For the rest of us, better options are available. The Epson Perfection V39 flatbed scanner is an excellent choice if you want to scan photographic prints, as well as short documents to searchable PDF and editable text formats. HP's 3500 f1 will be useful to someone who absolutely needs a standalone, non-networkable, flatbed scanner with ADF functionality – one that remains attached to a computer. So to recap, flatbed scanners are now ultra-niche products.

The downside, other than size, is the fact that it is marginally slower than the flatbed scanner but otherwise, it is a far more versatile device altogether. Other than printing and faxing, it has two USB ports, Wi-Fi, a large touchscreen display, a Gigabit LAN port, a slew of business apps and costs less than the 3500 f1 (at the time of writing, £244 with a free five-year warranty thrown in). It probably has a smaller footprint than the 3500 f1 (although it is definitely taller). Most will easily sit on an A4 sheet, will be able to scan much thicker paper sheets (as well as banner-like media), be less prone to paper jams, scan without a computer and scan directly to storage media (USB sticks or memory cards), network/cloud services (Dropbox, OneDrive, SharePoint) or even send or share files via email.īeyond this though, the real question would be whether you still need a flatbed scanner – you could look at something like the HP LaserJet Pro M426fdw multifunction printer for example.

If pure batch scanning is what you're after, a traditional document scanner is probably what will work best. At just over £300 from Ebuyer (around $425, or AU$565), the HP ScanJet Pro 3500 f1 is one of the cheapest flatbed scanners on the market, but unless faster scanning is an indispensable requirement, as is a daily duty cycle higher than 1,500 pages, I would recommend sticking to the more affordable 2500 f1.

Best scanner reviews 2016