News

DataMaster Lab Award for Scanners 2022: small files, high quality scan output

24 May 2022

DataMaster Lab is completely independent from the equipment manufacturers whose products we test. We derive no revenue from testing, nor from our evaluations, certifications - and not from our Digital Imaging Awards either.

We have been testing printing equipment since 2009, and our services are dedicated to helping sales and marketing teams who distribute copiers, printers, and, since 2020, scanners. We know what buyers need. We know how to differentiate products in the office market place.

Digital document storage costs money.
Storing documents on the cloud is secure and promotes teamworking - and has become vital for distributed teams and homeworkers. Much of the cost depends on the size of the files that get uploaded to cloud-based document management systems.

Most manufacturers of imaging equipment provide the means to compress files, which can reduce their size - and the cost to store them - by a factor of ten or more. However, the quality of the images can often be lost in the quest to make files as small as possible.

This can be a false economy, and a risky one. An organization might save on their cloud bills, but if the content is no longer usable, the object of the exercise is completely defeated. Since you cannot uncompress a file, the loss is permanent - and potentially, catastrophic.

Here at DataMaster Lab we look at the quality of scan output. We look at images, and also texts - in all resolutions and in a variety of standardized, real-world scenarios. We look at compressed pdf output. As well as measuring the time it takes, we review whether the files are so damaged in the compression process that they are no longer useful.

This award goes to scanners which deliver both high-quality scan output and small file sizes in a range of different business scenarios.

We have evaluated their compression options for colour and greyscale scanning at 200 and 300 dpi, and run our scan-quality evaluation processes on the pdf files which are produced. We found an excellent balance of small output files and undamaged content.

The winners of this award are scanners which make small pdf files which will be cheap to store on the cloud while still guaranteeing the value of their contents.

The Award is available to subscribers to the sales-enablement service DataMaster Online on the product pages of the machines concerned, and from our public website. High-resolution versions of the Awards and Rosettes are available upon request.