CZUR Book & Document Scanner with Smart OCR for Mac and Windows

I've only had this for a day, so I may have to update this review as I use it more. Assuming something doesn't break right away, I've played with it enough to declare it VERY USEFUL, a huge leap forward in technology. Perhaps even a 'revolution' in my way of life ;) I read books from the 1800's that are long out of print, not available anywhere except maybe ONE lending library if I'm lucky. I also like to scan individual pages out of a thick music score when I'm traveling. Has worked well in both those cases on my test runs. In fact, scanning with this device has made easy what was before sometimes impossible. Seems like a great way to scan handwritten notes too, though I've not used it for that yet. What I ESPECIALLY like: - I can scan books, sheet music, etc that are lying flat on my desk. The 'autoscan' feature activates after pages have been flipped, so you can multitask and just flip pages when you're ready. It waits for you while you vacuum or whatever. I put a weight inside the 'thumb glove' to keep pages open while I'm away after flipping. Scan quality was excellent on all things I tried so far. - When not in use, I now use the scanner as THE lamp for my desk area-- it illuminates my entire work space quite evenly. They even provided 2 additional USB-rechargeable portable LED desk lamps -- a MOST pleasant surprise -- better than any I've bought on the market. - The OCR and PDF work sufficiently well for me. The page curvature elimination works very well also. The 'thumbprints' from holding the pages down sometimes don't get edited out completely; but this doesn't bother me too much. I might eventually find out what's wrong on those pages where it hasn't worked. So I gave it 5 stars despite some 'rough edges' which are as follows: - documentation is very minimal and incomplete, so you've got to figure a lot of stuff out on your own by just trying things. - installing on windows requires running the app with admin privileges, a pain. They explicitly say in the provided documentation (such as it is) that it runs only under windows not MAC, but I haven't tried obtaining MAC Software which is rumored to be available online. I have computers that run everything, so I'm OK with using it on windows for now. Linux would be my #1 choice. - GUI is very barebones and primitive, but gets the job done. I personally don't require a lot of polish in a GUI as long as I can do what I want. - When OCR-ing a book, you get blocks of text interspersed with headers, which I suppose is to be expected. I'm after text and almost never care about photos. I'm a decent python programmer and so can post-process headers out. Also, I don't like how OCR goes to *.doc files by default; I usually prefer working with straight text in this context, and the intermediate 'doc' files will require some thought for use in batch processing. All in all though, to sum up in one word: spectacular! Kudos to the developers.

This is impressive. I first wanted something like this when Google worked on their Library of Congress project around 2007 or so. I have tens of thousands of documents that I've been wanting to digitize so that I can get rid of the physical stacks. Various books too. This product absolutely does what it's supposed to do. Out of the box, this is an impressive display. I would say their packaging rivals that of Apple products (of which I also use). It's slick, solid, well-presented, and gives a good feeling of quality. I would say that hardware wise, that quality delivers. The unit is solid, easy to use, quick to assemble, and easy to store. The only thing I found a little iffy is the extra light. It's absolutely useful and while I think they did a great job with the design, the light is held in place with a magnetic rectangle lock (very similar to the power cord on a MacBook). Because the light is being pulled by gravity and is a little heavier, it can come off with just a little force. Again, not a huge deal, but it's my only complaint with the hardware. There is a foot pedal and hand pedal that allow you to scan without touching the scan area. That in itself is really convenient and functional. The software is good, but definitely leaves some features to be desired. I noticed that the Fujitsu version of this allows multiple items to be laid on the black cloth and processed individually. This device doesn't seem to allow for that. The multi-page gets off from time to time and I'll have to toy with it in those cases. As a designer and engineer, there are a number of software features that I could envision being pretty easy to build into the software. I also don't feel that the algorithm that "blends in" the thumb holders is very strong. It works, but they could definitely improve upon this significantly. I was also a little frustrated having to upgrade my version of OS X to use their scanner software. I was only half a version behind and I just can't understand what functionality of the newest OS X release they use that would warrant that. So it took me some time out of the box before I could use it since I had to upgrade my entire machine, but it's been running smoothly since. If you have a lot of documents or books that you want to scan, I would highly advise this. If you have a ton of photos, unless I'm mistaken and there IS a way to do multiple scans at once, you might consider their competitor. It's more expensive, but that one feature would save me a TON of time with my scanning process. I've had it for 2 days and have already scanned over 3,000 documents - so yea, it's pretty fast.

It works really well and it scans fast, however the processing time slows down the machine. I had to use a lower DPI and Resolution settings and not use the page flattening option and just use "original picture" or my laptop (which is not screaming fast, but a good machine that runs other high speed production level 90ppm scanners no problem) If not the laptop could not keep up with the scanning speed. it will buffer pages ahead of where you are scanning, but if you are in a production environment where speed is key the options mentioned above allow for less than 10 pages in the buffer and then you sit and wait and I mean like over 5 minutes wait before you can scan 10 more pages and then wait... not good. The page flattening option works great, but it slows down scanning a lot. If speed doesn't matter to you use it, for us it just bogged down the process way to much. Using lower dpi than desired and non page flattening allows you to be hundreds of pages out in front of the processing and then you can simply let your pc work on them while you go home or lunch or do other things. That is the only way I could make it work for us. But this technique did work and I was able to scan 4k pages or so in just a few days. At this price point this is a good scanner. You just need to play with the settings to make it work for your needs.

Best product ever, I scanned 86 pages of book at low quality, low size, it took 2 mb of space and best quality at the lowest settings. Go for it. Thumb cots only auto-removed when two page setting is applied. 86 page took 2-3 minutes, as I am a new to this.

Utilisé dans le cadre de la numérisation de ma bibliothèque personnelle, je l'ai testé sur des gros pavés (certains ayant 2000 pages, d'autres avec des reliures collées, donc peu "flexibles") et tout ce que l'on peut dire, c'est que ce numériseur assure grave ! L'aplatissement est de très bonne qualité, tout juste peut-on remarquer (parfois) ici et là de très légères ondulations des lignes de texte, mais il faut être très tatillon ! Le logiciel fourni est aussi d'excellente facture, simple d'utilisation et rapide. Je n'ai pas testé la fonction OCR (j'utilise Abby Finereader), mais on peut présumer que ça sera d'un très bon niveau puisque CZur embarque la technologie... de ce fournisseur. Les outils de complément (pédale pour pied, bouton déclencheur, éclairage latéral) sont très utiles, de même que la numérisation auto (via le logiciel) qui permet de gagner un temps considérable. Bref, du matos QUI TIENT SES PROMESSES, et qui justifie pleinement son prix.

Yo lo utilizo para escanear fotos y texto, y puedo decir que cumple sobradamente con las expectativas. Es rápido, sencillo de utilizar, el software de instalación funciona perfectamente en Windows 10 (mejor descargarlo desde la página de Czur, el manual incluye el enlace directo). Todo el material que viene con el escáner, está muy presentado en su caja, un poco voluminosa para guardar, pero muy útil al venir acolchada para la protección del escáner y las luces auxiliares. Muy satisfecho con la compra.

The CZUR ET16 Plus Book Scanner is the solution for faster scanning than the traditional flat-bed scanner. Once you become familiar with it it really can save a great deal of time with high-quality results - you choose your DPI. The LED lighting options are very flexible to cope with glare too. If you belong to an orchestra, for example, you can scan all your music into an app - for fast retrieval and page-turning (via a foot pedal!) in an appropriate app - not to mention a very compact portable solution and 'electronic' music stand. If you are a teacher/lecturer or museum librarian - this must be the answer for access for your students and researchers. It's very fast with desk and foot buttons if you have to scan, say, a book. Slower for, say different music sheets - but still fast. The clever finger gadgets hold down the pages (even though the software straightens out 'curves') and then automatically removes them from your scan!

I do not have tons of stuffs to scan, but Covid-19 has make me bring your tutoring sessions online (on Zoom), and a new management of what materials I should pre-scanned, so that I work out chapters, worksheets with my students Online. But sometimes, I would need to get something scanned quickly and make them into PDFs, and my normal Multi-function printer/scanner takes a bit too slow, and I still have to do some backend work, to clean up the scans, rotate alternate pages (if I scanned a book), etc. The Czur ET16 Plus allows me to get the job done in a fraction of the time I used to take, and it's quiet, no moving parts, only me flipping the pages, step on the foot paddle to activate scan/capture when I'm ready to. Totally happy with the purchase. Also, when I decided to make the purchase, I got the product from the supplier in Singapore, in 2 days, with Amazon Prime. If you in need of scanning a lot, books or papers, or needs scanning to done quickly, this is the product I strongly recommend.