Though it's more expensive than similar portable scanners such as the Doxie, the Brother DSmobile 700D offers more bells and whistle, and is simple to set up and operate. In particular I was impressed that this little scanner could scan both sides of a page in a single, very fast pass. Scans weren't perfect looking and came out a bit on the dark side, but with some tweaking that's fixable. If it had better paper guides I would've been even more impressed--but I had then same issue with the cheaper Doxie.
Speed, Quality
Portable scanners like the DSmobile 700D should be fast, and this one is. Scans at a decent resolution took less than ten seconds for a letter-sized page. You can get up to 600 dpi of resolution if you really need something big and super clear; but for most portable scanning use, the default dpi is more than acceptable. The DSmobile 700D could do both sides of a sheet in a single, fast pass, saving them as a PDF, TIFF, or JPG (note that color pages take a bit longer than monochrome to scan).
The quality of the printed results was acceptable, if not spectacular. Pages seemed to come out a bit dark, though I was able to mitigate this somewhat using the included software. However, it would be nice if they were lighter to begin with.
Pros, Cons
The DSmobile 700D's size and weight (a bit bigger and heavier than the Doxie) is one of its biggest pros. It comes with a soft carrying case that's not going to offer much protection; and the scanner is not quite small enough to be a handy in-your-briefcase scanner, though it certainly could be brought along in luggage without much hassle. It powers off a USB cord which is included, and it's compatible with Windows and Mac. Some features, such as the one-touch scan button (the only button on the unit itself), were not available to Mac users. Installation on a Mac was a bit more complex than on Windows boxes. Plastic sheets into which small items such as receipts can be loaded are included.
Small scanners such as this don't often seem to have good guides in place to ensure that paper loads straight; and in fact I had a few issues early on getting letter paper to load properly. That improves with practice; still, it seems there must be a better way to guide paper in to the unit without having problems with skew.
Disclosure: Review samples were provided by the manufacturer. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.