Plustek MobileOffice S420 review

Plustek’s MobileOffice S420 is a compact scanner designed for mobile use. It comes with a USB data cable and a second USB lead for power on the move, but there’s also an AC adaptor and docking station that can be left back in the office. Oddly for a portable device, there’s no supplied carry case.

The docking station is quite novel, forming a proper document feeder for the docked scanner and letting you share it between two attached computers, but it’s disappointing in the details. Power and data come via captive leads you must plug into the scanner, rather than the scanner clipping into a connector, laptop-dock-style. The scanner sits upside down and isn’t securely retained – it’s easy to knock it out of position.

The software package is very similar to that supplied with the Plustek SmartOffice PS286, but with a newer and more basic version of ABBYY’s FineReader OCR software. We didn’t experience any problems when operating this scanner, but the quality of the results was disappointing. Colours were sombre, while the scanner couldn’t preserve the differences between dark or very light shades.

There isn’t a great deal of competition in this class, but while Fujitsu’s ScanSnap S1100 (£158 from www.ebuyer.com) is simplex only, it’s cheaper than the MobileOffice S420 and comes with Fujitsu’s brilliant software. Alternatively, HP’s similarly priced ScanJet 1000 Professional (£201 from www.ebuyer.com) doesn’t have a docking station, but it is duplex. It produces better scans than the S420, feels beautifully made and comes with its own case.