The ES-865 scanned and converted our 25-page, two-sided document in 26 seconds. That's 2 seconds slower than the DS-870, but 2 seconds faster than the Patriot. It's also faster than the Brother and Canon by 26 and 27 seconds respectively. Without question, the WorkForce is one fast scanner.
Top-Drawer Accuracy
Like the DS-870, the ES-865 scanned both our Arial and Times New Roman test pages error-free down to 5 points. Not only is this highly accurate, eliminating the chore of retyping and error correction for most business document scan jobs, it's also among the best scores we've seen.
Of the other scanners mentioned here, the Visioneer Patriot H60 turned in scores of 6 points mistake-free on both the Arial and Times New Roman pages. The Canon managed errorless scanning down to 5 points Arial and 6 points Times New Roman, and the Brother ADS-3600W mustered a decent 6 points on the Arial page and 8 points for Times New Roman.
The good news here is, that while both the Epson ES-865 and DS-870 turned in the best scores among this group of midrange and high-volume scanners, text document scanning and OCR in general has evolved into a highly accurate discipline. If you've been around long enough to remember the bad old days when this wasn't the case—when we often found ourselves wondering if retyping wasn't more practical—today's text recognition technology has become quite remarkable.
Multipurpose Scanning
While, like its DS-870 sibling, the Epson WorkForce ES-865 has all the trappings of a high-volume document management and archiving sheet-fed scanner, the inclusion of ScanSmart and the optional Accounting Edition plug-in help make the latter more of an all-purpose document scanner. Its 100-sheet capacity, high speed, and price may render it overkill for many small businesses and workgroups, however. One of Epson's smaller, less expensive WorkForce models, such as the ES-500WR (which includes the Accounting Edition plug-in), may be a more practical pick. If, however, you want the best of both worlds—speed and agility—the ES-865 is a terrific choice.
Though out of the box it connects only via USB 3.0, the fast and accurate Epson WorkForce ES-865 is a versatile all-purpose, high-volume sheet-fed desktop document scanner for small businesses and workgroups.
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Sign up for other newslettersAbout William Harrel
Former Contributing Editor
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