Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i Review
Pros: High quality scans, easy to use software
Cons: Relatively slow, 10-page document feeder feels limiting
Manufacturer: Fujitsu
Our Verdict
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Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i | |||||
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| Awards |  |  |  | | |
| Price | $295 List $259.99 at Amazon | $495 List $399.99 at Amazon | $110 List Check Price at Amazon | $0.00 List | $100 List |
Overall Score  |
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| Star Rating | |||||
| Pros | High quality scans, easy to use software | Fast, high-quality scans, easy to use, touch screen interface, 50 page feed tray | Great scan quality, small and portable, simple operation, good OCR | Now available for free, high quality scans, great text recognition | Excellent photo scan quality, easy setup, relatively inexpensive |
| Cons | Relatively slow, 10-page document feeder feels limiting | Expensive, Optical Character Recognition not perfect | Slow | Slow and laborious for multi-page documents | Software can be a bit clunky, very slow for long text documents |
| Bottom Line | This model produces high-quality scans, is easy to use, and is good at scanning lots of short documents | The fastest, most fully-featured, easy to use, and highest quality scanner we've tested | A great balance between performance, quality, and portability, all at a reasonable price | A perfect free option for those that occasionally scan shorter documents and receipts | An excellent and reasonably inexpensive flatbed option for digitizing documents and photos |
| Rating Categories | Fujitsu ScanSnap S1... | Fujitsu ScanSnap iX... | Brother DS-640 | Scanner Pro App | Epson Perfection V39 |
| Scanning Performance (35%) | |||||
| Speed (30%) | |||||
| Software (20%) | |||||
| User Friendliness (15%) | |||||
| Specs | Fujitsu ScanSnap S1... | Fujitsu ScanSnap iX... | Brother DS-640 | Scanner Pro App | Epson Perfection V39 |
| Paper Sizes | A4, A5, A6, B5, B6, Business card, Post card, Letter, Legal and Custom size | Max: 11" x 17" Min: 2" x 2" |
Max: 8.5" x 32" | Any size | Max: 8.5" x 11.7" |
| Weight (pounds) | 3.1 lbs | 7.5 lbs | 1.0 lbs | N/A | 3.4 lbs |
| Resolution (dpi) | 600 x 600 | 600 x 600 | 600 x 600 | N/A | 4800 x 4800 |
| Simplex/Duplex | Duplex | Duplex | Simplex | Simplex | Simplex |
| Scanning Modes | Color, Grayscale, Black and White, Automatic Detection | Color, Grayscale, Auto | 24-bit color, 8-bit (256 levels) gray scale, 1 bit monochrome | Color Document, Black and White, Color Photo, Grayscale Photo | Color, Grayscale, Black and White, Automatic Detection |
| Automatic Document Feeder | 10-page | 50-page | No | No | No |
| PC Compatible | Yes | Yes | Yes | N/A | Yes |
| Mac Compatible | Yes | Yes | Yes | N/A | Yes |
| Measured Pages Per Minute | 13 | 67 | 4 | 3 | N/A |
Our Analysis and Test Results
The Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i is a good all-around performer, but its relatively small automatic document feeder makes it one of the slower scanners at the price point. After all of our testing was completed, it ended up with an average overall score. In the following sections, we detail how it performed in our speed, scanning performance, software, and user-friendliness tests.
Performance Comparison
Scanning Performance
The Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i was top notch in our scan quality testing, sharing one of the top scores in this metric. Both printed and handwritten text came out looking nearly as good as the originals, and it was even able to reproduce full-color documents with a high level of accuracy.
Like many of the models we tested, it did create some smudges when scanning receipts, but those scans still came out perfectly legible. It also handled full-color scans quite well, with just minor alterations in the shade of the original documents.
Speed
Speed is one area where the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i was relatively lacking. It got through our 10-page double-sided test document in 45 seconds, leading to an average speed of 13 pages per minute. It also only has a 10-page document feeder, meaning for long documents, you're going to have to reload the document feeder at least once a minute.
For comparison, the Epson WorkForce ES-400 is only slightly faster, scanning at 14 pages per minute. Still, it has a 50-page document feeder, so scanning longer documents is more automated and requires fewer reloadings of the document feeder.
Software
The Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i comes with the ScanSnap software, which was one of our favorite software bundles. This software makes choosing settings, creating PDFs, and managing the resulting files very easy and intuitive.
The only reason it didn't earn a top score was because of its optical character recognition. In our testing, the software was able to accurately identify most words, but it did miss a few words here and there. However, it was accurate enough that you could definitely find a document on your computer by searching for a keyword contained within it. Still, it may not give you an accurate count of the number of keywords within a document. The Epson WorkForce ES-400 was just the opposite. Its software interface has a slight learning curve, but the optical character recognition is nearly flawless.
User Friendliness
The Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i was easy to set up — we had it scanning within 15 minutes of opening the box — and its software is compatible with both Mac and PC. The interface is also simple and easy to use.
We docked it a few points because it doesn't have a paper output tray. When trying to scan longer documents, it was surprising how annoying it was to not have a tidy paper tray where all the scanned pages were deposited. For that reason, we preferred other options when it came to ease of use.
Value
The Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i has a fair price given its performance relative to comparably priced models. If you need a high-end scanner to use for lots of shorter documents, it's a fairly good value. However, if you scan lots of documents that are longer than 10 pages, it would be worth spending a bit more on the Epson WorkForce ES-400 for the larger document feeder.
Conclusion
The Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i is a good all-around scanner, but its small 10-page document feeder makes it a poor choice if you scan lots of longer documents.
— Max Mutter and Steven Tata