Vue Point handheld scanner test

[Antoha-spb]

Hi everyone!

This post is about VuPoint Magic Wand handheld scanner that i bought on ebay and have tested lately.



Official homepage of the product is here http://www.vupointsolutions.com/PDS-ST410-VP.asp. All specs and features are mentioned there.

In brief:
1. Scanner supports colour and BW, 300 and 600 dpi resolution. So there are four modes of operation.
2. It's fully autonomous - works with two AA batteries and a microSD flash card
3. Designed to capture A4/Letter-sized dox
4. Surprisingly cheap - just $100 compared to $300-$400 for merely the same from Planon (http://planon.com/products/docupen/xseries)

VuPoint Scanner looks great and the build quaity is excellent. Plastic is metallized and hard, start/stop/power button is convenient.

Display is small and got no background light, but it's readable. It shows the mode of operation (resolution and colour settings) and the amount of scanned pages (NOT remaining shots like photo cameras)

What i didn't like are two LEDs - green one showing that scanner is in action, and the red error LED - they should have been much much brighter.



On the side there is a micro SD card slot and standard mini-USB connector. When the scanner is connected to PC it turns into a standard USB card reader.



The bottom side has a long glass window for CIS+LED and long axle with rubber rollers. Note the small gear on the left - it works the same way as movement sensor in the old PC mice with balls (heh... u know what i mean



Note the distances between the CIS window and the upper and lower edges of the device - it shows the scanner inner margins that will appear when scanning bound books. The ones with tight binding may have shorter inner margins so you can't scan it with Magic Wand.

So let's go for some action. In order to test how practical is using this scanner i made two sample pages. An M$ Excel(TM) spreadsheet with frames is required to test how straight do the frame lines appear on the scanned image after the scanner was dragged along the standard A4 page (29 cm). The second one is an M$ Word(TM) document printed in a book layout - 2 pages per sheet. It contains various text styles and a small colour photo.

Both samples were scanned with VuPoint Magic Wand and Canon LIDE 90 to have a kind of a comparsion.

VuPoint, dragging vs. geometry test, 600 dpi monochrome - http://vp.plavmayak.spb.ru/VPMWGEO600M.JPG

VuPoint, image quality test, 300 dpi monochrome - http://vp.plavmayak.spb.ru/VPMW300M.JPG

VuPoint, image quality test, 600 dpi monochrome - http://vp.plavmayak.spb.ru/VPMW600M.JPG

VuPoint, image quality test, 300 dpi colour - http://vp.plavmayak.spb.ru/VPMW300C.JPG

VuPoint, image quality test, 300 dpi monochrome - http://vp.plavmayak.spb.ru/VPMW600C.JPG

Now the same sheet from Canon Lide



Canon LIDE, image quality test, 300 dpi colour - http://vp.plavmayak.spb.ru/LIDE300C.JPG

Canon LIDE, image quality test, 600 dpi colour - http://vp.plavmayak.spb.ru/LIDE600C.JPG

Besides i've scanned two photos that were made with Minolta 6mpix DSLR and printed at a minilab on a matt photo paper.





Here are the links to original scans. Scans by VuPoint are 'crops' from the photos (occasionally turned upside down )

VuPoint, photo quality test, 600 dpi colour - http://vp.plavmayak.spb.ru/VPMWPH1600C.JPG

VuPoint, photo quality test, 600 dpi colour - http://vp.plavmayak.spb.ru/VPMWPH2600C.JPG

With LIDE I scanned both at once. Vertically they are full sized, horizontally - a bit cropped (scanner was a bit narrower).

Canon LIDE, photo quality test, 600 dpi colour - http://vp.plavmayak.spb.ru/fotos_c6.JPG

Conclusion

* VuPoint is a nice gadget that can help you 'on the road' where no other equipment is available or usable.
* It's cheap and very easy to use.
* It scans in absolute darkness where camera or mobile are useless
* It can scan longer documents (in 300dpi, however...)
* People around hardly know that a stick that you carry is a scanner....

However:
* it implies very slow and stable dragging when you scan at 600 dpi colour.
* quality is not as good as from the cheapest USB-powered flatbed CIS scanners
* images are not that sharp as from the camera, and geometry issues that are present in camera scanning also appear with MagicWand
* with this device you can't scan pages from the books with tight bindings and narrow inner margins

That's all for now. Best regards,
Anton

PS: No copyright has been infringed by posting this message. All sample pages and photos featuring here are made by myself for the public domain. Original word and excel samples available/uploadable to here upon request

[lexicographer]

Interesting. Thanks for testing that. I had the same experiences with a Planon.

[daniel_reetz]

Absolutely phenomenal review, AntohaSPB! Thank you!

I might buy one of these, with the intention of ripping it apart and making a battery-powered scanner camera from it.

[Antoha-spb]

Absolutely phenomenal review, AntohaSPB! Thank you!

I might buy one of these, with the intention of ripping it apart and making a battery-powered scanner camera from it.

Thanks Dan.

Indeed i bought the gadget also for using it in one of the crazy projects of diy-map-scanning that implied some mechanical 'upgrades' to what i got from VuPoint out of the box. But after the tests and some general considerations i decided to go for camera shooting rather than scanning (another big DIY design report is coming... ).

Idea of making a scanner-camera is still worth going ahead. Hovever, i hardly believe this can be made with CIS technology that is used in cheap scanners like LIDE and VuPoint. It needs a good CCD matrix of 10K+ pixel triplets (e.g. SONY), a chip with complete scanner functions (e.g. NATIONAL SEMICONDUCTOR) with relevant electronic components like I\O ports, step motors etc, the lens ensuring proper geometry of the resulting scans (e.g RODENSTOCK) plus soldering and programming. Bringing it all together needs some kind of a crowdsourcing as it's expensive and requires extensive knowledge. But if we could replicate a Zeutschel-type scanner - it would be a huge win for all..........

[rob]

Thanks for the great, detailed review! Back in the 1980's, before there were good consumer flatbed scanners, there were handheld scanners just like these, of course with much lower resolution. The problems were similar: you had to make sure you were moving the scanner straight. However, speed wasn't much of a problem because the resolution was so low.

I wonder if you could take apart one of these (or one from a flatbed scanner), attach it to a prism, and build something like the ScanRobot (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlOQuuLYavY).

[daniel_reetz]

Today, w00t has this scanner for $60

http://sellout.woot.com/Default.aspx?Wo ... dd46ee5021

I am thinking about buying one just for tinkering...