Plustek OpticSlim M12

This scanner's intended purpose was to provide a portable scanner for my laptop - something that I could carry around without lugging a box that was bigger than my actual laptop! It had to meet 3 requirements: be portable, scan quickly and scan in detail - as I wanted to be able to scan in business cards for work and the occasional article. Anything else was a bonus. So, what did I actually make of the M12 scanner.

Well after having ...
...certainly does have some bells and whistles. I was surprised when I opened the box as to just how small and light it was. It's about the size and weight of a toblerone bar, so if you are looking for a lightweight scanner, this one is great. It also proved to be highly portable - after you've downloaded the driver onto your laptop, you just plug it into a USB port and it is ready to scan. That's it - no power cords, no batteries that need re-charging, ... more

This scanner's intended purpose was to provide a portable scanner for my laptop - something that I could carry around without lugging a box that was bigger than my actual laptop! It had to meet 3 requirements: be portable, scan quickly and scan in detail - as I wanted to be able to scan in business cards for work and the occasional article. Anything else was a bonus. So, what did I actually make of the M12 scanner.

Well after having this scanner for 6 months I can confirm that it certainly does have some bells and whistles. I was surprised when I opened the box as to just how small and light it was. It's about the size and weight of a toblerone bar, so if you are looking for a lightweight scanner, this one is great. It also proved to be highly portable - after you've downloaded the driver onto your laptop, you just plug it into a USB port and it is ready to scan. That's it - no power cords, no batteries that need re-charging, etc., all you need is an empty USB slot. So it was light and portable - and definitely fit my first pre-requisite. I can carry it with my laptop and not notice the extra weight, so great.

So okay, it had a compact design, but what's the good of that if it couldn't scan properly? Surely something so lightweight couldn't possibly scan correctly? Oh yes it could - it's scanned in my documents quickly, and with highly legible quality. It was also incredibly easy to use (once all the drivers, etc are on - which was also easy to do thanks to the step by step onscreen instructions). To scan you just put the sheet of paper at the edge of the scanner, it 'grabs' it, then press the scan button on the machine, and it pulls straight through the middle of the scanner. 30 seconds later up came my picture looking good. Rather impressive I thought - scanned at high resolution 1 colour sheet of A4 and it came up in half the time I expected it to do (it's about 20 seconds for a black and white sheet of A4 at its highest resolution). So it also fulfilled my other 2 pre-requisites of quality and speed quite nicely.

Did it come with any extra bells and whistles though? Oh yes. For starters there was a navy blue upright desk stand with cable tidy so you could rest the scanner in that whilst not in use, a wall bracket if you wanted to attach it to the wall and a grey drawstring pouch (which mine rests in) that you can pop the scanner inside of to avoid scratches. It also came with the USB cable and driver software - necessary so that you can actually scan. The software is ok - nothing special in terms of previewing and scanning, but still pretty decent. One useful function of it though is that you can create PDFs with a touch of a button - you don't need anymore Adobe Acrobat software with this. It also has a scan to e-mail and custom option which is useful too. According to the manual it supports over 176 languages - but I've never checked if this is true - I've always used the English setting. It also came with some cleaning paper (I've only used this once during calibration) and a manual - which is also worth a read if you can spare a couple of minutes. It also came with Presto Page Manager so you can create OCR docs or convert them into Word or Excel. The Abbey Finereader package with it is also good for OCR scanning and can be saved in all the usual formats (jpeg, gif, bmp, etc). The other packages were for image processing and editing - which I haven't used as I've got Photoshop so I can't comment on them.

So those are the good bits - but are there any negatives?

Unfortunately, yes. The main bugbear has to be that you can't scan in pages from books - you either have to use the usual box style scanners, which lift up, or photocopy the page to feed it through. This was aggravating for me because I couldn't scan in charts from booklets, health and safety book legislation, etc., etc. This is because whereas with an ordinary box style scanner you can simply lift up the lid, place a booklet on the screen and close the lid to scan from books - you can't do this with an M12 scanner. The scanner feeds through single sheets - which obviously you can't do with a booklet or book without having to copy it page by page onto a single sheet and then scanning them all in one by one - which is both time consuming and wastes cartridges/paper, etc.

The other downside of this is that it can't scan A3 documents properly - it rips them. I know that other box style scanners can't scan in A3 documents - they are usually designed to scan in A4 information, but on a box scanner you can simply scan the top half of the page then turn it over and scan in the bottom half of the page. With the M12 you need to have photocopied it onto separate A4 sheets. This isn't really much of a problem though - unless you are wanting to scan in a lot of newspaper articles or anything larger than an A4 sheet (which I've only done once). Anything A4 and under (photos, magazine articles, business cards, etc). It scans through fine.

The scanner originally cost me £60 including postage, which seemed a tad expensive at the time in comparison to some of the other scanners on the market (especially the box ones) - but I thought if you want quality, you pay a bit extra and I haven't been disappointed. I have been pleased by both its speed and the quality of its scan resolution. As for the portability side - it simply can't be beat.

So, would I recommend this scanner to you? If you are looking for a scanner that is small, with a good resolution, is fairly quick and easy to use (either portable or something which doesn't take up a lot of desk space) - then look no further - this is definitely the scanner for you. However, if you know that you will be scanning in documents larger than A4 - e.g. newspaper articles - or want to scan multiple pages in books and booklets then this is definitely NOT the scanner for you.

Of course, you could always have the best of both worlds. I have a printer/scanner/copier all in one at home which does the work of a box scanner for me. This portable scanner is fine for doing what I originally wanted it for - scanning in business cards on my desk at work without having a great flipping box taking up half the available room. If you want a portable laptop that does the above then I recommend this one. 

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