An update to the Panasonic KV-S1057C we reviewed back in early 2015, the KV-S1057C-MKII ($1,089) is a high-volume sheet-feed document scanner for small and midsize offices, as well as large enterprises with medium-to-heavy scan workflows.
This upgrade adds Ethernet support and an enhanced ability to scan thick plastic cards, passports, and mixed media.
Like 2015's KV-S1057C, the KV-S1057C-MKII is fast and accurate when converting to editable text.
A few formidable heavy-duty desktop scanners that have hit the market recently, such as the Editors' Choice Kodak Alaris S2060w, offer up some mighty stiff competition, however.
The KV-S1057C-MKII is a solid alternative for most types of demanding document-scan situations, but it falls just short of dislodging the Alaris as our top pick.
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Measuring Up
The KV-S1057C-MKII measures 9.4 by 11.8 by 10.7 inches (HWD) and weighs 8.8 pounds, which makes it the same size as its KV-S1057C predecessor and similar in size to the Alaris S2060w.
Also close is the Visioneer Patriot H60 ($899.99 at Amazon) , another high-volume Editors' Choice pick.
Brother's beefy PDS-5000 High-Speed Color Desktop Scanner, another competent competitor, is slightly smaller in all dimensions.
I've reviewed a bunch of other comparable high-volume speed demons over the past few years—too many to mention here, but those listed in the previous paragraph are a good sampling.
As for volume and capacity, the KV-S1057C-MKII automatic document feeder (ADF) holds a whopping 100 sheets, and Panasonic rates its daily duty cycle at 8,000 scans.
The Alaris S2060w's ADF holds 20 sheets fewer, and the rated duty cycle is 1,000 scans fewer.
Visioneer's hefty Patriot H60, in contrast, is meant for heavier lifts; it comes with a 120-sheet ADF and a rated duty cycle 2,000 scans a day greater than the KV-S1057C-MKII, while the Brother PDS-5000's ADF capacity matches today's Panasonic review unit, but duty cycle is 2,000 scans fewer.
The KV-S1057C-MKII supports media sizes ranging from 1.9 by 2.1 inches at the smallest, up to 8.5 by unlimited inches.
(The unlimited-length support means that the scanner should be able to scan the longest document you encounter, though it will eventually run out of memory.
When it does, the KV-S1057C-MKII clips and saves that page segment and then continues, clipping and saving as required to reach the end of the page.) Like most Panasonic scanners, the KV-S1057C-MKII comes with a detachable guide, shown in the image above, for scanning business cards and credit-card-size documents And a lever in the upper left corner of the front panel allows you to toggle between thick and standard media.
Also, on the front of the KV-S1057C-MKII's chassis is a somewhat sparse control panel, which consists of a small monochrome display and a set of buttons.
These comprise navigation controls for scrolling through pre-defined workflow profiles, a Start button to initiate scans, a Stop button, and a Skip button for ignoring double-feed detections.
Connection Options and Software
Versus some of the other machines listed here, the KV-S1057C-MKII is a little short on connectivity options.
You get support for Ethernet up to gigabit speeds (most likely overkill for a scanner), USB 3.0, and mobile connectivity via a proprietary app.
In the last case, keep in mind that, because the KV-S1057C-MKII has no wireless radios, your mobile device must be connected to your LAN, WAN, or the internet to access the scanner.
You can also connect to the scanner from a web browser via TCP/IP, using the KV-S1057C-MKII's IP address.
For that to work, the scanner must be connected to your network.
By comparison, the Alaris S2060w supports USB 2.0 and USB 3.0, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct, and scanning to a USB thumb drive, and the Brother ImageCenter ADS-3600W ($820.00 at Amazon) , another midrange networkable model that received an Editors' Choice award, supports everything the Alaris S2060w does, plus Near-Field Communication (NFC), which creates a one-touch hotspot on the scanner's front panel.
One distinction that sets the KV-S1057C-MKII apart, though, has to do with scan destinations.
It lets you set up 100 scan-to destinations (for example, Scan to Folder, or Scan to Email), including multiple destinations from the same profile.
You can do this via IP address, from your PC.
You can also set 30 direct scan-to-local-folder destinations.
Compared to what comes with its Panasonic predecessor, the KV-S1057C-MKII's software bundle draws up just a little short.
While it does include Abbyy FineReader 12 Sprint, a pared-down version of the state-of-the-art optical character recognition (OCR) software, this time around Panasonic has left out Nuance PaperPort, the popular document-management and -archiving program.
In its place, Panasonic has thrown in complimentary 7,500-page licenses of its own high-volume PremierOCR and PremierCompression scanning frontend and full-blown document management backend.
These would be perfect companions for the KV-S1057C-MKII, which is capable of handing off thousands of page images day after day.
Panasonic's critically acclaimed software then goes to work in the background indexing and archiving documents without further intervention from the person operating the scanner.
The problem is that high-volume management systems like this can easily burn through that 7.5K page allotment in a day or two, leaving you with the prospect of buying more page licenses before actually getting a chance to assess these two fairly expensive programs.
I couldn't find any unlimited license versions online, but I did find a 50,000-page version for $700.
At that rate, you'll pay more than the price of the KV-S1057C-MKII for every 100,000 pages it scans.
Meanwhile, Panasonic has included Image Capture Plus, another scanning interface utility that provides much less robust scan and workflow profiles.
It also has some rudimentary document-management features for naming and organizing your scans, as well as the ability to convert image files that picture text into editable and searchable text files.
In addition to Image Capture Plus and FineReader, you get User Utility, a Windows system-tray program that monitors and reports the status of the scanner, and the Scan Button Setting Tool, a small utility that tells Image Capture Plus which programs and/or utilities to launch when Image Capture Plus has completed processing a particular scan.
(You might want to send scanned data to, say, an SQL database for populating web pages on demand.)
A Scan-Speed Demon
Panasonic rates the KV-S1057C-MKII's scan speed at 65 one-sided pages per minute (ppm) and 130 two-sided images per minute (or ipm, where each page side constitutes an image).
I tested the device over USB 3.0 using Image Capture Plus from our standard Intel Core i5 testbed PC running Windows 10 Professional.
Without including the time it takes to process and save the scanned data to a usable file format on our testbed PC, I clocked the KV-S1057C-MKII at 69ppm and 133ipm, or slightly higher than its ratings.
If you've got thousands of pages to scan each day, how fast the machine can simply scan the paper, without the supporting software processing and saving the digital file, is important.
Usually, in these settings, the scans are handed off to a document management backend that converts them to the desired file format(s) and then archives based on content—without the person loading and unloading the scanner all day interacting in the process at all.
But if you're just getting started, or your data archiving system isn't yet that complicated, the KV-S1057C-MKII and its software must create usable files for you.
When I scanned our one-sided 25-page test document and saved the scans as image PDF files, the KV-S1057C-MKII churned at the rate of 61.2ppm, and, when scanning our two-sided 25-page (50 images) document, it managed 125.4ipm, or still very close to its ratings.
By comparison, the Alaris S2060w scanned the same pages at 5ppm and about 20ipm slower.
Brother's PDS-6000 ($1,886.79 at Amazon) , which is rated at 75ppm and 150ipm, came in 1.2ppm and about 10.8ipm behind the KV-S1057C-MKII, while the Visioneer H60 scanned to image PDF at 5.4ppm and 5ppm faster, and the Brother ADS-3600W, rated at 50ppm and 100ipm, managed 15ppm and just under 30ipm slower.
The KV-S1057C-MKII scanned our two-sided 25-page (50 images) document to the more versatile searchable PDF format, the KV-S1057C-MKII scanned and processed all 50 pages in a respectable 25 seconds, which was significantly faster than all the other machines listed here, except the Visioneer H60, which was only 3 seconds slower than the KV-S1057C-MKII.
Scanning Accuracy
No matter how fast your scanner is, that benefit is eaten up quickly if you have to go back to correct multiple errors.
Like the Panasonic KV-N1028X I reviewed the other day, the KV-S1057C-MKII tied our best optical character recognition score, by scanning our Arial font test page with no errors down to 5 points and our Times New Roman page at 6 points.
Only a few other scanners have reached that level of accuracy.
Managing to scan both fonts down to 6 points, the Alaris S2060w and the Visioneer H60 came close to the KV-S1057C-MKII's score, while the Brother PDS-5000 scanned both pages down to 8 points without errors, as did the Brother ADS-3600W.
Decisions, Decisions
Scanner technology has become so fast, accurate, and reliable that nowadays choosing the right one for your application can come down to a matter of nuances—choosing among convenience features, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but could result in a lot of time-consuming research.
I found little to complain about for the KV-S1057C-MKII, except perhaps the lack of a free full-blown document management and business card archiving software, which most of the scanners mentioned here include.
Even the pricing is competitive, which isn't always the case with Panasonic scanners.
But then Panasonic told me that the KV-S1057C-MKII's target market is predominately large enterprises, such as hospitals, banks, and others that most likely already have backend data gathering and archiving systems in place.
The bottom line for the KV-S1057C-MKII is, though, that it is a highly capable scanner offered at a competitive price that would make a valuable contribution to most enterprises with medium-to-heavy scanning volume, though some of its competitors come with a more complete software bundle.
The Bottom Line
Fast and accurate for OCR work, the network-ready Panasonic KV-S1057C-MKII is a solid sheet-feed document scanner, but its software bundle needs a bit of bulking up.
