The HP ScanJet Pro 2500 f1 Flatbed Scanner ($299.99) is a light-duty yet versatile document scanner that combines a flatbed and a sheet-fed scanner with an automatic document feeder (ADF), so it can scan both delicate or thick items and stacks of paper. It has a good software suite, including a scan utility and drivers, plus document-management, optical-character-recognition (OCR), business-card, and photo-editing programs. At default settings, the 2500 ($298.90 at Amazon) is notably slow at scanning to searchable PDF (sPDF) format, but its speed can be improved by changing the color mode. There are faster and/or more capable small-office flatbed scanners, including the HP ScanJet Pro 3500 f1 Flatbed Scanner ($548.90 at Amazon) and Canon imageFormula DR-2020U , but the 2500 delivers a lot for a modest price, and is a good addition to an office with modest yet varied scanning needs.

Design and Features
The 2500 is fairly compact for a flatbed scanner, measuring 4.8 by 7.8 by 13.8 inches (HWD) and weighing 9.5 pounds, so you might be able to fit it on one side of your desk. It has a recommended daily duty cycle of up to 1,500 pages, compared with a duty cycle of up to 3,000 pages for the HP ScanJet Pro 3500. The sheet-fed portion of the scanner has a maximum optical resolution of 600 dots per inch (dpi), while you can scan at up to 1,200dpi with the flatbed. On top is a 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) for scanning multipage documents.

The scanner lacks a display, but has several buttons in front, one to launch a scan, one to cancel a scan, one to switch between simplex and duplex scanning, and one to switch between four scanning destinations: Save as PDF; Save as JPEG; Email as PDF; and Scan to Cloud. You can launch scans either from the front panel, the HP Scan utility, or the programs mentioned below.

Software
Two discs come with the 2500, one with Twain, WIA, and ISIS drivers, and the HP Scan utility, the other with ReadIris Pro 14 for OCR, CardIris Pro 5.5 for business-card scanning, Nuance PaperPort 14.5 for document management, and ArcSoft PhotoStudio 6 for photo editing. The Twain and ISIS drivers let you scan to nearly any Windows program that has a scan command.

HP Scan lets you create, edit, delete, and prioritize scan profiles, and initiate scans using any of the profiles. Default profiles include Save as PDF, Save as JPEG, Email as PDF, Email as JPEG, Save as Editable Text (OCR), Scan to Cloud, and Everyday Scan.

Performance
The 2500 is rated at 20 pages per minute (ppm) for simplex (one-sided) scanning and 40 images per minute (ipm) for duplex (two-sided) scanning, where each side of a page is considered a separate image. In scanning to image PDF at default settings (200 dpi, color), I timed it at 16.7ppm for simplex and 26ipm for duplex scanning.

See How We Test Scanners

The HP Scan software does not include a separate preset for scanning to searchable PDF (sPDF) format as opposed to image PDF. So for our official timing, I used the same scan profile as for image PDF to scan our 25-page, 50-image test file, simply changing the PDF type, as is our standard procedure. I timed the 2500 at 6 minutes 32 seconds, which is unusually slow, even for scanning in color mode. I also did some ad-hoc testing in other color modes, and by switching the mode to black, it finished much faster, averaging 3:22, a minute and a half slower than it took to scan to image PDF. That matches the time of the Xerox DocuMate 3220 ($229.99 at Amazon) , another low-price flatbed scanner, but was well off the pace of some other comparable models. The Canon imageFormula DR-F120 ($380.00 at Canon) scanned and saved the same document to searchable PDF in 1:38, just 9 seconds longer than it took to scan to image PDF. The Canon DR-2020U did one better, losing no time in the text-recognition stage, taking 1:23 in scanning to both image PDF and searchable PDF formats.

The 2500 did well in our OCR testing, reading our Times New Roman test page with no errors down to 8 points and our Arial test page down to 6 points. The business-card software, CardIris Pro 5.5, did reasonably well in our testing. I used the flatbed for business-card scanning, as the 2500's ADF doesn't support it. You can scan multiple cards on the flatbed, with their data sorted into separate records. A few cards were error-free, but most had several errors.

Conclusion
The HP ScanJet Pro 2500 f1 Flatbed Scanner is a good fit for very small offices in need of a light-duty scanner that can handle a variety of material, from books to business cards to multipage documents, and includes a robust software suite. It lacks the durability (as reflected in its daily duty cycle) and USB 3.0 connectivity of the HP 3500, and can't match its speed, but comes in at a much lower price. It's not the best choice if you need to scan to searchable PDF; the Canon imageFormula DR-F120 and the Canon imageFormula DR-2020U are much faster in that regard. But the 2500 can fit the bill for general-purpose scanning in a micro office.

Best Scanner Picks

• The Best Photo Scanners for 2020
• The Best Scanners for 2020
• The Best Scanners for Macs
• Top Tips for Preserving Your Photos
• More Scanner Reviews
• More from HP

Further Reading

• How We Test Scanners
• Top Tips for Preserving Your Photos
• Epson FastFoto Scans a Photo Per Second
• Microsoft App Turns Your Phone Into a 3D Scanner
• Get Organized: Choose the Right Scanner for Going Paperless