The IRIScan Pro 5 ($299) is a portable document scanner that's similar in many ways to our current Editors' Choice, the Epson WorkForce ES-300W. It has two key differences, though: It lacks a battery and Wi-Fi connectivity. This means you can't use it without connecting it directly to a PC, nor will it work with most smartphones. While the Pro 5 is slightly more accurate when converting scanned text to editable text and it comes with an impressive software bundle, the ES-300W is faster and more feature-packed, and remains our Editors' Choice.
Small and Tethered
Before diving into the Pro 5's design and features, it's important to note that there are two basic types of portable document scanners. First, there are manual-feed, or single-sheet, scanners, such as the Editors' Choice Epson WorkForce ES-60; then there are sheet-feed multipage models with automatic document feeders (ADFs), like the Pro 5 reviewed here. The difference is that the former accepts only one sheet at a time, and the latter holds several pages (the Pro 5 has a 20-page ADF). You should choose the sheet-feed models with ADFs if your scan jobs frequently consist of more than one or two pages.
The Pro 5 measures 2.9 by 11.7 by 4.1 inches (HWD) and weighs 2.2 pounds. That is a bit smaller and more than half a pound lighter than the Epson ES-300W, the Epson ES-300WR, and the Visioneer Patriot P15. It's closer in size and girth to the Epson's DS-320 and ES-200. Those last two, like the Pro 5, are smaller and lighter primarily because they lack onboard batteries.
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As mentioned, also missing are wireless networking and Wi-Fi Direct; hence, you can't connect the scanner to most mobile devices, as you can with both the Epson ES-300W and ES-300WR. In other words, the Pro 5 only works when physically connected to a PC.
Like most portable scanners, the Pro 5 comes with a simple but effective control panel, as shown below.
The panel consists of two arrow keys for scrolling through up to nine workflow presets, as well as cancel (the X), scan (Start), and power buttons. The parameters of the various presets, such as resolution, destination, one- (simplex) or two-sided (duplex) scans, and more, are determined by the Readiris optical character recognition (OCR) and other bundled software.
The mini USB 3.0 port for transferring data and powering the scanner resides on the left edge of the device. Also, as shown in the image below, located in the middle of the output tray is a designated slot for scanning thick ID and other laminated cards and credit cards, as well as stacks of up to 10 business cards.
IRIScan rates the Pro 5's maximum daily duty cycle at 1,000 scans and its maximum resolution is 600dpi. That's twice the duty cycle and half the maximum resolution of all the Epson models mentioned above.
The IRIS Software Bundle
One of the more impressive aspects of the Pro 5 is the software bundle and its optional add-on programs. Depending on the model you choose—Pro 5, Pro 5 File, or Pro 5 Invoice—you get the following software:
- IRIScan Pro 5: This bundle comes with Readiris 17 or Readiris Corporate 17 (Windows and Mac), IRISCompressor Pro or IRISCompressor Pro Mac, and Cardiris 5 or Cardiris Corporate 5.7.
- IRIScan Pro 5 File ($499): You get everything that comes with the standard Pro 5 bundle, as well as IRISmart File, a full-featured document management and archiving application.
- IRIScan Pro 5 Invoice ($599): This is robust invoice and other financial document scanning, extracting, archiving, and exporting add-on to the programs that come with the IRIScan Pro 5 version. (Note that this version competes directly with Epson's ES-300WR Accounting Edition, which lists for $200 less.)
Readiris is a highly capable scanner interface and OCR application with basic document-management functionality, such as custom file naming and the ability to save to numerous file formats, including BMP, DOC, DOCS, GIF, HTML, JPEG, Multi-Page PDF, Multi-TIFF, OCR, PNG, PPTX, RTF, Single-Page PDF, TIFF, TXT, XLS, XLSX, and XPS. Its PDF editing and management prowess is, while not quite up to that of Adobe Acrobat, extensive. The corporate version supports batch document processing, and you can set up watched folders for processing in the background. While the $499 IRISmart File application is document management on steroids, I suspect that the majority of users of this portable scanner will find most, if not all, the document archiving features they need in Readiris.
A component of Readiris, Button Manager, allows you to access the nine workflow presets mentioned earlier. From here, you can use the presets as-is or modify them as needed. The Button Manager numbers correspond with the preset numbers accessible via the Pro 5 scanner's control panel. In other words, Button Manager is where the scanner gets and executes its list of presets.
IRISCompressor does precisely what it sounds like; it makes PDFs small—very small, so that they take up minimal disc or cloud space. Cardiris is a highly capable business card-scanning and -archiving utility that allows you to create a database of contacts within the Cardiris software itself, or you can export directly into Microsoft Outlook or Google Contacts.
Respectable Performance for a Portable
IRIScan rates the Pro 5 at 23 one-sided pages per minute (ppm) or 46 images per minute (ipm, where each page side constitutes an image) for two-sided pages. Without the lag time, or the time between when the last page in the scan job exits the scanner and the software saves the scans to a usable file format (which, for our testing purposes, is either image or searchable PDF), the Pro 5, at 27.6ppm and 49.9ipm, actually exceeded its rating.
But then how fast a scanner shuffles paper through its hardware mechanism isn't nearly as useful a number as how quickly it scans, processes, and saves the scan job to the desired file format. With that said, the Pro 5 scanned our 25-page one-sided text document to image PDF at the rate of 26ppm, and it scanned our 25-page two-sided (50 images) test document at 49.6ipm—once again beating its ratings. The scores do, however, fall slightly behind the ES-300W and the ES-300WR by about 2ppm and 5ipm, but they beat the Visioneer Patriot P15 by nearly 10ppm and 15ipm.
Next up, the Pro 5 scanned our 25-page two-sided (50 images) test document to searchable PDF in 1 minute and 1 second. Here again, the Pro 5 fell slightly behind Epson's ES-300 series models, by about 7 seconds, and the Patriot P15 came in about 33 seconds behind the Pro 5.
OCR Accuracy Plus
If you spend much time at all correcting conversion errors in your scanned documents, then your scanner and its software are missing the point. To that end, the Pro 5 scanned and converted both our Arial and Times New Roman test font pages without errors down to 6 points, which is about average for today's scanners, be they superfast high-volume desktop models or the more modest slower portables. Even so, 6 points is quite small, and about the size at which many readers require magnification.
In other words, in terms of OCR accuracy, scanners are perhaps encroaching on their ultimate precision—the difference between 0 and 6 points doesn't leave much more ground to cover. The Pro 5's scores tied the Epson ES-300WR but beat the ES-300W's 8 points error-free for both the Arial and Times New Roman tests. Keep in mind, though, that we tested the ES-300W back in early 2017, and at that time, a score of 8 points without mistakes was average. The Visioneer Patriot P15 was tested well over a year ago, and it managed 8 points error-free on the Arial test page and 10 points on the Times New Roman page.
To test the Pro 5 and its bundled Cardiris utility, I also scanned a few stacks of assorted business cards. The results were not surprising. Cardiris, like most of its competitors, performs well, identifying and extracting data from relatively plain cards, devoid of fancy design elements, such as gradient backgrounds and fills and decorative fonts. In other words, the more elaborate the card, the more likely you'll find yourself retyping and correcting the data gleaned from your scan.
For the No-Frills Road Warrior
The IRIScan Pro 5 is a well-built, highly accurate little portable scanner. We'd feel better about recommending it, though, if it had Wi-Fi and a battery, or if at least it didn't list for the same price as our current top pick, the Epson ES-300W, which does come with these productivity and convenience features. Where the Pro 5 outshines its Epson counterparts, though, is in its OCR and business card utilities. If you're OK with being tethered to a PC for your portable scanning needs, it's a solid option.
The IRIScan Pro 5 is a highly accurate portable sheet-feed document scanner designed for tethering to your PC or laptop.
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Sign up for other newslettersAbout William Harrel
Former Contributing Editor
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