A predecessor to the Editors’ Choice award-winning Raven Pro Document Scanner reviewed here in October 2021, the $439.85 Raven Original Document Scanner (2nd Gen) is essentially the same document scanner with lower capacity and speed. This version offers the same 8-inch touch screen and preinstalled scanning interface and document management software as the Raven Pro, but a price roughly $200 lower brings some sacrifices: the Original’s automatic document feeder (ADF) holds only half as many pages, its daily duty cycle is 4,000 versus 6,000 pages, and its scanning speed rating is one-third slower. Otherwise, the Original and Pro scanners are similar, making the former a less robust but still capable entry-level solution.
Not Your Everyday Scanner
The Raven Original measures 6.5 by 11.2 by 7 (HWD) inches with its trays closed and weighs 9.8 pounds. Those measurements are about average among many competing models, though the device is a pound or two heavier than three Editors’ Choice honorees: the Epson RapidReceipt RR-600W, the Fujitsu ScanSnap iX1600, and Brother’s ADS-2700W Wireless High-Speed Desktop Document Scanner. A few other worthy contenders are Epson’s WorkForce ES-580W and the Canon imageFormula R50.
As with the Raven Pro, the Raven Original’s most attractive feature is its 8-inch touch screen. The display is a highly effective, tablet-like interface that lets you create, edit, and save workflow profiles that define and take your scans from hardcopy to searchable archives and everything in between—all from the front of the scanner.
More than a convenient, conventional touch screen for navigating menus and executing commands, the front panel offers a robust scanning interface, optical character recognition (OCR) to convert pages to editable text, and a choice of resolution, destination(s), and file formats (Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat image or searchable PDF, Excel, and so on). In other words, you get a complete scanning solution and document management application, not to mention the ability to edit your scans after they’re done, all on the face of the scanner instead of on your PC.
Raven’s scanners are not, to be sure, the only ones with large touch displays and up-front interface and archiving routines. PCMag reviewed Canon’s imageFormula ScanFront 400 almost five years ago. It has a full 10.1-inch tablet-size touch panel, though it’s bulkier and about four times as expensive. Fujitsu’s ScanSnap iX1600, a 2021 Best of the Year pick, has a 4.3-inch display with similar functionality, at least in terms of setting up and executing scans from the device itself. Most of the iX1600’s document management features, however, belong to the bundled ScanSnap Home software.
The Raven Original and Pro also come with scanner interface and document management software called Raven Desktop that you can install on your Windows or macOS desktop or laptop. (More on software and connectivity in the next section.)
Document handling on the Original consists of a 50-sheet automatic document feeder, which as mentioned is half the size of the Raven Pro’s ADF, and the device is rated for 4,000 compared to 6,000 scans daily. Meanwhile, the Epson RR-600W and ES-580W each come with a 100-sheet ADF and are rated at 4,000 scans per day. The Fujitsu ScanSnap iX1600 and Brother ADS-2700W have 50-sheet ADFs and duty cycles of 6,000 and 3,000 scans respectively. Finally, Canon’s R50 holds 60 sheets and is rated for 4,000 scans daily.
Connectivity and Software
One of the more disappointing aspects of the Raven Original is that it, like the Raven Pro, doesn’t support handheld devices (smartphones and tablets) directly, though it does come with and supports TWAIN drivers for connecting and scanning into third-party apps. (Adobe Scan for Android and iOS are excellent examples.)
The scanner’s standard interfaces are USB, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and Ethernet, and you can scan directly to USB flash and other storage drives rather than to a computer. While the Raven doesn’t support scanning directly to mobile devices with its own apps, you can connect indirectly via Raven Cloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, SharePoint, OneDrive, Box, and Evernote.
Owners get a Raven Cloud online storage account that’s not only free but offers unlimited space. You don’t have to use it, but you must sign up for a Raven Cloud account to use the scanner. You and your team can also connect to the Raven Original via the supplied Raven Desktop software over a wired or wireless network.
With Raven Desktop, you can scan to a Windows PC or Mac or to any of your favorite cloud destinations. With configurable workflows and wired or wireless connectivity, Raven Desktop and the front-panel integrated interface are similar enough that switching back and forth between them was relatively easy.
Entry-Level to Moderate Speeds, Competitive OCR Accuracy
Raven rates the Original at 40 one-sided (simplex) pages per minute (ppm) and 80 two-sided (duplex) images per minute (ipm). I ran my tests using the touch-screen interface and a USB connection. (I also ran some tests from our Intel Core i5 testbed running Windows 10 Pro and got similar results, though I did see a slight performance boost when scanning to a flash drive.)
For my first round of tests, I clocked the Raven Original as it scanned both one-sided and two-sided 25-page text documents, and then formatted and saved the scanned text as image PDF files. When scanning the one-sided text document, the Raven Original averaged 41.6ppm. It scanned the two-sided pages at an average rate of 82.8ipm.
These results are about one-third slower than the Raven Pro. Of the non-Raven scanners mentioned here so far, only the Canon R50 (also rated at 40ppm/80ipm) beat the Original by 1.3ppm in simplex mode, though it trailed by 1.7ipm in duplex mode. The ScanSnap iX1600 was 3.1ipm faster in duplex mode. All the others fell slightly behind, though not by significant amounts.
Next, I timed the device as it scanned the same two-sided (50 sides) text document and then converted and saved it to the more versatile searchable PDF format. The Raven Original completed the entire task—from hardcopy to editable PDF—in 40 seconds.
That’s 16 seconds slower than the Raven Pro, but otherwise about average. Both Epsons handled the job in 45 seconds, the Brother in 50 seconds. The Canon R50 was second fastest behind the Raven Pro, taking 37 seconds.
But then, the fastest scanner in the world is worthless if you find yourself correcting a lot of conversion errors. As I’ve said several times recently, however, these days it’s hard to find a scanner—whether a $100 portable or $2,000 office workhorse—that isn’t accurate enough for the average home office or business environment.
Like its Pro sibling, the Raven Original scanned our Arial and Times New Roman test documents error-free down to 5 points. That beat or tied all the scanners mentioned here, except for Epson’s ES-580W, which managed 4 points error-free in both tests.
I also scanned a couple of stacks of financial documents such as receipts and invoices to see how well the Original gleans and manages financial data. This worked as well as expected, and the more I scanned, the more the program seemed to learn where to put which figures.
A Good Price/Performance Combo
For about $200 less or two-thirds the list price of the Raven Pro, the Raven Original delivers half the capacity and about two-thirds the performance, which is fine if it meets your needs. You and your team can access all this scanner’s features from the front of the device itself or from any of the computers on your local network. Yes, the Pro model is faster and well worth its cost if you require 6,000 scans per day, but if you don’t need that much volume, the Raven Original is a good deal.
