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Last year I tested the Epson DS-510, and felt a bit underwhelmed. It was hindered mostly by its software and was far from a true alternative of the market leading Fujitsu Scansnap ix500.
This year’s DS-560 gets a lot closer. And in some ways this one even exceeds the Fujitsu.
First the negatives: configuration is way more difficult than it needs to be – especially for the initial WiFi set up. The Epson configuration utility gets buried in a folder that is installed with the included software and is rather difficult to get up and running. The configuration utility crashed continuously on my Mac and would only configure initially via Windows. Once that was out of the way things were a lot smoother.
Here are some of the key comparison points to the Scansnap ix500:
1. The Epson is TWAIN/ISIS compatible, the ix500 is not.
2. The Epson can be used wirelessly with multiple PC’s (although only one at a time can scan). The Fujitsu Scansnap ix500 can only be ‘paired’ with a single PC for wireless use.
3. The Epson iPad app is more intuitive than the Fujitsu Scansnap app.
That said the Fujitsu Scansnap still does things better thanks to some features that are implemented through hardware vs. the Epson that relies on software. The result is that the Scansnap scans and processes images faster. The Epson software still takes a little bit of post processing time depending on the function but it has been much improved over the last year.
But choosing between the two is much more of a toss-up now than it was a year ago. Epson is definitely getting closer to having a product that matches the best scanner on the market.
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DISCLOSURE – I received this product through the Amazon Vine program to review on Amazon’s site.
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With the DS-510, Epson crippled the Mac software so it won’t scan documents as long as advertised. Did they fix this with the DS-560?
How fast does it scan to an OCR’d PDF vs an Image PDF?
Canon scanners can do OCR’d PDFs as fast as Image PDFs.
Fujitsu’s are 3 times slower since it has to OCR after the scan is done.
Yes that’s why I chose the Fujitsu over Epson thanks so much ur review helped my decision… Ur supper awesome
Thanks
What about scanner into different folders? Editing scans OCR?
Lon, Thanks for your review of this scanner and of the ix500Love all your reviews. I come to you always before a purchase.
Does any one ever use Epson WorkForce DS-560 and FUJITSU Image Scanner ScanSnap iX500 to scan music score? Musician could get load of sheets music an year. Hope Lon could do some experiment on it! 🙂
gret review….thanks now i get to choose between one.
Thanks for the review. Much appreciated! 🙂
So just to make sure I understand correctly, the Epson scanner can be accessed by multiple computers over WiFi without having to plug in the USB cable every time like the Fujitsu?? I recently purchased an ix500, but I’m thinking I’m going to return it and replace it with this model Epson since I need multiple computers to be able to scan to one scanner over WiFi.
Struggling with my decision. Your first review on ds-510 seemed to criticize the time after scanning to process into your apple. Your second review on the ds-560 indicated that problem seemed to go away. However I am a PC W7 (64bit) owner who runs Evernote vor everything. Evernote has problems but it has sooooo many good things. There are not many High quality reviews like yours available for the PC. So I don’t know which to buy. Maybe I should buy the the 560, maybe they added new software that the 510 does not have. I tried to contact epson. No luck. I am sure I will find the answer, but it is taking an agonizing amount of work.
How would I convert from a neat scanner to an Epson scanner?
Hi, thanks for your review. I live in Japan and the ix500 is almost double the price than the DS-560 (which is currently on sale) so on price alone the DS-560 is the better purchase currently for me.
I was wondering why you prefer the ix500 more than the DS-560. At the end of the video you seemed to be favoring the DS-560 more?