The Panasonic KV-S1057C ($1,295), the higher-end model of two document scanners the company recently introduced, has a good feature set for a workgroup scanner, including a 100-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) and the ability to scan a variety of documents. It's capable of high scan speeds, but you may have to make a choice between speed and convenience, as it was relatively slow at its default setting for scanning to a folder when scanning to searchable PDF.

Design and Features
The 8.8-pound KV-S1057C ($979.99 at Amazon) measures 9.4 by 11.8 by 10.7 inches (HWD), and should be easy enough to fit on a desk. Its ADF can fit business cards, ID and credit cards, and even passports, in addition to letter, legal, and banner-size paper of "unlimited" length.

The KV-S1057C has several preview functions that can improve document quality and correct mistakes. Auto Preview automatically creates nine versions of a scanned document and displays them as thumbnails on your PC's screen. (Like most workgroup scanners, the KV-S1057C is not Mac-compatible.) You can select the most suitable image, and then make further adjustments if needed. Auto Rescan lets you adjust the scanned image quality without rescanning the original document. If there is a problem with a scanned image, the user will be notified with one of several warning functions, and the problem will be flagged with an icon. It can also detect pages with color among what's primarily a monochrome document and flag them for special treatment.

Other image processing and scanning features include automatic double-feed detection, image emphasis, dynamic threshold, automatic separation, invert, white level from paper, border removal, de-speckle, auto rotation, smoothing, and barcode detection.

Connectivity is via USB, including USB 3.0, which we are seeing in a small, but growing number of recent scanners.

Software
Except for one low-price model, Panasonic scanners we have reviewed in the past have shipped without document-management software. Most businesses looking for high-performance scanners already have a document-management system in place. With the KV-S1057C, Panasonic has included Nuance PaperPort Professional 14. This will be a welcome addition for those businesses without document management software. Other software includes Panasonic Image Capture Plus utility, which lets you scan and save documents to different formats, as well as Twain and ISIS drivers, which enable you to initiate scans from nearly any Windows program with a scan command. The Scan Button Setting Tool lets users program up to 100 scan profiles that are visible on the scanner's LED and can be launched from the scanner itself.

Scanning Speed
I tested the KV-S1057C with its drivers and software installed on a computer running Windows Vista. Although the scanner supports USB 3.0 (and comes with a USB 3.0 cable), our testbed is limited to USB 2.0.

Panasonic rates the KV-S1057C at 65 pages per minute (ppm) for simplex (one-sided) and 130 images per minute (ipm) for duplex (two-sided) scans, with one image on each side of the page. Those ratings are for both 200ppi and 300ppi, for both binary (monochrome) and color scanning.

Despite the same speed ratings across different resolutions and scan types, scan speeds varied considerably depending on what settings were used. Panasonic's Image Capture Plus utility has two scan modes: Simple Scanning and Job Scanning. I used the Scan to Folder setting in Job Scanning—which is set for 300ppi auto binary/color detection—for our main testing, as it allows for one-touch scanning and saving of documents. It also is versatile, as it automatically detects and identifies the kind of document being scanned and scans it accordingly.

I also ran the same tests with the Simple Scanning mode's default option, Text, which scans in 300ppi black-and-white. It's a two-step process: First you scan the document, and when all the pages show up on screen, you can then save it to your chosen file type. (Actually, there's a third step, Auto Preview, described earlier, but that can be disabled by unchecking a box.) When timing such a scan, we shut the timer off when all the scanned pages appear on screen, restart the timer when we press the Save button, and then shut it off when the scanned document is saved to file.

In timings using Scan to Folder with its 300ppi auto binary/color detection, the KV-S1057C averaged 32.6ppm for simplex and 65.2ipm for duplex scans to image PDF format. That is slow for its rated speed, even when you consider that rated speeds are based on the time actually spent in scanning the pages, while we do our official timings from when we press the scan command to the time the scanned file is saved. In scanning at 300ppi monochrome and saving to image PDF, I timed the KV-S1057C at 50ppm for simplex and 100ppm for duplex scanning, which is close to its rated scan speed when you factor in the time from when you launch the scan until the pages start moving, and the time from when the scan is completed to when the file is saved.

There was even more of a disparity between these scan modes when I switched to searchable PDF. In scanning our 25-page, 50-image document using Save to Folder's 300ppi auto color detection, the KV-S1057C averaged 1 minute 36 seconds, a respectable, if unimpressive, speed for a scanner of its price. When scanning to black and white, the scans averaged just 40 seconds. The Epson WorkForce DS-860 Color Document Scanner ($899.00 at Amazon) , our Editors' Choice for moderate to heavy-duty scanning in a midsize office, took 1:12 to scan the same document to searchable PDF (also using auto color detection), while the Xerox DocuMate 5460 ( at Amazon) , another top pick, finished in 1:08. The Panasonic KV-S1027C ($979.99 at Amazon) , which presented the same issues in scan settings when testing, finished in 1:57 in scanning with auto color detection, and a minute flat when scanning in black and white.

OCR Performance
Optical character recognition (OCR) performance for the KV-S1057C is generally very good. It did well in scanning to our main test fonts, reading our Arial test page without error at sizes as small as 8 points, and our Times New Roman test page down to 6 points. Its performance with non-standard fonts was more erratic, reading some of them down to small sizes, but being unable to read others at all. The Epson DS-860 did better in OCR, reading both Arial and Times New Roman perfectly down to 6 points.

See How We Test Scanners

At their default scan-to-folder settings (auto color detection), when scanning to searchable PDF, the KV-S1057C lagged behind the Epson WorkForce DS-860 by 24 seconds. The KV-S1057C was faster in scanning to searchable PDF when we switched to black-and-white, which we didn't test for the Epson. Likewise, the KV-S1057C was slower than the Epson DS-860 in scanning to image PDF in their respective auto color detection modes (its 32.6ppm for simplex and 65.2ipm for duplex didn't come close to the Epson DS-860's 54ppm for simplex mode and 91ipm for duplex). Did some tweaking, and removed OCR reference.

Conclusion
That said, the Panasonic KV-S1057C has a lot going for it: A large ADF, the ability to set multiple scan destinations, and scan various types of documents using passports, and high rated speeds, to name a few. It has good OCR performance, and high rated speeds. Its speeds at both image and searchable PDF are somewhat slow in the auto binary/color detection mode, the default for scanning to a folder, but much faster in black and white. This makes the KV-Sl057 a particularly good choice if most of your archiving is for monochrome documents.

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