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Fujitsu Scansnap S500

M. David Stone
 & M. David Stone Contributing Editor

Our team tests, rates, and reviews more than 1,500 products each year to help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.

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65 EXPERTS
43 YEARS
41,500+ REVIEWS
- Fujitsu Scansnap S500
4.0 Excellent

The Bottom Line

Like earlier ScanSnaps, the Fujitsu ScanSnap S500 is a top-quality personal document and business-card scanner.

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Pros & Cons

    • Document and business-card scanner.
    • Rated at 18 pages per minute, or 36 images per minute for scanning both sides.
    • No standard drivers, so you can't scan from within most programs.

Fujitsu Scansnap S500 Specs

Automatic Document Feeder: Yes
Business Card Score: 3 Out of 5
Doc Management Score: 4 Out of 5
Ethernet Interface: No
Flatbed: No
Maximum Optical Resolution: 600 pixels
Maximum Scan Area: Legal
Mechanical Resolution: 600 pixels
OCR: 4 Out of 5
One-Touch Buttons: Yes
Scanning Options: Reflective
Usability: 3 Out of 5
USB or FireWire Interface: USB
Value: 4 Out of 5
All Specs

When I reviewed the first-generation Fujitsu ScanSnap two years ago, I said it was the best business-card scanner I'd ever seen. I also said nice things about it as a document scanner. But I missed having a Twain and WIA driver so that I could start a scan from within any program with a simple scan command. When I reviewed the second-generation model last year, I pointed to the improved software that made the lack of drivers more palatable, but I still missed having drivers. Now, with the third generation ScanSnap S500 ($495 direct), Fujitsu still leaves me wishing for drivers, but it's also boosted speed by about 20 percent, which is always a good thing.

Measuring 6.2 by 11.2 by 9.2 inches (HWD) including the output tray, the S500 offers a 50-page automatic document feeder (ADF) and optical resolution of 600 pixels per inch. Installation is straightforward. Basically, you install the software, plug in the power cord and USB cable, and let Microsoft Windows recognize the scanner. The new higher speed rating is 18 pages per minute (ppm), or 36 images per minute (ipm) when scanning in duplex mode (meaning both sides of each page).

Fujitsu still focuses on scanning to PDF, with JPG as a second choice, and it relies on Adobe Acrobat 7.0 to handle the scanned files. But the ScanSnap S500 includes a version of Abbyy FineReader—FineReader for ScanSnap 2.0—as an alternative to optical character recognition. You also have the option to scan a document, recognize the text, and send it to, say, Microsoft Word in one step. But you still have to initiate the scan from within the ScanSnap software.

You define profiles from within the scan software to specify the programs to scan to, so you can easily set the scanner to scan and e-mail or scan and fax. When you are ready to scan, you pick a profile and then press the scan button on the front panel to start the scan. This approach may feel natural to some people. Others who have more experience with scanners—including me—may wish they could press the button first and then pick the profile and settings, but this is nitpicking.

In testing, the S500 was a little faster than promised for scanning one side of a page to a PDF image file, at 18.1 ppm. But it was slower than promised for duplex scanning, at 30.6 ipm. Scanning, recognizing the text, and saving the result to a searchable PDF file took 6 minutes 21 seconds. For context, the significantly more expensive Canon DR-2580C, our Editors' Choice, took only 1:01, but the HP Scanjet 7800, which is also more expensive, took a nearly identical 6:23.

The ScanSnap S500 stands out as a business-card scanner, with the ability to run business cards through its ADF at a fast speed, recognize the text reasonably well, and send the results to a variety of programs, including Microsoft Outlook and Goldmine, as well as comma-separated variable format. The new version maintains its place as the best business-card scanner available, and as a high quality personal scanner for document and business-card scanning.

Don't miss our scanner comparison chart.

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Final Thoughts

- Fujitsu Scansnap S500

Fujitsu Scansnap S500

4.0 Excellent

Like earlier ScanSnaps, the Fujitsu ScanSnap S500 is a top-quality personal document and business-card scanner.

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About Our Expert

M. David Stone

M. David Stone

Contributing Editor

My Experience

Most of my current work for PCMag is about printers and projectors, but I've covered a wide variety of other subjects—in more than 4,000 pieces, over more than 40 years—including both computer-related areas and others ranging from ape language experiments, to politics, to cosmology, to space colonies. I've written for PCMag.com from its start, and for PC Magazine before that, as a Contributor, then a Contributing Editor, then as the Lead Analyst for Printers, Scanners, and Projectors, and now, after a short hiatus, back to Contributing Editor.

I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who worked on every "Project Printer" blockbuster PCMag ever produced, often writing 15 or more reviews for the year's big printer blowout. (I snuck in a single review one year when I was writing a book, strictly so I could keep that claim alive.)

I've always worked for PCMag as a freelancer, which has freed me to take time away to write nine books, be a major contributor to four others, and write for other publications, including Wired, Computer Shopper, Projector Central, and Science Digest, where I was Computers Editor. I also wrote a computer column at one point for The Newark Star-Ledger.

Although I started my career primarily as a science (mostly physics and astronomy) and science-fiction writer (published in Analog), my non-computer-related work runs the gamut from the Project Data Book for NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (written for GE's Astro-Space Division) to the script for a video overview of a top company in the gaming industry (that would be gambling, not video games). My books include The Underground Guide to Color Printers (Addison-Wesley), Troubleshooting Your PC (Microsoft Press), and Faster, Smarter Digital Photography (Microsoft Press).

Having covered a wide range of subjects, I've developed a serial expertise in many of them. The ones most relevant to my current work at PCMag.com are all imaging technologies.

The Technology I Use

I buy new PCs for my writing desk infrequently, because it takes a week or more to customize the settings the way I want them. At the moment, I have an HP Envy tower running Windows 10, but it's old enough to have a Windows 7 sticker on it. Its latest lease on a longer life is courtesy of a newly installed 500GB Samsung SSD 870 EVO.

Elsewhere in my house is an assortment of older and newer PCs. The older ones are dedicated to specific tasks, like the one I've been using to slowly digitize all the paper stored in my filing cabinets, while the newer ones are testbeds for printer and projector reviews.

For writing, I use Microsoft Word 2003, because I find it too annoying to take my hands off the keyboard to give mouse commands using the Ribbon. My workhorse printers are a Xerox Phaser 6280 color laser and a Dymo LabelWriter 450 Twin Turbo for labels and stamps. I also have a Canon Pixma iP8720 for printing photos, and a Canon ImageFormula DR-C225 for scanning.

My first computer was bought to replace my IBM Selectric for writing. After rejecting both the IBM PC (which had just been introduced) and the Apple II because of the keyboards, I chose a Vector Graphics Vector 3 CP/M machine with dual floppies. The first MS-DOS machine I was willing to use for writing was the IBM AT, with its much-improved keyboard compared with the original PC and its gargantuan 20MB hard drive.

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