The quality of entry-level desktop document scanners has improved so much in recent years that almost all of them land in the range from very good to excellent. The Epson WorkForce ES-580W ($399) is very good, with one standout feature: the most accurate optical character recognition (OCR) we’ve ever seen. There are other sheetfed document scanners in this price range that perform even better, including the Fujitsu ScanSnap iX1600 ($495, often discounted), our Editors’ Choice. But the ES-580W is more than acceptable in all respects.
Room for 100 Pages
Measuring 6.9 by 11.8 by 6.6 inches (HWD) with its trays closed and weighing 8.2 pounds, the ES-580W is the same size and girth as several of Epson’s entry-level and midrange machines, including the DS-530 II and the RapidReceipt RR-600W. Competing desktop document scanners with similar volume and speed ratings, such as the Fujitsu iX1600 and the Brother ADS-2700W (another Editors’ Choice winner), are also similar in size and weight. With the trays open, the scanner takes up much more room, so be sure to clear plenty of space for it on your desk.
An attractive feature on the ES-580W is a 100-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) for sending one- and two-sided multipage documents to the scanner’s sensors. Most scanners this size have 50-sheet ADFs. Like any sheetfed document scanner, the ES-580W scans both sides of each page simultaneously, saving you some paper-flipping time.
The Power button is the only button on the front of the scanner. All other walk-up functions are handled through the 4.3-inch color touch-screen control panel. You can also control the scanner with a PC or mobile device running Epson’s ScanSmart software; more on that below.
Epson rates the ES-580W’s daily duty cycle at 4,000 scans per day. That’s about average: Fujitsu rates its iX1600 at 6,000 scans per day, Brother’s fairly robust ADS-2700W is rated at 3,000 scans daily, and the beefier ADS-3600W can do 5,000 scans per day. All these ratings far exceed what most small and home offices need.
Plenty of Connection Options
The well-connected ES-580W supports USB 3.0 for a fast, dedicated single computer connection and Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac for multiple simultaneous connections to PCs and mobile devices. It will also scan directly to a USB thumb drive or other storage drive.
If you need Ethernet networking, check out the Brother ADS-2700W, which costs the same as the ES-580W and has all the connectivity options anyone could ask for. Epson sells a network interface unit for $350, but spending so much to upgrade the ES-580W simply doesn’t make sense when there are other $400 scanners out there with Ethernet already built in.
Epson’s nimble ScanSmart scanner interface software will run on Windows or macOS, and the ScanSmart app is available for both Android and iOS. ScanSmart is a modular app that performs several document management tasks, such as strategic file naming and archiving based on date and time, document content, and other parameters. You can export scanned data to many popular productivity apps, or scan directly into those apps using the included TWAIN drivers. If you need specialized scanning functions, add plug-ins such as the ScanSmart Accounting Edition module ($100), which gleans financial data from receipts and similar documents.
The software bundle for the ES-580W also includes Presto! BizCard, a business-card scanning and archiving program. All these programs and drivers can be downloaded from Epson’s website; there’s no CD in the box.
Sluggish Speeds, But Phenomenal OCR Accuracy
Epson rates the ES-580W at 35 one-sided pages per minute (ppm) and 70 two-sided images per second (ipm, where each image is a page side). This is on the low side, but probably more than adequate if you’re doing a fairly low volume of scanning. The Brother ADS-3600W is rated at 50ppm/100ipm, and the Fujitsu iX1600 at 40ppm/80ipm.
I tested the ES-580W over a USB 3.0 connection from our Intel Core i5 testbed PC running Windows 10 Pro and ScanSmart. For the first test, I scanned our one-sided 25-page and two-sided 25-page (50 page sides) text documents and let the software convert the scans to image PDF and save the file. The simplex (one-sided) scan job scored 37.1ppm, and the duplex (two-sided) document scanned, converted, and saved to image PDF at the rate of 70.1ipm.
Of the scanners mentioned so far, the ES-580W was the slowest on this test, with most of the others outpacing it by at least a few pages per minute, and in some cases by notably more. Like the ES-580W, the Brother ADS-2700W and the Epson DS-530 II are rated at 35ppm/70ipm, but the Brother scanner considerably exceeded those ratings in our tests.
See How We Test ScannersSee How We Test Scanners
Next, I timed the ES-580W as it scanned, converted, and saved our 25-page two-sided text document to searchable PDF, a task it completed in 46 seconds. Here, the ES-580W’s score is about average. The ADS-3600W was fastest (30 seconds) and the ADS-2700w was slowest (50 seconds), but any score in this range is more than sufficient for an entry-level scanner.
Most impressively, the ES-580W turned in the best score possible on our OCR accuracy test: perfect 4s. The test entails scanning blocks of both Arial and Times New Roman typefaces in several sizes starting at 4 points. We’ve had a scanner be accurate to 4 points on one of the two fonts, but never on both of them.
That said, it’s been a long time since any scanner performed poorly on this test—again, the range is from very good to excellent. If you routinely scan text smaller than 8 or 9 points, the ES-580W should rank highly on your list. Otherwise, any of these scanners will do fine on this front.
I scanned a couple of stacks of business cards into Presto! BizCard, which gleans business card data to populate the appropriate fields and records in a contact database. As with any scanner, the OCR performed well enough on plainer cards, but it was sometimes confused by fancy fonts and colorful or gradient backgrounds. You’ll get better results by setting aside the works of art to type in manually.
Meets Nearly Every Need
The Epson WorkForce ES-580W is an entirely satisfactory desktop scanner. It’s not the fastest, but it’s fast enough. Its capacious ADF will come in handy if you sometimes scan documents with more than 50 pages, and its top-quality OCR will ensure you can always read the fine print. It’s compatible with a great many computers and mobile devices, as long as they can connect over USB or Wi-Fi.
This end of the sheetfed desktop document scanner market is unbelievably competitive, but don’t let the abundance of good choices paralyze you. As long as you’re careful not to overlook critical features that you really need, you’re likely to be happy with any scanner you buy. The Fujitsu ScanSnap iX1600 is still our Editors’ Choice for its combination of speed, simplicity, and functionality, but if you don’t need its features and want to spend a little less, the ES-580W will serve you perfectly well.
