Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M review

Twenty years ago we were promised that by about now, we'd all be working in paperless offices. Some hope! Despite the prevalence of email and other forms of electronic communication, it seems that we generate as much paper as ever.

Processing, filing, storing and accessing it is frankly a pain we could all live without - but one that this document scanner from Fujitsu might just ease.

The S510M is an update of the S500M, with which we were very impressed when reviewing it last year. The headline new feature is the ability to scan documents to searchable PDFs. This is done, using the included Abbyy FineReader for ScanSnap and Acrobat Professional 8.

Abbyy FineReader for ScanSnap is a cut-down version of FineReader which allows you only to create searchable PDFs rather than say, Word documents from scans. In our tests creating searchable PDFs, using FineReader, worked well, if quite slowly.

Our one real complaint is that while creating non-searchable PDFs, using the ScanSnap software, allows you to specify where you want to save the resultant file, FineReader just dumps it into your Pictures folder. The result is that searchable PDFs have to be searched for from within Acrobat 8 or from Spotlight.

Other than the inclusion of Acrobat Professional and FineReader, the only other new feature is a method of scanning A3 sheets, which normally would be too big to fit in the S510M's automatic document feeder. This involves folding the page in two outwards and slotting it between two transparent sheets which are hinged at the top. The S510M scans the two halves of the A3 page, then stitches them together to form a one-page PDF. Clever! The trouble is that in practice, the join is clearly visible and the two halves are slightly out of alignment. The procedure is fine for archiving documents but you couldn't use it for anything else.

In every other way the S510M is identical to its predecessor, which is no bad thing. It sports a 600dpi optical resolution and a scan speed of up to 36 pages per minute in monochrome and 18 pages per minute in colour mode. At 284mm x 157mm x 158mm, it's compact and won't take up too much room on your desk.

It closes up neatly too; and when not in use the document feeder and output tray fold neatly away.

As before, there are a number of quality and compression settings, and the 510M automatically recognises whether a document is in colour or monochrome, and scans accordingly.

In Normal mode an A4 page whizzes through the scanner in a couple of seconds and is immediately ready to be saved as a PDF, attached to an email, or sent to either a printer or iPhoto. Quality at the Normal setting is reasonably good and fine for archiving documents.

If you want to print something you scan, you'll need to bump up the quality settings and reduce the compression. This is easily done but significantly increases the time taken to scan.

Paper jams can be an issue when scanning in bulk but are easily resolved: the front of the scanner flips down to expose the rollers, enabling the jam to be cleared.

We liked the ScanSnap S500M and its successor even more. But while we applaud bundling Acrobat Professional as a great move, we'd like to see a more feature-filled version of Abbyy FineReader.

Creating searchable PDFs is great but we would like access to full optical character recognition, so that for example we could read a business card and pass it to Address Book - or read a bank statement and send it to Excel.

The ScanSnap S510M remains expensive though. Bundling Acrobat Professional makes the price easier to swallow but it is still a significant investment.