Panasonic KV-S1057C-MKII - Review 2022

An update to the Panasonic KV-S1057C we reviewed back in early on 2022, the KV-S1057C-MKII ($1,089) is a high-book sheet-feed certificate scanner for small and midsize offices, every bit well equally large enterprises with medium-to-heavy scan workflows. This upgrade adds Ethernet support and an enhanced power to scan thick plastic cards, passports, and mixed media. Like 2022's KV-S1057C, the KV-S1057C-MKII is fast and authentic when converting to editable text. A few formidable heavy-duty desktop scanners that accept hit the market recently, such as the Editors' Choice Kodak Alaris S2060w, offer upwards some mighty strong competition, yet. The KV-S1057C-MKII is a solid culling for demanding document-scan situations, but it falls but brusque of dislodging the Alaris as our elevation pick.

Measuring Upward a Scanner

The KV-S1057C-MKII measures 9.four by 11.8 by 10.7 inches (HWD) and weighs 8.8 pounds, which makes information technology the same size as its KV-S1057C predecessor and similar in size to the Alaris S2060w. Also close is the Visioneer Patriot H60, another high-volume Editors' Option option. Brother's beefy PDS-5000 High-Speed Color Desktop Scanner, another competent competitor, is slightly smaller in all dimensions.

I've reviewed a bunch of other comparable high-book speed demons over the past few years—too many to mention here, but those listed in the previous paragraph are a good sampling. Equally for volume and capacity, the KV-S1057C-MKII automatic document feeder (ADF) holds a whopping 100 sheets, and Panasonic rates its daily duty bicycle at 6,000 scans. The Alaris S2060w's ADF holds 20 sheets fewer, but the rated duty bicycle is ane,000 scans greater.

Visioneer's hefty Patriot H60, in dissimilarity, is meant for heavier lifts; it comes with a 120-sheet ADF and, with a rated duty cycle of ten,000 scans a twenty-four hours, a volume rating almost twice that of the KV-S1057C-MKII. The Blood brother PDS-5000's ADF capacity and duty bike match those of the KV-S1057C-MKII.

The KV-S1057C-MKII supports media ranging in size from one.9 by 2.1 inches at the smallest, up to viii.5 past unlimited inches. (The unlimited-length support ways that, theoretically, the scanner should be able to scan the longest document y'all encounter, simply information technology will run out of memory eventually, which in turn would cause a browse to fail.) Like most Panasonic scanners, the KV-S1057C-MKII comes with a detachable guide, shown in the epitome above, for scanning business cards and credit-card-size documents. A lever in the upper left corner of the front panel allows you to toggle between thick media (such as credit cards and passports) and standard paper.

On the front of the KV-S1057C-MKII'southward chassis is a somewhat sparse command panel, which consists of a small monochrome brandish and a set of buttons. These comprise navigation controls for scrolling through pre-divers workflow profiles, a Start push button to initiate scans, a Stop button, and a Skip push for ignoring double-feed detections.

Connectedness Options and Software

Versus some of the other machines listed here, the KV-S1057C-MKII is a little short on connectivity options. You get back up for Ethernet up to gigabit speeds (most likely overkill for a scanner), USB 3.0, and mobile connectivity via a proprietary app. In the final instance, keep in mind that, because the KV-S1057C-MKII has no wireless radios, your mobile device must be connected to your LAN, WAN, or the internet to access the scanner. You can also connect to the scanner from a web browser via TCP/IP, using the KV-S1057C-MKII'south IP accost. For that to work, the scanner must be continued to your network.

By comparing, the Alaris S2060w supports USB ii.0 and USB 3.0, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct, and scanning to a USB thumb drive. The Brother ImageCenter ADS-3600W, some other midrange networkable model that received an Editors' Pick honour, supports everything the Alaris S2060w does, plus Nearly-Field Communication (NFC), which creates a ane-touch hotspot on the scanner's forepart panel.

I distinction that sets the KV-S1057C-MKII apart, though, has to do with scan destinations. It lets you prepare upwards 100 browse-to destinations (for case, Scan to Folder, or Scan to Electronic mail), including multiple destinations from the same profile. You lot can do this via IP address, from your PC. Y'all can besides set xxx direct scan-to-local-folder destinations.

Compared to what comes with its Panasonic predecessor, the KV-S1057C-MKII's software bundle draws upward just a piddling short. While information technology does include Abbyy FineReader 12 Sprint, a pared-down version of the state-of-the-art optical character recognition (OCR) software, this time around Panasonic has left out Nuance PaperPort, the popular document-management and -archiving plan. The master software that Panasonic does bundle is Image Capture Plus, its ain total-featured scanning interface utility that controls all aspects of scans and workflow profiles. It also has some rudimentary document-management features for naming and organizing your scans, as well every bit the ability to catechumen epitome files containing text into editable and searchable text files.

In addition to Paradigm Capture Plus and FineReader, yous go User Utility, a Windows system-tray program that monitors and reports the status of the scanner, and the Scan Push button Setting Tool, a modest utility that tells Epitome Capture Plus which programs and/or utilities to launch when it has completed processing a item browse. (You might desire to send scanned data to, say, an SQL database for populating web pages on need.)

A Scan-Speed Demon

Panasonic rates the KV-S1057C-MKII's browse speed at 65 1-sided pages per infinitesimal (ppm) and 130 two-sided images per minute (or ipm, where each folio side constitutes an image). I tested the device over USB 3.0 using Image Capture Plus from our standard Intel Core i5 testbed PC running Windows 10 Professional. Discounting the fourth dimension it takes to procedure and save the scanned data to a usable file format, I clocked the KV-S1057C-MKII at 69ppm and 133ipm, or slightly higher than its ratings.

If you've got thousands of pages to browse each day, how fast the machine can just browse the newspaper (regardless of the supporting software'due south efficiency at processing and saving the digital file) is important. Usually, in these settings, the scans are handed off to a certificate-direction dorsum end that converts them to the desired file format(s) and and so archives based on content—without the person loading and unloading the scanner all day interacting in the procedure at all.

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But if you're just getting started, or your data-archiving system isn't that sophisticated, the KV-S1057C-MKII and its software must create those usable files for you. When I scanned our 1-sided 25-page test document and saved the scans as image PDF files, the KV-S1057C-MKII churned at the rate of 61.2ppm. Scanning our two-sided 25-page (50-epitome) document, it managed 125.4ipm, or still very close to its ratings.

In comparing, the Alaris S2060w scanned the same pages more slowly, past 5ppm and 20ipm, respectively. Blood brother'southward PDS-5000, which is rated at 75ppm and 150ipm, came in but 1.2ppm and x.8ipm behind the KV-S1057C-MKII, while the Visioneer H60 was 5.4ppm and 5ipm faster. The Brother ADS-3600W, rated at 50ppm and 100ipm, was much slower than the rest of this lot.

I then had the KV-S1057C-MKII scan our two-sided 25-page (50-image) document to the more versatile searchable PDF format. Here, the KV-S1057C-MKII scanned and candy all l pages in a respectable 25 seconds, which was significantly faster than all the other machines listed here, barring the Visioneer H60, which was simply 3 seconds slower.

Weighing Scanning Accurateness

No matter how fast your scanner is, that benefit gets worn away chop-chop if you lot take to go back to your scanned content to correct optical character recognition (OCR) errors. Similar the Panasonic KV-N1028X I reviewed but before this model, the KV-S1057C-MKII tied our best OCR score, scanning our Arial-font test page with no errors down to 5-bespeak blazon and our Times New Roman page error-free down to 6 points. Only a few other scanners take reached that level of accuracy in tests I accept run.

As for the competition, the Alaris S2060w and the Visioneer H60 came close to the KV-S1057C-MKII'southward score, scanning both fonts down to 6 points gratuitous of errors. The Brother PDS-5000 scanned both pages down to eight points flawlessly, equally did the Blood brother ADS-3600W.

Decisions, Decisions...

Canvas-fed scanners like these have become then rapid and reliable that, nowadays, choosing the right i for your scanning state of affairs comes down to nuances—picking out the all-time convenience features for you. That isn't a bad matter, merely it tin can hateful lots of time-consuming research.

I constitute trivial to complain about in the KV-S1057C-MKII, except peradventure the lack of full-blown document-management and business organization-card-archiving software, which almost of the scanners mentioned here include. Fifty-fifty the pricing is competitive, which isn't ever the example with Panasonic's scanners. That said, Panasonic notes that the KV-S1057C-MKII's target market is mainly large enterprises, such as hospitals or banks, that most probable already have back-end data-gathering and -archiving systems to support the hardware.

The bottom line for the KV-S1057C-MKII: It'south highly capable and competitively priced, simply it'southward best for enterprises with medium-to-heavy scanning volumes that accept that kind of back end in place. If you lot need a meridian-to-bottom scanning solution, on the other paw, some of its competitors, named throughout this review, offer more complete software bundles out of the box.