If you need a personal scanner for your office desk—whether for a one-person home office or for your workspace in a large company—what you should be looking for is almost certainly a document scanner. By definition, these scanners are designed primarily for documents, as opposed to photos or books, for example.

Typical document scanners, like the Canon DR-2580C, Epson WorkForce Pro GT-S50, and Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 offer automatic document feeders (ADFs) for handling multipage document easily, and most include two scan elements so they can scan in duplex mode (scanning both sides of each page at once). They generally have two speed ratings—one for pages per minute (ppm) and one for images per minute (ipm), with one image on each side of the page. In most cases the ipm rating is double the ppm rating.

If all you scan are single-sided documents, you may be able to save a few dollars with a scanner that scans in simplex mode only. And if you occasionally need to scan originals like book or magazine pages that won't fit through a sheet feeder, you might want to consider a model like the Epson WorkForce GT-1500, which offers a flatbed in addition to its ADF. Here's an assortment of choices for personal document scanners.

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Canon DR-2580C ($680 street)

The Canon DR-2580C is rated at a relatively fast 25 ppm and 50 ipm, but it's even faster for real-world use than the rating implies. Canon's optical character recognition (OCR) feature can recognize text without slowing the scanner down, so if you're scanning to a searchable PDF file—which is the most common format for document scanning—the DR-2580C will finish the job far ahead of competitors that can scan faster but take longer to recognize the text.

Epson WorkForce GT-1500 ($349.99 direct)

One of the few low-priced document scanners to include a flatbed along with its ADF, the Epson WorkForce GT-1500 is an attractive choice for anyone on a tight budget. One way it keeps the price down is by limiting the ADF to simplex scanning. However, a manual duplex feature lets you turn the stack over and scan the second side, with the scan software automatically putting the pages in the right order.

Epson WorkForce Pro GT-S50 ($499.99 direct)

The Epson WorkForce Pro GT-S50 is small enough to fit on a desktop to use as a personal document scanner, but heavy-duty enough to handle all the document-scanning needs for a small office or workgroup. Rated at 25 ppm and 50 ipm, it's designed to go through stacks of pages in a hurry, and the ADF can hold up to 75 pages, making it easy to load hefty documents.

Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 ($495 direct)

The latest and greatest ScanSnap model, the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500, scans at 20 ppm and 40 ipm, delivering fast desktop scanning for documents. It can also scan business cards, and it comes with a capable business-card program that turns the S1500 into a terrific business-card scanner as well.