It may not sound particularly glamorous, but the market for midrange sheetfed document scanners is a hotbed of competition. In January of last year, for instance, two scanners in this category—the Fujitsu ScanSnap iX1600 and the Epson RapidReceipt RR-600W—not only both claimed Editors' Choice awards, but both scored 4.5 stars in our review ratings, as close to a perfect 5 as you can get. Today's Raven Select Document Scanner settles for 4 stars, since it lacks networking and some other connectivity options, but it costs only $298.85 while the Fujitsu and Epson are about $500 apiece. If your home-based or small office doesn't need their extra features, the Raven Select is fast, accurate, and a great value.
From Entry-Level to Midrange
Raven, a Houston-based scanner manufacturer, offers a variety of document scanners including two recent PCMag Editors' Choice honorees, the Raven Pro Document Scanner and the flatbed/sheetfed combo Raven Pro Max. At 5.3 by 11.3 by 6.3 inches (HWD) and weighing just 7 pounds, the Raven Select is the smallest and lightest of the firm's desktop document scanners (aside from the portable Raven Compact).
The Raven Pro is in another league than today's Select, being about twice as robust in terms of speed and duty cycle or volume. The Select's competitors are frankly too numerous to list here, though relevant rivals include not only the abovementioned Epson RapidReceipt and Fujitsu ScanSnap but the Canon ImageFormula DR-C225 II, the Brother ADS-2700W, and the Epson WorkForce ES-400 II.
One of the primary differences between the Raven Select Document Scanner and its upscale siblings is that both the Raven Pro and the Raven Original feature 8-inch, tablet-like touch-screen control panels that let you set up, execute, and edit scans from the scanner itself, as well as select workflow profiles (which we'll discuss momentarily) from the touch screen.
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The Select's control panel consists of a much smaller display that you navigate with a nearby set of buttons, as shown below. While this panel does provide some basic setup options, its main function is to allow you to scroll through and select from a list of profiles. The scanner gets this list from the bundled Raven Desktop software, which we'll examine in detail in the next section.
Since I've mentioned capacity and volume, some detail on those items. The Select's automatic document feeder (ADF) holds up to 50 pages, and its daily duty cycle is 2,000 scans, both half as much as the Raven Original. Of the other scanners we've talked about, the Epson RR-600W, the Brother ADS-2700W, and the Fujitsu iX1600 all offer color touch screens for configuring and executing scan jobs or workflow profiles, with the ScanSnap letting you edit your scans directly. The Epson ES-400 II, Brother, and Fujitsu all have 50-sheet ADFs, but their daily limits top the Raven Select's at 4,000, 3,000, and 6,000 scans respectively. The Canon has only a 45-page ADF and 1,500-page daily duty cycle, while the RapidReceipt combines a 100-sheet feeder with 4,000-scan duty cycle.
For the record, while researching this review I found a $329.85 bundle whose additional $31 buys you not only the Raven Select scanner but a box of 60 cleaning wipes, a self-inking rubber stamp that says SCANNED, and a dust cover. Raven also sells the wipes, stamp, and cover for $22.55, $13.60, and $22.55 respectively. (Adobe Acrobat and some other PDF creation tools come with features that simulate document stamping.)
Connecting to (and Using) the Raven Select
While the Raven Pro and Original provide interfaces for almost every device and application available, the Select scanner has only a USB 3.0 port for connecting to a single Windows PC or Mac. It has no Wi-Fi radio for office networking or peer-to-peer connections, nor an Ethernet port for sharing the scanner over a wired network.
In other words, you can scan directly from the unit's control panel or from your computer connected via USB. Most handheld smartphones and tablets are limited to USB 2.0, though 3.0 is by far a faster connection. (You can share the USB-connected scanner so it's available to other computers on your network, but this method is sluggish and has other inconveniences.)
If the PC hosting your scanner is connected to the internet, the Raven Desktop software can send your scan jobs to one or several apps or other destinations, as shown in the image below. Unlike the touch-screen Raven Original and Pro, the Select relies much more heavily on its bundled software for everything from the initial scan to formatting to numerous available single or simultaneous destinations.
Raven also throws in unlimited storage on its Raven Cloud servers and bundles Neat financial scanning and data archiving software. Business card data is scanned, gleaned, and properly sorted and stored from the main Raven Desktop scanning and archiving utility.
Testing the Raven Select: Respectable Speeds, Predictable Accuracy
Raven rates the Select Document Scanner at 40 one-sided (simplex) pages per minute and 80 two-sided (duplex) images per minute (ipm), where each page side counts as an image. Of the machines I've mentioned, only the Raven Pro (60ppm/120ipm) is rated for higher speeds. The Raven Original and the Fujitsu ScanSnap match the Select's ratings; Epson rates the RR-600W and the ES-400 II at 35ppm and 70ipm; and the Canon DR-C225 II brings up the rear at 25ppm/50ipm.
I tested the Raven Select over a USB 3.0 connection from our testbed PC, an Intel Core i5 desktop running Windows 10 Pro and the Raven Desktop software. First, I clocked the Select as it and Raven Desktop captured our one-sided 25-page and two-sided 25-page (50 scans) text documents, then converted and saved them as image PDFs. The scanner barely beat its ratings at 41.3ppm and 81.4ipm.
Both the Fujitsu iX1600 and Raven Original performed similarly, except the Fujitsu outpaced both Ravens by about 4.5ipm. The other scanners reflected their ratings as 5ppm to 15ppm slower; the Canon, for instance, delivering 26.2ppm and 54.5ipm.
Next, I timed the Select and its software as it scanned our two-sided 25-page text document, then converting and saving it to a searchable PDF. Its time of 41 seconds was roughly what I expected from its ratings, and about average for this group of scanners. The slowest, the DR-C225 II, took 58 seconds for the same job. The bottom line is that this little Raven held up just fine.
Though I'm well acquainted with Neat financial software and had no reason to believe it would behave differently with this scanner than any other, I scanned a couple of stacks of receipts, invoices, and bank statements. As usual, Neat behaved well, putting most data into the correct fields.
Like most modern scanners, the Raven Select is plenty accurate enough to handle the scan jobs your small business is likely to encounter. It delivered error-free optical character recognition (OCR) down to 6 points in both our serif (Times New Roman) and sans-serif (Arial) font tests. A few scanners are even sharper—the Fujitsu, for example, converted our Arial text without mistakes down to 4 points, a character size that most humans can't read without magnification. For almost all applications, though, accurate OCR with any content smaller than 8 points is as impressive as it is overkill.
The Verdict: A Vigorous Home-Office Value
Working with the Raven Select Document Scanner was easy from setup through to the end of our testing. It's fast and accurate, for sure. And it comes with helpful features galore for setting up your scans, executing them, and subsequently correcting, formatting, and saving scanned pages to editable text. Perhaps its most attractive feature, however, is its under-$300 price. Most document scanners with comparable speed and capacity sell for $50 to $200 more.
For instance, Raven's next model up (the Raven Original) lists for $419.85, with the Fujitsu iX1600 at $495 and Epson RR-600W at $499.99. Each of these has its strengths, including extra connectivity options. But if your scanning volume is low to moderate, and you don't require network support or handheld mobile-device scanning, the Raven Select should be first on your list.
Raven's value-priced Select Document Scanner is relatively fast with highly accurate OCR, making it a fine choice for home-office and small-business document management.
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Former Contributing Editor
