Pros & Cons
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- Small and portable
- Can operate independently of a computer or mobile device
- Recognizes text in 48 languages and translates among 16 languages
- Scanned text can be saved to PDF, TXT, and Word files
- Supports manual scans, photo scans, and text-to-speech
- Built-in microSD card reader, dictionary, and MP3 player
- Software available for use with a PC or mobile device
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- Higher error rate than with document scanners
- Manual scan process can be tedious or tiring with longer scans
- Photo translation scans are limited to a few paragraphs at a time
- Translation capability is somewhat rudimentary
IRISPen Air 8 Specs
| Maximum Optical Resolution | Font sizes: 3.5 to 25 points |
| Mechanical Resolution | 120 |
The IRISPen Air 8 ($199) is a pen-like handheld scanner that can capture printed text in 48 different languages. You can scan the text manually by moving the tip of the pen across the lines of text, or you can use the built-in camera to take a photo from which the pen can extract translated text. The Air 8 can translate text into 16 languages, making it a valuable add-on when traveling to countries that speak a foreign language. It also has a built-in English dictionary, microSD card reader, and MP3 player.
This device could be a useful tool to have, as long as you’re willing to live with its limitations. It can be tedious or tiring to hand-scan more than a few paragraphs at a time. And it has a much higher error rate than you would find with a desktop document scanner, especially when it’s translating between languages. That said, you can’t beat its portability. As a scanner that you can take with you almost anywhere, it could appeal to students or academics who do research in libraries or similar institutions.
Design: Small But Versatile
At 0.6 by 6.1 by 1.7 inches (HWD), the IRISPen Air 8 is unusually small and portable for a text scanner. In fact, it weighs just 2.7 ounces. If you’re worried that it might be too small and fragile to carry around with you, that shouldn’t be an issue. The unit is solidly constructed and comes with a semi-hard case that can hold both the pen and the provided USB cable.
(Credit: David English)The Air 8 is very similar in size and weight to the IRISPen Reader 8, which offers a slightly smaller LCD readout and fewer features for a lower price ($149). Other pen-like scanners with similar features include Scanmarker’s Scanmarker Pro, Newyes’s Reader Pen 4, Berlanche’s X5 Pro, and Birgus’s Scanner Reader Pen. This may be a niche market, but there’s a considerable amount of competition here.
IRIS, a Canon subsidiary, estimates that the Air 8’s built-in 1,500mAh polymer Li-ion rechargeable battery can last from 6 to 8 hours while working. It also has a standby time of 5 to 7 days. This model is capable of scanning at 120 frames per second, which allows you to manually scan text at a moderately fast pace. And it’s capable of recognizing a wide range of font sizes, from as small as 3.5 points to as large as 25 points. That should cover almost any text size that you might encounter. And you can configure the pen for either left-handed or right-handed scans. Choosing the appropriate hand orientation helps to improve the accuracy of the scans.
(Credit: David English)One of the strengths of this particular model is the wide selection of languages that are available for some of its features. It offers OCR in 48 languages and text-to-speech in 16 languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Russian, and Japanese. And if you need a quick translation, this pen can scan text lines and translate them in 16 languages. How about text on objects, signs, or posters that can’t be easily scanned manually? The Air 8 has a small camera on the back of the unit that lets you photograph areas of text that can then be translated into 16 different languages. That feature alone could be very useful when traveling to a country that has a different native language from your own, though there are some limitations to these text-scanning features compared with traditional document scanners.
(Credit: David English)While the IRISPen Air 8 has 32GB of onboard memory, only 17.3GB of that is available for storing your scans or MP3 files. However, this model also has an embedded microSD card reader that allows you to significantly boost its storage capacity. You’ll have to provide your own microSD card, though they’re relatively inexpensive these days, depending on the capacity.
Setup and Software: Like a Swiss Army Knife
You can use the IRISPen Air 8 completely on its own, so the setup process can be as simple as charging the unit and jumping right in to try out the built-in applications. If you want to use it with your Windows computer, you can attach the included USB-C-to-USB-A cable to your computer, and the Air 8 will appear in Windows File Explorer as an external drive labeled as IRISPen_Air_8. From there, you can manually copy over any text or photo scans from the pen. Or in the reverse direction, you can use the wired connection to copy MP3 files from your computer to the Air 8.
The provided USB cable can be used for power charging, data transfers, or both simultaneously. You can connect the USB-C end to the Air 8 and the USB-A end to your computer or USB-A compatible charging port. The cable is only 13 inches long, though I was able to extend it successfully for a scanner-to-computer connection by plugging it into a Basesailor USB-C 3.1 female-to-male extension cable.
(Credit: IRIS)The IRISPen Air 8 also offers dedicated host apps for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS that let it scan directly into that app via Bluetooth. You can select separate languages for the scan and reading voice. That would allow you to scan something in a foreign language, but have it read back to you in translated English. Conversely, you can scan something in English and have it translated into a foreign language. In addition to hearing the scanned text spoken within the host app, you can save the scanned text to a TXT, RTF, DOCX, or PDF file on your connected computer or mobile device.
Using the Air 8 is fairly straightforward. The 3.5-inch color touch screen is sufficiently bright with an acceptable 120dpi resolution. The home screen consists of large icons that are well-labeled and easily distinguished from each other by both color and illustration. That’s especially important because, unlike the IRISPen Reader 8, the Air 8 offers a fairly large number of add-on features. Some of these may have limited appeal, such as the built-in MP3 player, but others, such as the photo translation feature, could be quite handy.
(Credit: David English)The home screen icons include the Scan to Text & Save app that lets you scan text in any of 48 different languages. The DYS Text to Speech app is designed to help dyslexic individuals see and then hear a word or sentence spoken out loud. That app supports nine different languages. The Scan Translation app lets you manually scan text in any of 16 languages and have that text translated into another of those 16 languages. The Photo Translation app lets you capture a photographic image of the text and have it translated from one of 16 languages into another of those 16 languages.
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The Collins English Dictionary app lets you scan a word or phrase in English and have that word or phrase spoken and also defined within a fairly comprehensive dictionary. And if you press on any word within that definition, that word will also be spoken out loud. The Favorites app lets you choose favorite words or phrases that will then be highlighted as shortcuts to the dictionary. The IRISPen Connect app provides basic instructions for connecting the Air 8 via Bluetooth to a computer or mobile device.
(Credit: David English)And finally, the MP3 Player app lets you play any MP3 files that you’ve transferred to the storage memory or microSD card. On the downside, there’s only room for a 23-character descriptive name inside the file menu screen, and the files don’t appear on screen (or play) in alphabetical order, as you might prefer. And there are no settings to change that. In its favor, the sound quality from the small built-in speaker is surprisingly good, especially if you flip the unit over to prevent the sound from being muffled.
For comparison, the less-expensive IRISPen Reader 8 doesn’t include the Photo Translation, Collins English Dictionary, Favorites, IRISPen Connect, or MP3 Player apps. It does have the Scan to Text & Save and DYS Text to Speech apps, though the DYS app supports only five languages rather than the nine languages that the Air 8 supports. And Newyes’s Reader Pen 4, Berlanche’s X5 Pro, and Birgus’s Scanner Reader Pen have almost identical home screen interfaces, with many of the same apps, including the Collins English Dictionary.
Scan Performance: Strengths and Limitations
In most scanner reviews, we usually cite the manufacturer’s speed rating and then test the device to see if it can match or exceed that rating. That’s not possible with a manual pen scanner where the user determines the appropriate scanning speed.
To scan the text manually, you’re instructed to tilt the device 70 to 90 degrees to the plane of the text as you align the front-mounted viewfinder with the center of the text line. You press the pen tip a little less than half an inch (1 centimeter) in front of the first word, wait a second for the light to come on, and then slide right at a constant speed. At the end of the line of text, you lift the pen tip and repeat the process on the next line. As you do this, the results will appear on the touch screen.
(Credit: David English)I found the manual scanning process itself to be relatively easy, though it can become tedious or tiring if you’re scanning more than a few paragraphs at a time. The photo scan option can be a good alternative when translating, though its view is limited to a few paragraphs at a time. So even that approach is also best suited for words, sentences, or paragraphs, as opposed to pages or chapters.
And while the Air 8 can technically recognize text as small as 3.5 points in size, it can be difficult to keep the pen’s scan tip centered on the text when the font is less than 8 points in size. You can still do it, but the error rate will increase as you stray off the vertical axis while trying to track a very small line of text.
I also tried scanning typefaces in a variety of styles, including serif, non-serif, and script. The results were closely consistent across the board, even with the cursive Monotype Corsiva typeface. When you do have errors, they’re usually isolated words that can be easily corrected due to their context or close similarity to the actual word. For example, time was misread as tme, good was misread as goo, and large was misread as lar.
Similarly, when translating text, don’t expect the kind of nuanced translation that might be available through Google Translate. You can expect a fairly large number of mistakes, though you can usually decipher the overall meaning behind the words. As a test, I scanned some text from a setup guide for a printer that I had recently reviewed. The text in the printed setup guide is repeated throughout in English, French, and Spanish, which made it a good test document for evaluating the Air 8’s translation capabilities.
(Credit: David English)In the setup guide, the original English version reads as: Plug in and power on. On the control panel, choose your language and country/region by turning the dial. Press dial down to select. However, the English translation of the French version came out as: Plug and turn on printer. On the control panel, Hoose your language and your country | Region by turning the wheel. Press the CADRA down to select. And the English translation of the Spanish version came out as: Connect it and turn it on it. In the control panel, choose your language and the country | Region twist the dial. Press dial down to select.
When you do see errors from a scan, you can fix them on the Air 8 before saving the output to a file. From the touch screen, you press the space following the misread word, press the X icon repeatedly to delete any incorrect characters, and then press the keyboard icon to type in the corrected characters. For the English language scans that I tried with the device, there were typically three or four errors per 100 words. That’s much worse than the OCR error rate for a desktop document scanner, but within this context, and with the device’s ability to let you manually make corrections, it’s manageable.
A significant challenge when manually scanning longer paragraphs is knowing where the next line starts after finishing the previous line. It’s best to make a mental note when you begin each line as to the particular word that will start the next line. For example, if the paragraph consists of ten lines of text, it can be confusing when you’re in the middle of the paragraph as to exactly where to pick up the next line, unless you adopt some kind of system. Shorter paragraphs are less of a problem, as you can think of it as “I’m now three lines from the top,” or “I’m now two lines from the bottom.”