VuPoint Solutions Magic Wand Review
Pros: Has a cool name
Cons: Poor scan quality, very difficult to use, no character recognition
Manufacturer: VuPoint Solutions
Our Verdict
Compare to Similar Products
 This Product
VuPoint Solutions Magic Wand | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Awards |  |  |  | ||
| Price | $70 List | $495 List | $350 List | $110 List $99.98 at Amazon | $295 List $259.99 at Amazon |
Overall Score  |
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| Star Rating | |||||
| Pros | Has a cool name | Fast, high-quality scans, easy operation, touch screen interface | High quality scans, easy operation, good text recognition | Great scan quality, small and portable, simple operation, good OCR | High quality scans, easy to use software |
| Cons | Poor scan quality, very difficult to use, no character recognition | Expensive, Character recognition not perfect | Slower than other high end models | Slow | Relatively slow, 10-page document feeder feels limiting |
| Bottom Line | Offers no advantages over a phone app | The best option for high volume scanning jobs that demand high quality | A solid, high end model that doesn’t cost quite as much as most other high end options | Apart from speed it excels in every aspect at a relatively low price | Can handle a lot of short documents quite well, but the lack of a paper tray and large document feeder makes it less suited for long documents |
| Rating Categories | VuPoint Solutions... | Fujitsu ScanSnap... | Epson WorkForce... | Brother DS-640 | Fujitsu ScanSnap... |
| Scanning Performance (35%) | |||||
| Speed (30%) | |||||
| Software (20%) | |||||
| User Friendliness (15%) | |||||
| Specs | VuPoint Solutions... | Fujitsu ScanSnap... | Epson WorkForce... | Brother DS-640 | Fujitsu ScanSnap... |
| Paper Sizes | Max: A4 | Minimum 50.8 x 50.8 mm (2 x 2 in.) Maximum 216 x 360 mm (8.5 x 14.17 in.) | Max: 8.5" x 240" Min: 2" x 2" |
Max: 8.5" x 32" | A4, A5, A6, B5, B6, Business card, Post card, Letter, Legal and Custom size |
| Weight (pounds) | 1 | 7.5 | 8.1 | 1.03 | 3.1 |
| Resolution (dpi) | 600 x 600 | 600 x 600 | 600 x 600 | 600 x 600 | 600 x 600 |
| Simplex/Duplex | Simplex | Duplex | Duplex | Simplex | Duplex |
| Scanning Modes | Color, Grayscale, Black and White, Automatic Detection | Color, Grayscale, Black and White, Automatic Detection | Color, Grayscale, Black and White | 24-bit color, 8-bit (256 levels) gray scale, 1 bit monochrome | Color, Grayscale, Black and White, Automatic Detection |
| Automatic Document Feeder | No | 50-page | 50-page | No | 10-page |
| PC Compatible | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Mac Compatible | 3rd party drivers | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pages Per Minute | 0 | 26 | 14 | 4 | 13 |
Our Analysis and Test Results
The Magic Wand does not deliver on the ease and whimsy inherent in its name. Instead of a charmingly simple and effortless experience it delivers one of rage and expletive laden rants, therefore we would not recommend it.
Performance Comparison
The Magic Wand earned an all time low overall score in our testing, as you can see in the table above. In the following section we detail the experiences that led to that low score, and why you'd be better off with a $4 phone app.
Scan Quality
The Magic Wand earned the worst score of 3 out of 10 in our scan quality testing. This is a product of the Magic Wand's scanning technique, which requires the user to slide the scanner over the document. If you've steady hands like the Sundance Kid, that can result in a fairly good scan. If you move the scanner with anything less than machine-like precision, however, the scan comes out with distorted waves in it, often making entire line of text illegible. Compare this with using the Scanner Pro App and your phone's camera to snap a shot of a page and ending up with a near perfect PDF, and you'll wonder why anyone would ever use the Magic Wand.
Speed
We gave the Magic Wand a score of 1 out of 10 in our speed testing. We were never able to get an actual speed reading from the scanner because we were never able to get to the end of our 10-page speed test document without at least a few of the pages looking totally unreadable. With the Scanner Pro App we were able to consistently scan 3 double-sided pages a minute, and the scans looked great.
Software
The Magic Wand earned only a 3 out of 10 in our software testing. First of all, the software does not have any kind of optical character recognition, so you cannot create PDFs that have searchable text. Secondly, you'll have to use third party drivers if you want to use the Magic Wand with a Mac, and thirdly it is very difficult to figure out where your PDF files are being saved. The Scanner Pro App is order of magnitudes better, with very accurate character recognition and easy file management.
User Friendliness
As we mentioned above, actually getting a quality scan from the Magic Wand is an exercise in patience, fine motor control and anger management. Accordingly, it earned a low score of user friendliness score of 3 out of 10. By comparison, the Scanner Pro App was as easy as snapping a few photos and maybe cropping them if the automatic cropping didn't work.
Value
The Magic Wand lists for $70. Seeing as we found it almost unusable, we would consider this a very poor value.
Conclusion
The Magic Wand provides a very poor user experience and it is very difficult to capture high quality scans with it.
— Max Mutter and Steven Tata