Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Hopefully, this review is not premature. I will update this review in the future if any of the main points I have raised fundamentally change. I took delivery of the Raven Scanner Pro on August 29th, 2019. I assume you are looking for a scanner of similar feature set which brought you to this review. I, too, was looking at this scanner, and before I wrote this, I found just three reviews on Amazon and one partial review on YouTube, which was more of an unboxing video. I think that video did more damage to my purchase than any review I have read on Amazon. This scanner is a little more expensive than the Fujitsu iX1500, which I consider being the gold standard of document scanners. I have this scanner and have purchased three other Fujitsu scanners before that scanner. When I want a document scanner, my first choice has been Fujitsu and for good reasons. This scanner gave me pause. It did so because of a feature I saw which is that the scanner has no required software for a personal computer. That was enough to catch my attention. Each time I buy a document scanner, I have to make sure it will work with my Apple Macintosh. Most times, the manufacturer provides software and drivers but not always. In the earlier days of the Fujitsu, for example, there were specific versions for the Mac and PC. If I switched to the PC, my Mac scanner would not work. Newer scanners, like the iX1500, have drivers for both, and this problem is all gone for me. Gone, but not forgotten. One reviewer mentioned that he wanted to use this scanner with a Chromebook and a ChromeBox. That is not possible because scanners need drivers and software, which is not how the Chromebook works. The same issue is coming up with the rise of the smartphone and tablet. I have both the iPhone and the iPad Pro, and honestly, those are fast becoming my platform of choice. Sometimes the hardware has an app in the Apple AppStore that allows its use from your iPhone or iPad using a feature such as AirPrint. Printers that use AirPrint are more valuable to me than those who lack AirPrint as a result. I do like to be able to print from the iPhone or iPad. From what I understand, this scanner uses Android to be both the client and the scanner in a single device. And as such, it can scan your document to itself, and then upload the document to your cloud providers, such as DropBox or others. I am a fan of DropBox, so that's where my scans are now going. Unlike any other scanner you have used, this scanner has a large display, and on that display, you choose how to scan and where the scan will go. Your personal computer such as a Mac or PC or your smartphone or your tablet has nothing to do with it. The scanner scans documents super fast, and then sends those documents directly to the cloud. If your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or PC have access to the cloud such as DropBox, then you can collect your scanned document there. It is this feature that I wanted. The real question is, what is that feature worth in terms of money or other issues raised by other reviewers. The unboxing video on YouTube mentioned that the scanner is noisy. Noisy? I wasn't even sure what that meant. Scanners are not loud. According to the unboxing video, the scanner has a noisy fan. I hate the noise. I buy Macs most of the time because they tend to be quiet. I don't think I want a noisy scanner. But I wanted a scanner that takes the pain of drivers and software out of the equation. And since Amazon says this can be returned for a full refund, I decided to try it. So first I will answer this question. Is this scanner noisy? I do hear the fan as my room is nice and quiet. In an office setting, I doubt you hear it at all. The scanner goes to sleep by itself, and when it does, it is silent. If you are done scanning, press the power button and the blue light behind the power button blinks. I will assume that means the device is sleeping the same as if you stopped using it for some time. Thus it is silent again. I don't think it is excessively loud when on and I am a stickler for these things. The Fujitsu is always quiet. The Raven is the first scanner I ever had with a fan inside it. Of course I wish it were silent, but believe me, it's not at all something to worry about. Is it true you don't need drivers? Yup. I did nothing at all on my Mac. Keep in mind this means you don't use your computer to scan. You use the scanner to scan. There is no scanner app on the Mac or PC that you use with this scanner. The scanner scans to itself and then sends the output to the cloud. To me, this means I never have to worry about the scanner working on my computer. You do, however, have to have a wifi network or an Ethernet network. In this regard, it differs from every other scanner I have ever used. Quality and speed. Okay, this is the hallmark of the Fujitsu. If you have never used a ScanSnap the feature everyone loves so much is you put a stack of paper in the feed, and it rips through them, single-sided or double-sided in record time. This scanner wants me to say single-sided or double-sided before I scan. The Fujitsu does it automatically, and that's not always a good thing. If I write on a piece of binder paper, there will be blue lines and a red margin line on both sides. But I typically want one side. Through the software on the Fujitsu, you can change it on the fly to single or double, but leave the preference to whichever you prefer. On the Raven, there are four large squares on the large display. Side, Color, Quality, and Destination. They stay stuck to what you last used. Super simple to change from single to double-sided anytime you want right on the scanner. This is a feature, not a bug unless you have 50 sheets and some are double, and some are single. In that case, it would be better if it had an AUTO choice. It does not. You either scan single, or double. In my specific use-case, I do not mind this, but I can see others seeing this as a problem. Raven should seriously consider an improvement here. As for speed, it feels like Fujitsu to me. The speed does not disappoint. Single or double, the scan is lighting fast. There is built-in software that allows you to crop and rotate and make other changes, like naming the scanned document. And then you can email it. Unfortunately, the email function lacks, in my opinion. I expected that if I typed in one email address and sent a document there, and then another email address and sent another document there, that it might remember the two addresses and give me a choice on the third scanned document. Nope. It only retains that last email address. I am not going to memorize email addresses on my own, so this feature is not useful enough to be useful to me. Another area for future improvement, I hope. So is it perfect? No. It needs an AUTO feature for single or double-sided documents. It could use a quieter fan but believe me. It isn't a problem. The email address feature could be better. It could retain multiple addresses else I think the only time I will use it is to email myself. All that said, this is a cloud scanner and doesn't require a personal computer to set up, or use. You can take it out of the box, and set it up and start using it to send documents to the cloud or an email address. Once in the cloud, like DropBox, you have access to it and can do all the things you might do from your client. So it doesn't come with free software for your PC or Mac. Today is what I call the honeymoon period. I use my scanner every single day. I scan handwritten text to a shared folder and my teacher, and I mark it up, and we discuss it. I'm a bit of a language learner, and this is a simple way for me to interface with my teacher as she lives on the other side of the earth. I read and write on an ordinary pad and scan that to a folder. She adds comments, sometimes live via skype and sometimes as homework. I also scan tons of documents which I sent to clients and store in a file system. I have been buying document scanners for years. I believe this is my second one in just a few months and my fifth or sixth one overall. If you need a document scanner, you'll know it. They are not for everyone. As my iPad Pro becomes my machine of choice, a document scanner such as this becomes more of a necessity than a desire. I think this is the first step, and I will bet many more like it will become the norm in the coming years. Unless something dramatic happens in the next few weeks, I'm keeping it. Update - 2019-09-09 - It has been more than a week since I started using the Raven Pro and I wanted to post a small update to the original thoughts I posted here. 1. This scanner has grown on me. I still have a recently purchased Fujitsu iX1500 scanner on my desk at my office. And I have the Raven Pro at home. I use document scanners daily, as I previously mentioned. Only now I find myself wishing that I have a Raven at work as well as at home. While the Fujitsu is an excellent scanner, the Raven which does not require a computer to be on or even present at all has won me over. There is a convenience that the Raven has that I feel the Fujitsu cannot match. I scan the document on the scanner. I rotate it if needed. I can name the document directly in the scanner, and then send it to the cloud destination of my choice, all from the scanner itself. 2. There has been a recent update, and I am not sure if I didn't notice this feature previously or if it is new. In either can set multiple destinations for a single scan. That is to say; I can have the scan go to both DropBox and GoogleDrive, at the same time. 3. I placed a document with text printed on one side and nothing on the other. I selected a 2-sided scan, front side up, and then scanned it. I then hoped it would auto-detect and result in a single-sided scanned page. Yup, worked like a charm. 4. In the GoogleDrive, I can traverse the Google Drive hierarchy directly from the scanner and have the scan go to a specific folder. 5. Email is the same as far as I can tell, but the folks at Raven reached out to me and let me know that a feature that remembers previous email addresses should come in the form of an update in the future. I have used the scanner to do minor things like rotate pages, and name the document before sending it to its final destination. I like this feature quite a lot. 6. Now the only problem is that I think I'm going to have to buy another one of these for the office.