The IRIScan Desk 5 Pro claimed our Editors' Choice award as the best overhead scanner in September 2019. Today the Canon subsidiary offers three version 6 models, the most powerful and versatile being the Desk 6 Business—it boasts the most memory and features, the largest scanning area, and naturally the highest price ($449). It's a lot more machine than the Desk 5 Pro was, and if you can stand its cost, it's a superlative overhead scanner for use in corporate, educational, and enterprise settings. The Desk 6 Business easily succeeds its predecessor as our Editors' Choice favorite.
Best of Three
While IRIScan's previous series contained only two models, the Desk 5 and Desk 5 Pro, the sixth generation has three—the Desk 6, Desk 6 Pro (to be reviewed soon), and the Desk 6 Business being tested here. Each is incrementally more robust (and about $100 more expensive) than the model below it. Even the base Desk 6 is closely configured to the upscale Desk 5 Pro.
As the top of the line, the Desk 6 Business scanner boasts a 32-megapixel (MP) camera illuminated by six LEDs, versus the Desk 6's 12MP and 6 Pro's 21MP cameras and four LEDs each. Both the Pro and Business models support pages up to A3 (tabloid or 11-by-17-inch) size, and both have buttons that allow you to execute scans from the scanner itself, instead of requiring a PC with the IRIScan software. But the Desk 6 Business also comes with a foot pedal for executing scans, thereby freeing both hands for turning book pages or placing new content on the scanner.
Fully assembled, the Desk 6 Business measures 5.9 by 15.8 by 12 inches (HWD) and weighs 2.7 pounds, compared to 5.5 by 4.7 by 11.1 inches and 2.5 pounds for the Pro unit. Unlike traditional desktop flatbed, sheet-fed, and portable document scanners, you don't have a vast selection of overhead scanners to choose from; the IRIScan's closest competitor is likely the CZUR ET16 Plus, a 2018 PCMag favorite that's somewhat larger and weighs about half a pound more than the Desk 6 Business.
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Technically, these devices are closer to cameras than scanners. Instead of moving the scanning sensor over the source material or vice versa, they simply snap a picture. The Desk 6 Business' two 16-megapixel CMOS sensors are also capable of capturing video (with audio) at up to 30 frames per second, allowing you to use the device not only for doing live presentations but for augmenting distance and online learning. In other words, the scanner can not only digitize book and magazine pages but, thanks to a built-in microphone and support for Zoom and other online meetings, help with presenting and instructing in many scenarios.
The Business model also supports autofocus, bar code scanning, ID and passport scanning, business card scanning via the company's Cardiris software, and more. As mentioned, it offers both a desktop button and a foot pedal for executing scans directly instead of relying solely on the bundled software. (We'll look more closely at the software in a second.)
Connectivity for all three Desk 6 scanners is limited to USB 2.0. The Business model's USB port is located at the base of the scanner/beam unit. There's also a second USB port for scanning to thumb drives and other storage devices. All Desk 6 models are USB-powered and lack built-in batteries, though the Business model does come with an AC adapter that facilitates scanning to USB storage devices instead of a computer. The others must be linked to a PC to use them even if not using the software. None offers wireless or mobile connectivity, either.
The Desk 6 Business scanner has a recommended daily duty cycle of 5,000 pages, 10 times that of its Desk 5 predecessors. Its resolution is 300 dots per inch (dpi), topping the 220dpi of the CZUR ET16 Plus. As I said, the Desk 6 Business can also act as a digital video camera capable of shooting movies up to 2,408 by 1,536 pixels that you can use during delivery of live presentations or save for later editing and posting.
The scan head's six LED lamps illuminate not only your content, but also you, the material you're presenting, or both. You also get automatic document detection; a self-timer for automatically shooting at predefined intervals (allowing, say, five seconds between turning pages); automatic de-skewing, cropping, and edge filling of damaged documents; and book digitizing with what IRIScan calls artificial intelligence features. These include finger erasing, front and back cover detection, and automatic page-turn detection as well as de-skewing, cropping, and edge filling.
IRIScan's Excellent Software
Like their predecessors, the Desk 6 scanners support optical character recognition (OCR) in more than 130 languages and owe much of their heavy-lifting prowess to the IRIScan Desk scanner interface and document processing and management software. Output formats include JPG; image, text, and searchable PDF; Microsoft Word and Excel; plain text; EPUB for ebooks; MP3; and WAV.
The software's automatic edge detection helps position content precisely, by automatically straightening it and converting it to legible text in seconds. You can use it in combination with your webcam to create multi-camera videos, simultaneously recording content including sound from both the scanner and the webcam. Everything is recorded in the same video and played back on a single screen, making the Desk 6 Business useful for creating tutorials, e-learning videos, and correspondence courses.
Although the Desk 6 Business is sheer overkill for the job of scanning business cards, it comes with the same Cardiris business card scanning and archiving utility shipped with most IRIScan and Canon scanners. Optional add-ons include IRISPowerscan, which lets you capture MRZ codes and export metadata to XLS or structured XML files, and Readiris Corporate, which can save your videos in high-definition AVI, MP4, FLV, and WMV video formats. (Between them, however, IRISPowerscan and Readiris Corporate list for over $1,000, and there's considerable duplication of features between them and the bundled IRIScan Desk.)
Scanning Speed and OCR Accuracy
Desktop buttons and foot pedals are convenient, but they can't change the fact that the Desk 6 Business, its siblings, and its competitors are all manual scanners—they can't move from page to page or scan the flip sides of two-sided pages automatically. You must turn pages yourself, though as mentioned you can configure the device to scan every few seconds as you do. I tested the scanner using IRIScan Desk over a USB connection to our standard Intel Core i5 testbed running Windows 10 Pro.
IRIScan rates the Desk 6 Business' scanning speed at 1 page per second (pps) or 60 pages per minute (ppm), but keep in mind that that doesn't account for the time required to change the content or turn the pages of a book, magazine, or document. If it takes, say, a second to turn each page (while the software saves the scan and readies the device for the next one), that should yield a throughput of 30ppm.
In my tests with our 25-page Microsoft Word document, converting it to an image PDF and saving the file, the Desk 6 Business averaged about three seconds per page or 20ppm. That's about 3ppm faster than the Desk 5 Pro and more than twice as fast as the CZUR ET16 Plus.
The IRIScan Desk software performed well, converting text at a good clip. In fact, it scanned our Word document, converted it to searchable PDF, and saved the file at 15ppm, or nearly twice as fast as the Desk 5 Pro and ET16 Plus.
Far more important than speed is scanning accuracy, as there quickly comes a point where correcting errors negates the time savings of using a scanner and OCR. The Desk 6 Business proved accurate down to 6 points in both our Arial and Times New Roman font tests, tying the Desk 5 Pro with Arial and beating its 8 points with Times New Roman. The CZUR also read 6-point Arial but an unimpressive 10 points with Times New Roman.
Overall, these scores are highly competitive and more than adequate for today's OCR market. I also scanned a couple of stacks of business cards into Cardiris and found, as I have with other scanners, that the software works fine as long as you avoid fancily designed cards with decorative fonts. Plain white or lightly colored media with common serif or sans-serif typefaces scan and populate the proper database fields much more efficiently than artistic business cards.
An Overhead Scanner for All Applications
Without question, the IRIScan Desk 6 Business is two or three times the scanner its Desk 5 Pro ancestor was. It has a 32MP camera, shoots pages up to A3 size, comes with both a desktop button and a floor pedal, and offers numerous software features for automating and speeding up the process. Its audio and video features make it ideal for teaching, presenting, and hosting remote meetings. Its $449 price is at the top of the class, but so is the scanner. The unlikelihood of finding another to match its features and volume ratings makes the Desk 6 Business our new Editors' Choice winner among overhead scanners.
The IRIScan Desk 6 Business is a highly capable and versatile overhead book scanner with a wealth of features for teaching, presenting, and conducting online meetings.
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Sign up for other newslettersAbout William Harrel
Former Contributing Editor
