The Visioneer Mobility ($199.99 direct) portable document scanner isn't the first portable that can scan without a computer. The IRIScan anywhere 2 ($199 direct, 3 stars) from I.R.I.S., the Pandigital Personal Photo Scanner/Converter PanScn06 ($149.99 direct, 3 stars), and the PlanOn DocuPen Xtreme X05 ($369.99 list, 3.5 stars) all got there first, along with some others. However it may be the first—and is certainly the first we've seen—that offers a good solution to the biggest problem with scanning without a computer, and that's enough to make it Editors' Choice.

The key shortcoming to PC-free scanning is that the scans get stored in memory without you seeing them first. If you transfer them to your PC sometime later, and find out the quality isn't good enough, it's too late to rescan something you no longer have in hand.

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The Planon DocuPen Xtreme X05 offers a partial solution by letting you send files to BlackBerry and Windows smartphones. However, it's a two-step procedure—scan and then send—and it won't work with any other kind of phone. The Mobility, on the other hand, can scan directly to any smartphone that can act like a USB drive when you connect it to a PC, because it will look like a USB drive to the scanner too. That lets you see the image on the phone's screen after the scan. I tried with an Android-based phone and it worked swimmingly.

The Basics
The Mobility is a little large for a portable manual sheetfed scanner, at 2 by 11.75 by 2.75 inches (HWD), and a touch heavier than most, at about 1.4 pounds. However, it's lighter than the computer you won't have to carry, and it comes with its own soft, padded carrying case.

Basic setup for scanning without a computer consists of inserting the rechargeable battery, letting it charge, and then plugging in your choice of the supplied 2-GB memory card, a USB memory key, or connecting to your smartphone using the supplied USB cable. Run the supplied calibration sheet through the scanner, and you're good to go. Visioneer says you can scan about 300 pages on a full battery charge.

Scanning
Scanning is easy too. Simply turn on the scanner, press the function button to choose between scanning to a color JPG file, a black-and-white PDF image file, and a color PDF image file, all at 300 pixels per inch (ppi), and put the paper in the front slot. The scanner will sense the paper and automatically feed it. That's it.

Visioneer includes a well-chosen set of Windows software you can optionally install on your PC: Nuance OmniPage 15 for optical character recognition (OCR), BizCard 5 SE for business cards, and Nuance PaperPort Professional 12, which is one of the best document management programs available. By itself, it gives the scanner as high a score for document management as any scanner without an automatic document feeder (ADF) can get. You can't scan directly into any of these programs, but you can import scanned files.

Results
The combination of Mobility and OmniPage did a good job on text recognition, reading our Times New Roman test page at sizes as small as 8 points and our Arial test page at sizes as small as 6 points without a mistake. In fact, as with document management, the overall score for OCR capability is about as high as a scanner without an ADF can get.

The Mobility also scored extremely well for business cards, making no mistakes on the vast majority of cards in our test set, and no more than two mistakes on any one card. The one issue I ran into is that the software can read JPG files only, so if you make the mistake of scanning to PDF format, you have to rescan. The software also synched with Windows Mail without problems.

I'd like the Mobility even more if it were a little lighter (say, under a pound), if it had its own screen for viewing scans, or both. But until a scanner with those features comes along, the Mobility is way out in front of everyone else. Being able to see your scans on the spot, as long as you have a smartphone, is a big plus for scanning without a PC, and the high scores (for a portable scanner) for optical character recognition, document management, and business card management puts the Mobility in a class of its own in any case. If you need a portable document scanner, make sure this one winds up on your short list.

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Visioneer Mobility with several other scanners side by side.