Tech review: three portable Wi-fi scanners

Able to scan up to 300 pages on a single charge, the Doxie Go Plus (above left; HK$1,390, getdoxie.com) fits nicely into a briefcase or backpack. At 267mm x 43mm x 56mm and weighing 424 grams, it may be small, but it's serious, offering colour print-quality scans of 300 dots per inch (DPI) or 600 DPI in just eight seconds, while on-board software creates multipage PDFs that can be searched, viewed on a smartphone app, and sent to Dropbox, OneNote and Evernote. But there's no Wi-fi — it only syncs via USB.

Although slightly heavier than the Doxie Go Plus, the WorkForce DS-40 (top; HK$1,395, epson.com.hk) adds Wi-fi for footloose scanning. Measuring 295mm x 70mm x 42mm and weighing 500 grams, it can also produce searchable PDF documents at up to 600 DPI, and upload them to cloud services. As well as an app for phones, it automatically sizes scans, corrects image skew, and enhances text, making it ideal for small businesses. It scans 250 pages on a single charge.

Capable of performing 260 scans per charge, the ScanSnap iX100 (above right; foresoon.com.hk, HK$2,950) is, at 273mm x 47mm x 36mm and 400 grams, the lightest and fastest wireless scanner. But it's also the most expensive. It has both Wi-fi and USB, and produces searchable scans at up to 600 DPI and sends them to cloud services, adding an app for Kindle Fire products. Oversized documents must be folded and scanned twice; the ScanSnap iX100 then stitches them together.