Canon imageFormula DR-C125

Canon document scanners are almost uniformly impressive beasts, so I had high expectations for the Canon imageFormula DR-C125 ($495 direct). I wasn't disappointed. Just like the Editors' Choice Canon DR-2580C ($875 street, 4.5 stars) ?which I reviewed in 2005, but is still one of the best desktop scanners available? the DR-C125 is fast for a desktop scanner and remarkably fast for scanning, recognizing text, and saving to a searchable PDF file. That's enough to make it an easy pick for Editors' Choice.

Designed for a small or home office or as a personal scanner in any size office, the DR-C125 offers a suitably small footprint, at 11.8 by 6.1 inches (WD). Even better, unlike most desktop scanners, it doesn't need extra room for an output tray.

Paper normally follows a U-shaped path. Starting from the 30-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) in back, it moves under the scanner, takes a u-turn, and continues up to the output tray that's parallel to the scanner front. For heavier weight paper or business cards, you can bypass the output tray with a nearly straight-through path that pushes the paper out through a slot in the front.

Setup and Software
Setting up the DR-C125 is mostly standard fare. However, I have one quibble with the installation program, which treats the applications that come with the scanner almost as an afterthought. When you run the installation, you have to choose between a Typical or Custom install, which really should be called Minimal and With Programs.

With most installation routines, the Typical option would install everything. With the DR-C125, however, it installs only the driver, scan utility, and user manual. Worse, it doesn't tell you that other programs are available, or that you can install them only if you choose the Custom option.

Choose Custom, and you get the rest of the software you paid for, including PaperPort 11 for document management, OmniPage SE4 for optical character recognition (OCR), Presto! Buzzard 6 SE for business cards, and recopy PDF Pro Office for working with PDF files. You can also install an Evernote connector that lets you scan directly to Evernote.

As you might have noticed, most of the applications are either SE versions or older versions. The current version of PaperPort, for example, is PaperPort Professional 14 ($199.99 direct), well beyond the version 11 Canon provides. Although not as robust as the full versions of the current programs, however, the software is capable enough to handle most personal or small office needs.

Scan Speed and Document Management
The DR-C125's 600 pixel per inch optical (ppi) resolution is typical for document scanners, and more than you need for scanning text. The default resolution is 200 ppi, which is also typical, and all you need for most documents.

In my tests using the Canon scan utility to scan directly to image PDF files at the default 200 ppi and color mode settings, I timed the scanner at 25.4 pages per minute (ppm) in simplex mode, just a touch faster than the 25 ppm rating. For duplex mode it was essentially the same speed per page, or 50 images per minute (ipm), with one image on each side of the page.

Far more impressive is that the scanner didn't slow down at all when I scanned directly to a searchable PDF format, which is generally the most useful format for document management applications. Even with the added step of recognizing the text, it took just 1 minute for 25 pages or 50 images.

Being able to recognize text without slowing down is something very few scanners can manage. For document management applications that depend on searchable PDF files, it makes the DR-C125 much faster in practice than other scanners that offer faster raw scan speed, but add time for recognizing the text. The Editors' Choice Kodak i2600 ($1,195 direct, 4 stars) came in at 76.9 ipm for scanning duplex pages to image files, for example, but with text recognition added, it slowed down from 39 seconds for a 25-page, 50-image file to 1 minute 16 seconds.

Other Test Results
The DR-C125 also scored extremely well on our OCR test and reasonably well on our business card test. In combination with OmniPage, it read our Times New Roman test page at sizes as small as 8 points, and our Arial test page at 6 points, without a mistake. It also did surprisingly well with some additional fonts that aren't part of our official tests, because most scanners do so poorly with them. In particular, it read two highly stylized fonts with thick strokes at sizes as small at 8 points without a mistake.

On our business card tests, the scanner had no problems feeding stacks of cards, with BizCard doing a reasonably good job of recognizing the text, parsing it, and putting the data in the right fields.

This combination of speed, OCR accuracy, and business card handling is impressive for the price. Even more impressive is the ability to recognize text and save to a searchable PDF file without slowing down. All this makes the Canon DR-C125 both an Editors' Choice and, for those who need to scan to searchable PDF format, a potentially better choice than faster, more expensive scanners that slow down when recognizing text.

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