IRIScanDesk 6 Business-Prof.Document,Receipt,Book Scanner,Auto-Flatten & Deskew,32MP,Capture 11x17in,136 Languages OCR,Text to Speech,PDF/Search,PDF/Word/Tiff/Excel,Video Distance Learning,Win&Mac

Abstract Both book scanning products have adequate hardware with software that leaves a LOT to be desired, both in terms of features and in terms of bugginess/stability. They both lack critical features that can turn a simple task into a repetitive nightmare that takes 5x as long as it should. The CZUR with the updated 2024 software you download from the internet is completely worthless, you must have the older version of the software that comes on the CD to make it work at all for scanning books—with the newer version of the software you get online, the CZUR is a 0 star product, with the 2023 software the CZUR is a 2 to 2.5 star product. The IRIScan is a 3 to 3.5 star product—usable for its intended purpose, but falling short of what you really should have if you want to scan books.Discussion My need is to scan books into searchable PDFs for a research project. First I bought the CZUR device, since it had a higher rating on Amazon than the IRIScan, albeit not by much, 4.1 vs 3.4. The experience was so jarringly bad that I felt it was necessary to have a shootout, so I ordered the comparable IRIScan. Both operate on USB power, important if you plan to scan in places that may not have AC available. Fancier devices exist, at higher cost, that may do a better job, particularly for book scanning, but you typically have to have AC power. The CZUR came with a CD with an older version of the software, and it turns out that this is absolutely essential, as the device is nearly completely unusable with the newer version of the software (V2.2.240123) that you download from their website. If you don’t have access to the older V2.2.230531B software, until CZUR fixes their newer software version, the comparison is over, the CZUR is worthless, return it and buy the IRIScan. You can see my review of the CZUR on Amazon, under 2 star reviews. So this comparison is between the CZUR with the V2.2.230531B software and the IRIScan with software version 1.5.0.2712. These are essentially software products as the hardware is nothing special. Anything can happen if these companies update their software, so you need to check the version number of the software. These devices are physically pretty much the same, the IRIScan is more uniquely engineered, but is heavier—I prefer the elegantly simple design and light weight of the CZUR. Both have built in dimmable lights which are useful for matte books but useless for pages with any amount of sheen or gloss. To image glossy pages, like magazines, you will need additional light sources (2 really) of about the same high color temperature, as neither cameras offer automatic white balance. The light intensity control on the CZUR is of a superior design compared to the IRIScan, but they both work fine. Both devices have modes to scan A3 (11.7” x 16.5”, two 8.5 x 11 inch pages) and A4 (8.3 x 11.7”) books and documents. Anything bigger cannot be scanned two pages at a time. I guess you could scan them one page at a time, but have not investigated this. In the CZUR this is done by physically raising the camera higher to get the bigger field of view for A4, which works fine, a simple and effective solution. I have no idea how it works for the ISIScan device, but there is no moving the camera. It doesn’t matter for the IRIScan, as the A4 mode produces terrible images, barely usable. That said, the IRIScan works fine in A3 mode even for A4 and smaller books, so you aren’t really losing much due to this weird quirk. It seems like you are wasting a lot of pixels if you do this, but in practice, it works OK.Advantage CZUR. Software page flattening is a really important feature if you want to scan books, particularly big, thick old books as I seek to scan. I guess there are higher end devices that use lasers to improve this process, but these all require separate power AFAIK. Neither of these devices do a great job, but the edge definitely goes to the IRIScan here, most of the pages are decently flattened. Both allow you to adjust the page flattening algorithm after you shoot the image. Sadly, in book mode, if you image a flat page, there is no way to disable the page flattening feature in the CZUR software, it will force a curve adjustment on the page which is usually, but not always, grossly inaccurate. Mind you there is a page flattening on/off checkbox that looks like you can uncheck it, but it is fake, grayed out. Errors can mostly be fixed in post processing before creating an output file, but is just another totally unnecessary hassle.BTW, the OCR works fine in both products. You will typically need to hold the pages of thicker books flat with your fingers during the page imaging process. Both software packages offer the ability to automatically remove your fingers from the images if you follow their rules carefully. The IRIScan software is more demanding of the user but is much more reliable in this regard. In both software packages you can laboriously make adjustments after you shoot to crop out fingers that don’t get automatically removed, but it is unnecessarily difficult in both. They should simply offer an eraser tool to use on images with residual fingers, but neither do. As far as image sharpness goes, as long as you avoid the A4 mode in the IRIScan, they are roughly comparable. Images of high resolution glossy color photos (taken with auxiliary lighting!) show them to be pretty close in terms of color, sharpness and contrast, and of course these are somewhat adjustable within the software. Both take decent images, as you would expect from 20-something Megapixel cameras.The user interface is better on the CZUR once you figure it out, with controls for global changes to all pages or changes to just one page at a time, the former apparently missing in the IRIScan. The CZUR saves the page images in an almost useful way, in a user designated spot. The IRIScan hides them deep inside an invisible folder on your C drive—I have to ask the company where they were hiding to see them and then tell the computer to show hidden files. They are all jumbled up with thumbnail images so are virtually useless outside of the software. When you start a new project, the old scan images are deleted. This should be user controlled, not automatic. Advantage CZUR. The CZUR images each page as a color jpg and then when you output the final book you can choose the mode you want—e.g. jpgs, B&W, tiffs, MS Word, PDF, OCR PDF. In contrast, you need to make this selection before you scan with the IRIScan. Thus, with the CZUR you can output multiple version of a project if you want to, whereas this is not apparently possible with the IRIScan. Again, advantage CZUR. However, software stability is a BIG ISSUE with the CZUR software package, even the 2023 version. It is rare to get through a whole book without a crash, and sometimes you get the Blue Screen of Death, requiring a hard restart of the computer (pressing the power button). These Blue Screens are so hard that they scrambled the arrangement of my 3 monitors and temporarily disabled some attached USB hardware. Scan too quickly in the manual mode and you will get this locked, non-responsive blue screen. Fortunately, the software has saved the images you have already collected, so you can just pick up where you left off after you reboot. Again, you MUST use the 2023 version of the software or the CZUR is completely unstable and unusable. Stability is less of a problem with the IRIScan, but there are some bothersome bugs. Sometimes, while scanning manually or in timed mode (one page ever 5 or 7 seconds) the software decides to open the "image adjustment panel" after each page—not all the time, but sometimes, I can’t figure out why. When shooting manually, it then requires two clicks to image each page instead of one—the first to make the control panel disappear, the second to take the page image. I threw this to the company for resolution, nothing back yet. Here is a big shortcoming of both software packages--Both systems sometimes take page images that are not salvageable after they are shot, although this is definitely more frequent with the CZUR. If you note this immediately while you are scanning a book, it is not hard to stop and replace the defective page. If you don’t see the bad page and just keep on scanning, you are screwed, you have to start all over again. With the CZUR system it MIGHT be possible, with great effort, to go back and replace a bad page before outputting as a PDF (although I never got it to work, it is possible in theory), but it is completely impossible with the IRIScan. If you don’t detect the bad scan in real time, the only solution I can find for both is to rescan the whole book while keeping a close eye on each page thumbnail as it scans in to make sure you don’t have to do it a third time. This is better implemented in the CZUR. This alone doubles or triples the time it takes to scan a book and makes the timed shooting option virtually worthless. When not scanning books, the CZUR has a “replace image” function that looks like it would solve this problem, but their tech support confirmed that it is not available in book scanning mode! It makes me think that the software designers never actually used their products to scan a book. There are many other missing features in both software packages. Text looks by far the best when scanned in the high contrast "black and white" mode, but you can't use this mode when pages have photos of any type. You can scan pages with photos in the color or grayscale modes, but then the text is not as sharp as it could be and the page background can appear to be gray. It would be nice to be able to protect the photos and convert the text portions of a page to black and white in post processing, but this feature appears not to exist in either software package.I prefer the CZUR hardware for several reasons. I prefer the software design of the CZUR. But the software is just far too unstable and unreliable to tolerate, even the usable old version. And as I said, the new version of the software is unusable. Given that the software of the CZUR is getting worse with time rather than better, skip the CZUR and buy the IRIScan. But know that it is a mediocre product that will only barely meet the needs of some users. The only good news is that the problems are mostly in the software , so if the programmers ever decide to improve it, you product might become more useful.

It does a decent job but will not display the application window properly when you have multiple screens. It tries to display on several screens at one and you can’t change the window size. Really bad programming. If you have a laptop, the only way to get it to work is to make the laptop screen the default screen. Even then reviewing a page brings up a screen that you can’t move or control, again sloppy coding that you never see in any other decent software.

I just returned a CZUR ET 24 Pro because the software was so unstable, and I ordered an IRIScan Pro 6 Business. I got through 100 pages of a book before the device got a connection error: "USB Device not recognized." I tried everything suggested on the support site but no luck. I have a trouble ticket in. If they cannot resolve it, I'll be returning this one, too.Update 9/10/2024 - I spent a lot of time working with IRIScan support and we could not get this to work on a Windows 11 computer or a MacBook. I am returning the item.

This is a great device... I had to update my MacBook Pro otherwise it wouldn’t install the software. The only problem I had, was with a very thick book (700 pages). What ever the book I scan, after every scan, I look to the scan page to make sure the scan is ok... if the scan is not... I delete the page and start again. For now, I only used the scanning book feature... and I don’t regret this purchase.

I am reviewing the IRIScan Desk 6 BusinessI did a lot a research before investing in this scanner. I was looking for a scanner that would scan flat documents, books, photographs, cards, etc, to digitize genealogical records. In intended future use to include research at repositories that hold genealogical records (libraries, courthouses, and historical societies). This scanner simply is not appropriate for that scope of work.Inside the box, the manual states this scanner has difficulty with glossy images. I found that to be true. Even a matte photo is too glossy for the scanner. Older photos that are shiny are nearly impossible to capture. Room lighting creates streaks in the photos, as does the built-in extra lighting. When it does capture photographs successfully, the image quality is very grainy. The 32MP refers to document scanning capability, not photo. A 3X5 photo yields about a 115 kb file at the highest quality, lowest compression setting. A magazine or book page that has even a slight sheen ends up with glare on the image. A flat card with metallic ink ends up with an unreadable image. A store receipt printed on thermal paper is too glossy. I will be returning this scanner since it will not function in the way I need it to.There is an instruction booklet included that covers how to install everything. Read it first and follow the sequence exactly as listed. Note that not all the included software comes with the download. You will have to contact the company to access some of the software (Readiris Corporate, for example). You will have to register the product before you can download any software at all.In the downloadable user manual, there is a list of known limitations. Using the edge fixing feature can save you time in the post scan editing phase, but it does not capture well. It even includes a reminder to avoid scanning pages with color images.While the scanner is portable, it is cumbersome to move. To take it along requires a laptop and the laptop’s power supply if you are going to run the scanner using the laptop’s power. Then, you need the scanner itself and the Scanpad. If you might use the built-in lights, you will also need the AC adapter for the scanner. If you plan to use the hand button or foot pedal, you will need to take it/those, too. The scanner itself has a footprint that is about 4.5X6.0” with a folded height of almost 16”. I have yet to find a backpack/case that will contain all of this neatly.Now, after sharing the big negatives, I’ll add some things it does very well. Those old school certificates scan beautifully (except for any shiny seals). Newspaper clippings come out crisp. Works typed on plain typing paper also scan nicely. It takes a bit of tweaking to get the curved image flattening to work properly, but once it does, the results are outstanding. The hand button for operating the camera is convenient. I did not try the foot pedal.In all, I think it has potential to be a good scanner for the right situation. If your work looks like the advertising images included in the listing, it is not going to work well.