Epson WorkForce DS-970 sheet-fed scanner A4, 600 dpi, duplex, USB 3.0

In a sheet-fed scanner the document is not placed on a glass plate; the paper travels through the device on its own. That suits stacks of loose sheets: invoices, contracts, reports and forms are loaded into the scanner and scanned one after another. Bound books and thick magazines call for a different kind of scanner, a flatbed.

The DS-970 captures the front and back of each sheet, so documents printed on both sides do not need to be turned over separately. With a large stack this halves the manual work and produces a file with pages in the right order. When digitising an archive or processing incoming invoices every day, it saves a lot of time.

The scanner connects to a computer over USB 3.0. Compared with USB 2.0, this interface has far more bandwidth, which matters when many pages are scanned in a row at high resolution: files reach the computer without the connection becoming a bottleneck. No network interface is listed in the manufacturer data.

An optical resolution of 600 × 600 dpi gives documents plenty of headroom: normal text is legible at 300 dpi already, and the higher resolution helps with fine print, signatures and stamps. The maximum size is A4, which covers most office paperwork. The scanner weighs 3.5 kg and fits on a desk next to the computer.

Accounting, administration and document management teams that digitise large stacks of paper every day; archives moving paper binders into digital form; and companies where one person handles the scanning of incoming invoices and contracts and needs a duplex sheet-fed scanner.