Fujitsu's Image Scanner fi-800R ($795) is a cross between a portable sheet-feed document scanner, such as the Epson WorkForce ES-300W, and a desktop sheet-feed document scanner, such as the Brother ADS-2700W (both Daxdi Editors' Choices).
While it's remarkably small for its feature set and capacity and comes with a very impressive software bundle, the Fujitsu's biggest drawback is that it costs about $400 more than its closest competitors, be they portable or desktop models.
Even so, the fi-800R's petite size, robust software, and great capabilities make it a near-perfect candidate for front-desk customer and client processing and our latest favorite among document scanners.
Return and U-Turn Scan
At 3.3 by 11.7 by 4.1 inches (HWD) and 4.4 pounds, the fi-800R is just slightly smaller and lighter than Epson's ES-300W and Brother's similar ADS-1700W.
It's about half the size of Brother's ADS-2700W, Epson's ES-500W, and other entry-level desktop document scanners.
Even so, as you'll see in a moment, its speed and duty cycle are much closer to its desktop than portable rivals.
Fujitsu was able to squeeze so much oomph into the fi-800R primarily due to two technological innovations that the company calls Return Scan and U-Turn Scan.
The former allows you to scan passports, ID cards, and other thick documents via the front or exit slot.
Instead of pulling the object in one slot and ejecting it out another, the device pulls and ejects through the same slot, as shown here.
The second exclusive, U-Turn Scan, saves even more room.
It permits the scanner to pull in and push out documents without requiring input and output slots that greatly increase the length of the machine, often by as much as two or three times.
In other words, document sheets perform a, well, U-turn onto an output tray that stands nearly upright confined within the chassis, instead of onto a long tray or onto the desktop itself (which also requires a lot of additional desk space).
Less space-related but equally impressive is another Fujitsu innovation the company calls Active Skew Correction, which is what it sounds like.
I've seen similar deskew claims for many different scanners, but seldom have I seen a machine straighten documents sitting askew in the feeder as well as the fi-800R does.
Unlike most $800 scanners, the fi-800R has a very sparse control panel located on the right side of the top of the chassis, consisting primarily of the power switch and a Scan or Start button.
Everything else, including the workflow profile containing processing instructions (dpi, image or searchable text, destination, and so on) that executes when you press the Start button, is controlled with the bundled PaperStream software, discussed momentarily.
The Fujitsu's automatic document feeder (ADF) holds just 20 sheets of 20-pound paper, and its daily duty cycle is 4,500 scans.
That's the same input capacity as the Epson ES-300W and the Brother ADS-1700W, though the former's daily duty cycle is smaller by 4,000 scans and the latter's by 3,500 scans.
Brother's ADS-2700W desktop scanner, on the other hand, holds up to 50 pages and has a daily duty cycle of 4,000 scans, while Epson's WorkForce ES-500W also holds up to 50 pages and can perform 3,000 scans per day.
The fi-800R's higher duty cycle is impressive, but getting to 4,500 scans per day with a 20-page ADF will require a lot of human interaction with the scanner, compared to a 50-page or larger feeder.
It's also important to mention that all the other scanners mentioned here support both Wi-Fi and USB connectivity, and the ADS-2700W throws in wired Ethernet networking, while the fi-800R connects only via a USB cable.
That not only precludes using it on a network, but also scanning from mobile devices.
Nifty New Software
I've reviewed many Fujitsu scanners, including the ScanSnap iX100 and the ScanSnap iX1500, and have always been impressed with the software bundle, which includes the ScanSnap scanner interface software.
This time around, though, Fujitsu includes its PaperStream Capture scanner interface.
You also get the PaperStream IP driver (TWAIN/ISIS), WIA driver (Windows), the Software Operation Panel (for making configuration changes to the interface), Error Recovery Guide (which alerts you to scanning errors and causes), Abbyy FineReader for ScanSnap (optical character recognition, better known as OCR, for converting scans to editable text), and Scanner Central Admin (for updating software and firmware).
As mentioned, you control which workflow profile the scanner uses from the software, or you can choose from multiple profiles when you scan from the USB-tethered PC.
Profiles are editable from the Software Operation Panel.
In addition to the four included editable profiles (shown in the above image), you can also create your own, which you can in turn assign to the Scan button on the device or deploy from inside PaperStream Capture or PaperStream Capture Pro.
(The latter is an optional upgrade you can purchase from Fujitsu.
Pricing is based on licensing.)
Both the standard and Pro versions of PaperStream provide document management features, though the latter is designed more for a multi-node enterprise scanning application.
Faster Than Most Portables
Fujitsu rates the fi-800R at 40 pages per minute (ppm) for one-sided scans and 80 images per minute (ipm) for two-sided scans, though the 20-page feeder makes actually getting 40 pages scanned per minute a bit of a challenge.
(I tested it over a USB 3.1 connection from our standard Intel Core i5 PC running Windows 10 Pro.)
The scans are, of course, useless until the computer processes them, which for our testing purposes consists of converting them to either image or searchable PDF, with the latter being the most useful for document management and other applications.
That said, then, when scanning our standard 20-page document to image PDF, the fi-800R managed about 38.7ppm for one-sided and 75.7ipm for two-sided pages.
That's about 10ppm and 21ipm faster than the Epson ES-300W and 11.3ppm and 20.2ipm quicker than Brother's ADS-1700W.
Brother's desktop ADS-2700W, on the other hand, beat the fi-800R by 6.1ppm in single-sided and fell behind it by 2.5ipm in two-sided or duplex mode, while Epson's WorkForce ES-500W proved about 1ppm quicker with one-sided and tied the Fujitsu with two-sided scans.
Converting a scan to searchable PDF, or editable text, is much more complex and usually more time-consuming.
Even so, the fi-800R managed to process our 20-sheet, 40-sided text document to searchable PDF in 42 seconds—four seconds faster than the Epson ES-300W and 14 seconds faster than the Brother ADS-1700W portable scanners.
Its results pretty much tied the ES-500W and ADS-2700W desktop models.
Accuracy Counts
Naturally, the fastest scans in the world aren't worth much if you have to spend a lot of time correcting errors.
Nowadays, most portable and desktop scanners and their software do a superb job of converting scanned or imaged text to editable copy.
The fi-800R was particularly accurate on my Arial and Times New Roman test pages, with 100 percent accuracy down to 4 and 6 points respectively.
The Epson ES-300W, which we tested a couple of years ago (it's likely more accurate now), managed 8 points on both font test pages, while the Brother ADS-1700W was accurate down to an impressive 6 points for both.
Looking at the two desktop models discussed here, the Brother ADS-2700W managed 5 points for Arial and 4 points for Times New Roman, while the Epson ES-500W (also tested a while back) came in at 8 points for Arial and 10 points for Times New Roman.
Pricey But Innovative
The two things the Fujitsu fi-800R lacks (three, if you ask for a bigger ADF) are its inability to network—precluding sharing or mobile devices—and its omission of a battery, which would make it much more portable.
Even so, the fi-800R is uniquely suited to the job for which it's designed: front-desk or customer and client processing applications.
So much so, in fact, that we've given it its own category of front-desk document scanner and made it an Editors' Choice.
I'm not wild about its $795 price tag, but it nevertheless packs a lot of value.
Besides, you can always look for it on sale.
Fujitsu Image Scanner fi-800R
The Bottom Line
The Fujitsu fi-800R takes up very little space for all that it does, and comes with a highly useful scanner interface and document management software bundle, making it ideal for front-desk document processing.
