Review of the Canon CanoScan LiDE 210 Flatbed Scanner

The Canon CanoScan LiDE 210 is one of the smallest flatbed scanners I've ever reviewed. Don't be fooled by its size, though; the LiDE 210 offers a lot of functionality and convenience in a small footprint--and with a small price as well. It feels a bit delicate and so I was hesitant to put too much pressure on it when trying to scan a hardcover book (and the cover only raises an inch or so, so it's not optimal for scanning large items); but it's a best bet for document scanning.

Flatbed scanners are rarely small, graceful items, but Canon has turned things around with the CanoScan LiDE 210 flatbed scanner. Measuring 9.9 inches wide by 14.4 inches long and only 1.6 inches high, this scanner doesn't take up too much space; and if you find it does, it can also be mounted on its side using the included plastic mount. I'm not exactly sure if that's the optimal way to scan, but it does get the scanner out of the way while keeping it close at hand. And I was able to scan single documents without any issues.

The LiDE 210 isn't just small; at under $90, it's also pretty inexpensive. You get plenty of value for your money with the LiDE 210 as well. It offers five one-touch scan buttons for functions such as scan to e-mail or PDF, and a maximum 4800 x 4800 color resolution.

Scans were done quickly, with color 8 x 10 documents taking only about 11 seconds. PDFs looked good and could easily be made searchable; and you can scan to other formats such as TIF as well.

In one test I scanned a form letter that had a yellow watermark in the background, using the configurable scan choices. At 300 dpi, it looked fine, though the watermark was barely visible. At 600 dpi, the image actually looked worse (and took longer to scan). Then I tried the Autoscan button, which automatically chooses what it thinks are the best settings. The resulting scan looked fantastic, with the text sharp and the watermark bright and clear.

One of the scanning options is to optical character recognition (OCR). Unfortunately the LiDE 210 doesn't scan directly to Word but rather to Notepad. To me that's a big inconvenience, as OCR is inevitably inaccurate (as this scanner's OCR was), and Notepad is not the easiest word-processing program to use to correct mistakes.

The scanner is a bit big to be called portable, but it does run off a hi-speed USB rather than an electric plug. That's convenient, unless you're trying to run it off a laptop that's on battery power, which it's sure to drain quickly.

Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.