The Portable Document Saving Companion - The Epson WorkForce ES-300W

Many institutions, government offices, courthouses, hospitals, still store their records as paper documents.  Making copies of those papers can get expensive, the copies may not be immediately available and the the available copier may not be very good. Paper copies require more paper, which means harvesting semi-renewable resources. Scanning documents can be fast, cheap and easier to handle compared to reams of paper. Scanners used to be anything but portable, but technology has improved to the extent that you can buy a portable scanner and expect it to make reasonable scans.  Almost three years ago I bought a portable scanner, the Epson ES-300W, so in today's blog article I will share my experiences with the scanner, identify its strengths and weaknesses and provide a review for it.

Overview and Features of the ES-300W

The ES-300W retails for $249.99, and while it is a six year old product at this point, it is still being sold new by Epson and from distributors like Amazon.  While that is expensive for a scanner when there are multifunction devices that have more features, you are paying for portability and reliability.  If you go cheap you will have miserable experiences and waste valuable time wrestling with the scanner instead of processing papers.  

Let's start with the physical aspects of the unit.  In the box comes the scanner, an AC to DC power adapter with a detachable cable and a Micro-B USB 3.0 to Type-A USB 3.0 cable.  The scanner weighs just under 3lbs, but with the cables included they will make the weight closer to 4lbs.  The scanner is 11.3" in length, 3.5" in width and 2.6" in height, so it is pretty compact.  

The unit comes with a battery which can be charged either by the power adapter or the USB connector, but the power adapter will charge faster (3 hours to a full charge) than USB.  The battery is a Li-ion 3.6v with a capacity of 2090 mAh.  I cannot find any specifications of how many pages the scanner can scan when operating on battery power but I have gotten a few hundred pages out of it while it was unplugged.  The AC adapter connector and the USB port are on the back of the unit.

There are several switches and buttons on the unit.  On the top is a paper thickness switch and on the side is a scanner connection mode switch.  Also on the top is the power, stop and scan buttons.  Press the power button to turn the device on, hold the power button to turn the device off.  The blue Ready LED in between the stop and scan buttons indicates when the scanner is ready to receive paper.  There is a Wi-Fi and Battery indicator on the front illuminated by LEDs and a button to connect the scanner to a WPS-enabled wireless router.  If all else fails when you try to connect, try the WPS button.

The input tray and paper guide fold over the scanner unit and is released via a latch.  There are adjustable edge guides on the side of the tray to keep the paper aligned as it is moving through the scanner.  The top portion of the tray has a pair retractable supports which can be pushed upwards and inwards in a Y-shape to support letter and larger paper.  The tray can hold about 20 pages of 92lbs paper and less for thicker paper.

Scanner with input tray and paper guide unfolded

The scanner can connect to a computing device in three ways.  The first and most straightforward is with the provided USB cable.  The included cable is an unusual one and may seem proprietary at first glance, but back in 2017 USB Type-C connectors were not yet common.  The cable will plug into a standard Windows PC or Mac and there are drivers for both OSes.  

The second method is via Wi-Fi, the scanner can be setup as a network scanner and any computer with the drivers and software on it can access the scanner.  The scanner can be fully controlled remotely from the computer.  This method is also intended for Windows PCs and Macs.

The third method is via Wi-Fi AP mode, which is intended for scanning to a mobile device.  In this mode, which is settable with the connection mode switch, the scanner broadcasts its own private Wi-Fi network.  You set your phone to connect to this Wi-Fi network and then run the Epson DocumentScan app (downloadable for free from the Google Play Store or the Apple Store).  

The scanner can handle letter or legal sized documents, credit cards, business cards, receipts and card stock.  It can scan at up to 1200 dpi in either wired or Wi-Fi mode.  It can scan in color, black and white or grayscale and can support two-sided (duplex) scanning.  The advertised speed is 25 pages per minute.  

The PC software package is fairly light with only two main programs, Epson Scan 2 and Epson ScanSmart with a few subsidiary programs.  Epson Scan 2 is a standard scanning program and presents all the options available with the scanner.  ScanSmart is more of a beginner-friendly scanning application but lets you rearrange pages before you save the scan.

Using the Scanner - USB & Wi-Fi

Once you have connected the scanner and installed its drivers, I suggest you start by connecting it via USB.  Set the mode switch to the USB icon, turn on the scanner and use the Epson Scan 2 Utility to select the scanner as a USB device.  

Take a test sheet of letter-sized paper.  For single sided scanning, you want to place the document in the tray so that the side you want to scan is facing toward the back of the scanner and the top half of the document will go through the scanner first.  In other words, if you were looking at the paper normally, turn it around by flipping the top of the document to the bottom.  If you make a mistake with the orientation of the page, you can rotate it with the software.  The Ready LED will turn a brighter blue when it senses paper in the tray.  

You must have the Epson scanning software open to scan.  You can change the scanning settings here fully with Epson Scan 2.  If you do not need color or a truly high quality scan, I would recommend scanning in grayscale at 200dpi.  You probably should try for 300dpi if you are looking for a high quality Optical Character Recognition (OCR) candidate.  Once you have your documents ready, either hit the scan button on the software or on the scanner.  The documents should feed through the scanner one at a time through the automatic document feeder (ADF).  

Scanner Status LEDs

If you see that the scanner has pulled more than one paper through, you can set those pages aside and put them back in the input tray.  If the scanner is still scanning papers you will have to be very gentle in putting the paper back in.  You can always wait, then put the missed pages back in and scan them into the same file on your computer.  Each file can be up to 100 pages, so if you are getting close to 100, save the file in order to avoid an error message.

The ES-300W has the ability to scan business cards and plastic cards, but the scanning process is different for these thicker items.  In order to scan these, set the switch on the top to the card position.  Then you must insert the card into the front of the scanner where the outline indicates.  Do not try to scan it from the input tray.  Insert the card in gently and scanner will pull it in halfway.  Then hit the scan button and the scanner will pull it in all the way and then push it all the way back out again.  When finished I suggest you flip the switch back to the document icon.  

The PC and Mac software allow you to scan to PDF, JPG, TIFF with both Epson Scan 2 and Epson SmartScan.  Epson Scan 2 can also save to BMP, PNG, Multi-page TIFF and "Searchable PDF".  Searchable PDF applies OCR, but if you have better OCR software, then use the standard PDF option.  Epson Scan 2 has the ability to keep scanning documents as you feed them into the input tray automatically until you click on the Finish button in the application.  

Using the scanner via Wi-Fi is essentially the same as using it via USB after setting the scanner up on your network.  Wi-Fi has proven not to be reliable for me when scanning business cards.  

Using the Scanner - Wi-Fi AP and Mobile Devices

Scan Sample 1 - 200dpi Grayscale

Using the scanner is a tricky business over Wi-Fi AP.  First make sure you have downloaded Epson DocumentScan from the Play Store or Apple Store.  Set the scanner to the Wi-Fi AP mode using the mode switch, you will set it to the middle position.  Push the power button on the scanner and wait for the Ready LED and Wi-Fi icon to go solid blue.  

Next go into your phone's mobile settings and look for a new network.  If you are in a municipal, office or court building, you will likely see many networks.  On the bottom of your scanner will be the SSID, connect to that network using the password found there.  Your phone may complain that the connection does not have internet access.  Ignore that, you can still get on the Internet by your cell network.  

When you have connected to the scanner, both the Wi-Fi and the Ready LED should be solid blue.  Go into the DocumentScan and select Search for Scanners or Setup.  Setup will give you a list of compatible scanners, select the ES-300W option.  If DocumentScan finds the scanner, then you can press Scan and you should be able to adjust the options after a few minutes.  The options are much more limited compared to the PC and Mac applications, you can only scan to PDF or JPG and at only 200 or 300dpi.  You can scan two sided and color, so if you are in any doubt about the quality, scan in the best  quality and sort it out later.  DocumentScan cannot do OCR.  

If you get an error such as a paper jam or more than 100 pages are being scanned into a file, you will have to shut down the scanner, restart it, reconnect to its network and restart the app.  Whenever you start or restart the app you must select the scanner from the list of registered scanners before the app will be able to successfully complete the "Searching for scanners" function.  You may want to try scanning to your mobile device at home before going out into a world that closes up shop at 5PM.  

If you are using the Wi-Fi AP mode, you can plug the scanner in using the AC adapter but it should not be connected via the USB cable, otherwise it may not broadcast its SSID.  

Scan Sample 2 - 200dpi Grayscale

Troubleshooting

If your scans are starting to show in poor quality, the scanner glass may be dirty.  Lift up the top part of the scanner at the area with the little triangle and then wipe down both sides of the glass with a streak-free glass cleaner.  

Epson offers replacement pickup rollers and separation pads.  The Epson Scan 2 Utility will inform you when it is time for them to be replaced.

Portable vs. Flatbed Scanners

As a portable scanner, there will come times when the shortcomings of the device will be very apparent.  For straight sheets of regular letter-sized paper without signficant edge or corner wear, the scanner will fly through those pages.  For pages that are ripped, seriously dog-eared, folded into thirds from an envelope, you may get better and more consistent scans from a flatbed scanner.  Flatbed scanners are much larger, heavier and rarely portable.

As there is no collection tray, pages come out and may not look particularly neat as they do.  This may lead to pages finding their way out of order if there is no backstop at the other end of the scanner.  You could put your phone at the other end.  

As a home office scanner, the ES-300W can do the job but it is best suited for smaller scanning jobs.  The scanner is rated for 500 pages monthly, a dedicated AC-only scanner can handle larger jobs.  I would say that this scanner is much faster than my Brother MFC's scanner, produces better quality scans than the Brother's ADF and except for errors like paper jams, more reliable.  

The Good

The best feature about the scanner is that it is fast, and it scans almost as fast in color and double sided as it does single sided.  As there are two scanning surfaces inside the unit, it can scan each side of a piece of paper in one pass.  And its scans usually come out straight and whole.  The scan quality for regular documents with black text on white backgrounds is perfectly acceptable without tweaking settings.

The ES-300W is fairly quiet and has a very smooth sound as the paper passes through the device.  This is very important, you do not want to disturb people working on the other side of the counter with a loud device.  It also does not take up any more space than it has to, so if you can only get a tight spot on a shelf or a part of a table or the top of a filing cabinet to scan, you can still do your job.  

For a portable scanner, as long as you do not drop it or get water on it, you should not have too much trouble with the unit.  The unit is fairly rugged and is not going to break if you nudge it.  It is also easy to clean.  The rechargeable battery is crucial to scanning away from your home or office, wherever you may find yourself having to scan may not have a convenient wall outlet handy or allow you to use it.

As long as you have a charged scanner, you can scan a lot of documents without needing access to a wall outlet or a laptop to keep the device charged.  

Going to a records keeper can save you time on having to wait for a copy request to be processed, allows you to scan only the documents you need to scan, to ascertain what documents the agency does and does not have and saves you money on having to pay for paper copies.  The scanner's ability to support scanning to mobile allows you to travel light, much lighter than bringing your laptop with you.  Many other portable scanners require a laptop.  

Scan Sample 3 - 300dpi Color

The Bad

One issue I dislike about my scanner is that unfolding the input tray is a rougher experience than it should be.  Once you push in the latch, you should expect the tray to lift up and back, but it gets stuck and getting the tray to clear the remainder of the body requires much more force than it should.  The easiest was I have found is, using your left hand, slide the latch back with your thumb and then, with your fingers on the edge between the top and back of the tray, push your fingers into the edge a little while you rock your hand toward the back of the scanner.  This method will fold back the tray with the least amount of resistance and struggle.

The scanner's method for dealing with paper jams and other errors is non-intuitive. In order to deal with a paper jam without power cycling the scanner, you must open the tray as if you were going to clean the scanning lens, fix the jam and then put the tray back.

The software with Wi-Fi is a bit finicky as described above, but the real annoyances come with the mobile app.  The first time I had to scan documents remotely I could not get the scanner to work with Wi-Fi AP.  Lucky the clerical staff behind the copier were able to copy the files I needed, but I felt like I had wasted my money.  Fortunately on my next portable scanning trip the device worked and has ever since, otherwise it would have gone back to the store.  When paper jams it is really going to interrupt your scanning grove over the Wi-Fi AP.  

Epson's DocumentScan software is a bit creepy in the data it collects.  Why does a scanner app need my location?  It seems to be able to access files, is it uploading everything I scan to its servers?  There is no way to demand that whatever data you are sending to Epson is deleted.  

There are no instructions to access or replace the battery, you are at the mercy of Epson support.

Scan Sample 4 - 300dpi Color

Conclusion

Not all business have gone paperless and if you need to make copies at their location rather than your own, then you need a portable scanner.  The price of the Epson ES-300W is high, but there is a great deal of value in it.  The device is fast, robust and holds a generous battery charge, all absolutely essential qualities for scanning on the go.  When you need to go through a file inches thick, this is the tool for the job.  There is no denying that there are annoyances mainly with the wireless options and paper jams.  There are not many other options for robust portable scanners on the market, so if you need to do a lot of scanning