Canon P-208II Duplex Document Scanne
Canon P-208II Duplex Document Scanne
Easy-to-use image processing
The P-208II’s range of image processing features includes auto colour detection, text orientation recognition and text enhancement – to deliver high quality images and save valuable time. For convenient and intuitive scanning, use the Full Auto Mode feature that automatically applies the best settings for your document. Simply load up your documents and scan.
Flexible wireless scanning
For the freedom to scan wherever you are, combine the P-208II with the optional WU10 Wi-Fi and battery unit. Use it to wirelessly scan documents directly to your smartphone, tablet or desktop PC or share the scanner amongst a group of users or devices via a network server or home router.
CaptureOnTouch mobile
The powerful CaptureOnTouch mobile app gives you the flexibility to scan direct to your iPhone, iPad or Android device. Save valuable time with double-sided one-pass document scanning. This free app is available for both iOS and Android devices.
 |  |  |  |  |  | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OS Support | Win, Mac, Linux | Win, Mac, Linux | Windows, Linux | Win, Mac, Linux | Win, Mac, Linux | Win, Mac, Linux |
| Document Type | A4 2-sided | A4 2-sided | A4 2-sided | A4 2-sided | A4 2-sided | A4 2-sided |
| Scan Speed 200dpi, A4, Black and White | 8 ppm / 16 ipm | 15 ppm / 30 ipm | 20 ppm / 36 ipm | 25 ppm / 50 ipm | 25 ppm / 50 ipm | 30 ppm / 60 ipm |
| Scan Speed 200 dpi, A4, Colour | 8 ppm / 16 ipm | 10 ppm / 20 ipm | 10 ppm / 18 ipm | 25 ppm / 50 ipm | 25 ppm / 50 ipm | 30 ppm / 60 ipm |
| Feeder | 10-sheet ADF | 20-sheets ADF Business Card Slot | 50-sheets ADF Flatbed | 30-sheets ADF | 30-sheets ADF | 60-sheets ADF |
| Daily volume | 100 scans | 500 scans | 1000 scans | 1500 scans | 1500 scans | 3500 scans |
| Software (Win) | CaptureOnTouch, CaptureOnTouch Lite, CardIRIS | CaptureOnTouch, CaptureOnTouch Lite, CardIRIS | CaptureOnTouch | CaptureOnTouch, CardIRIS, eCopy PDF Pro Office | CaptureOnTouch, CardIRIS eCopy PDF Pro Office | CaptureOnTouch Pro, CapturePerfect |
| Software (Mac) | CaptureOnTouch, CaptureOnTouch Lite | CaptureOnTouch, CaptureOnTouch Lite | CaptureOnTouch | CaptureOnTouch | CaptureOnTouch | |
| Special features | Powered directly via USB. Canon’s built in CaptureOnTouch Lite software is ready to go – without any need to load drivers or application software. | Most productive USB-powered scanning. Canon’s built in CaptureOnTouch Lite software is ready to go – without any need to load drivers or application software. | It’s ideal for capturing a wide range of document types in high quality. Keep productive with 20 ppm duplex scanning and 50-sheet ADF. Scan books, magazines or fragile materials with the integrated flatbed. | The sleek, ultra-compact imageFORMULA DR-C225II offers the ultimate in space saving. Full software pack for all your scanning needs. | Scan with Wi-Fi to PC, Mac, iOS and Android devices. Ultra compact footprint with a unique J-Path design. Full software pack for all your scanning needs. | Easily scan various types of documents including passports with one compact device. Enjoy peace of mind with supreme paper-handling reliability and durable construction. |
| Dimensions (WxDxH) | 312.5 x 56.5 x 40 mm | 285 x 95 x 40 mm | 469 x 335 x 120 mm | 300 x 156 x 220 mm | 300 x 156 x 220 mm | 291 x 253 x 231 mm |
| Weight: | 590 g |
| Dimensions: | 30.5 x 28.2 x 23 cm; 590 Grams |
| Brand: | Canon |
| Model: | 2421C01 |
| Colour: | Black |
| Manufacture: | Canon |
| Dimensions: | 30.5 x 28.2 x 23 cm; 590 Grams |
PROS
1. It’s lightweight and very portable (more about that below)
2. It scans as well as other more expensive high quality scanners
3. It can scan duplex (double sided)
4. It can scan more than one document at once (believe it or not, it has like a small sheet feeder)
CONS
1. It’s not a high speed scanner like in an office (but it’s not slow either).
USES (as promised)
1. We used it in the office to scan everything from A4 to little petrol receipts
2. I use it when going to help relatives with scanning important documents – here is the even better part – within the scanner is a small disk drive which will get found when you plug it in to a USB port of someone’s computer. On the drive is software and the drivers to run the scanner, so no need to take discs, download software, search for drivers, take a separate USB etc, it’s all within the scanner.
3. It’s robust, and because it’s so simple to use (one button operation) it’s easy for anyone…..however, the software allows you to configure so many options, so when the button is pressed, you are getting exactly what you want and how you want it.
I would have given it 5 stars on “Easy to Use”, except it took a little while to realise about the scanner having the internal drive with everything you need on it – once you figure that part out, it’s 5 stars across the board.
This is definitely worth the money, and highly recommended.
To my relief its great. Out the box it has some paper work (quick start guide, instructionmanul and cd). I use the device one 2 pcs running windows 10, a personal pc and my work laptop. I installed the driver and software on my personal pc but not on my work laptop as it doesnt have a cd rom plus i dont have the permission as an administrator to run. Luckily the product works right out the box no need to actually install the cd.
You plug the device after windows does its thing it work. In your windows (10) explorer the device will appear as though it a seperate device, click the icon and your into user interfa e its pretty simple and self explanatory.
The scan quality is good, the character regocnition work good depending on the source scanned and overall the scanning is quite quick. Ive probably scanned over 250 a4/letter paper and it picked up by the feeder with very few snags. Ive only scanned paper that are no fold or only a few folds, the most paper ive fed the device in one go was 10 and it picked each sheet with no snags or picking up 2 sheet instead of one. It much quicker then using a mobile app as especially if your scanning double sided.
The default software you get to choose the scan quality whether its colour greyscale etc, whether you scan in simplex duplex or skip a page so pretty does all i need it to, the scanner (or maybe windows) remeber the setting you last scanned on so remeber to change if you scanning requirement change.
A minor gripe but not really a major issue is it usesold mini usb in on the device with pc end usb 2.0, wish it used a type-c or even mico usb as the the older wires are now not as readily avaible so try not to loose the wire.
If you scan infrequently but when a bunch at a time and are using apps on a phone this (for me at least) is a time efficient option i wouldnt recommend if your job require daily bulk scanning as there a quicker options out there.
Overall happy with the device.
I unpacked and commenced setting it up today. It took 5 mins. But I posted a community question saying I had Windows 10, it scanned but wouldn’t save the photos. One response said it was a waste of money. Well, I’d like to report that my own stupidity was the reason. I wasn’t fully following the instructions. Once I’d got over the teething problems, I scanned about 150 photos in no time. Easy to pop into files so I’m hoping to complete 7 boxes of photos onto my PC in about another 4 days of scanning. It is so quick at scanning. And senses if a document is double sided so scans back and front just by popping the document in. I could scan multiples of photos – just feed them through one after the other. It’s quiet, efficient and has capability of altering the clarity, brightness etc of images. Also you can rotate the images. I would thoroughly recommend it for sorting all your photos. We have a scanner within our printer but this little one just connects right next to my laptop without me having to leave my desk. Added advantage is because it only needs to connect with my PC I can use it anywhere. A brilliant buy and I would thoroughly recommend it.
I bought this product to help reduce the amount of paper I store in my house. Like many people, I keep letters from years ago “just in case”. Using this scanner allowed me to quickly archive my documents to then be able to shred and get rid of a lot of paper work. I now have a lot more storage space and also I can find things easier as I name my scans appropriately. Sometimes can be a bit fiddly to get it started, but 99% of the time is quick to setup and make my scans.
I bought a “opened box” one for about 100 just because it would arrive earlier. When it arrived, my computer had trouble recognising it and I wondered whether I’d made a mistake. Obviously the first step was to try a diffierent USB cable and voila, it works.
The actual product’s great. Small but works surprisingly well. The scans are good and the software has useful features. Overall, very pleased with the purchase.
What is unique about this “Canon P-208II Mobile Scanner Duplex 8 ppm 10xADF Mac Win – Black” is that it auto-detects coloured originals (most alternatives are mono only!) and accepts embossed letterheads etc, plastic cards of various types and sizes and also laminated documents up to a certain thickness. A fabric storage bag is included and it is sufficiently small and light to be transported in a backpack, larger messenger bags, briefcase etc. Although another portable scanner has been successfully used for various paper documents, recent requests to provide copies of a driving license and variously thick laminated documents smaller than A4 showed that scanner could not accept them; it feeds paper through a deeply curved path through which thicker items cannot pass.
Ideally, a basic, inexpensive flat-bed scanner would be a possible solution, an inexpensive all-in-one printer another, but availability for most as at mid-March 2021 is almost non-existent although limited to the most expensive photo-scanners which are not ideal for the specific purposes or the more expensive AIO printers, both a waste of large sums in these difficult times. Regardless, there is a substantial duplication of functionality between both portable scanners.
The scanner is tethered by a provided USB cable and it does not have on-board document storage via a micro-SD card or similar. Canon provide a software suite that provides the necessary scanning options, storage choices etc for both Mac and Windows systems on an included CD and probably an older version; most users will need to download the current packages from Canon’s Product Support page. One unique feature Canon claim for this is the ability to de-skew and re-align the scan so that the document is perfectly vertical or horizontal as necessary.
There were initial problems with an error code repeatedly offered on every attempt to scan a document and not mentioned within its PDF manual. An on-line explanation and corrective procedure was found and it helped. It was also found that Canon’s site offered a more current version of the software that was later installed – problem fully resolved! Scanning quality is favourably comparable to that from the older scanner, and its ability to scan in colour, the wider range of document types and thickness the P208II accepts are major significant advantages.
There is a Canon-branded soft canvas case should one be needed but its price is beyond reasonable when hard cases for comparable models are about less than half its price. There may be an alternative.
So I was in the market for a low-cost scanner that wouldn’t take up too much desk space. After a fair bit of research, I settled for this Canon P-208II portable scanner. It seemed to fulfil my requirements.
It arrived in a decent retail box, but I would expect this from a company like Canon. In the box are the scanner, a carry bag, a USB lead, a CD and all the usual paperwork. The carry bag is handy if you want to transport the scanner from place to place. The USB lead is a standard plastic coated one and uses the mini-USB plug rather than the usual micro-USB or USB-C plugs. Come on Canon, this isn’t good enough.
The scanner itself is solidly built. It just has one single control button that can be used to start a scan. The unit automatically powers up when the flap is lowered on the front of the unit. Opening this flap gives you access to the scanners rollers where your documents are placed. There are guides that slide to set the document width. You can place up to ten sheets of standard paper at the same time, and they will feed in one by one.
The pages feed in from the bottom of the pile first. Documents should be placed face down. The scanner can read both sides of the paper at the same time. However, page one will be the face down side and that’s why you should place the document face down.
There are two ways to use the scanner. One is to use the inbuilt software that sits on a read-only drive on the scanner. This will only work for a Windows computer as far as I can tell. The software can be run straight off the scanner’s internal disk. No drivers need to be installed for this method.
The more comprehensive way to use the scanner is to use the software on the CD or download from the Canon website. You need to install a driver that will make the scanner available as a TWAIN device making it compatible with a large range of software. You can also install their CaptureOnTouch software that makes scanning a breeze.
You can set up shortcuts using this software. My first job was to create a shortcut that would do a colour scan and create a searchable PDF file. This was easy to do and works a treat. You can create different shortcuts for different jobs like scanning photos for instance. It’s possible to set the destination of a scan to go straight to your printer making a quick and easy photocopier.
Overall, I like this scanner a lot. I hope that helps.
From my headline, it is clear that this is my secondary scanner.
I bought this because I am trying to digitise all my paperwork, while my other Canon flatbed scanner (Lide 700F) does the job very well, nonetheless scanning 1 side at a time and keep opening and closing the scanner lid is slow and painful, so I invested in this document scanner.
Positive: very quick scan and love the duplex function and software is good too
Negative: scanned image quality is not comparable to my flatbed scanner, but for document is sufficient.
Overall I am happy with my purchase, it is not the cheapest, but not the most expensive either. And Canon always offer good driver and compatibility, so I am happy.
This scanner seemed to fit the bill as it was small (I really didn’t want computer desk real estate taken up by a massive flatbed scanner), seemed to have a lot of functionality and was at a good price ……and it didn’t disappoint!
First Impressions:
As soon as I opened the packaging I knew that I had make a good choice. The scanner is very sturdy and has some heft to it, so you get the instant impression that it’s made to last. It comes with a cd (which you don’t actually need, more on that later), a USB cable, and that’s pretty much it!
Functionality:
As I said above, it comes with a software disk where you can install the scanning software and read through and online user manual. That said, there seems to be absolutely no need to.
As someone who grew up in the 80’s when photocopiers and scanners too up practically a small room, what this thing can do is amazing for the size.
The software is embedded into the scanner itself, so unless you want to actively tweak the default settings you can literally just plug the scanner into any home computer, put the paper into the feed, press the button and seconds later a pdf appears on your desktop! The scanner automatically reconises two sided documents and can scan both sides simultaneously. So, so impressed.
Software:
The software that comes packaged with it is pretty good. Fairly straightforward to get up and running with it. Found I didn’t really need to use it other then setting the filename (though I could easily have done a rename once the file landed) and auto-aligning the scans where the feeder caused the document to scan in at a very slight angle.
The paper feeder though, is excellent. Despite being such a small, narrow scanner, the feeder easily and flawlessly feeds a stack of 7-10 pages through one at a time without clogging up or accidentally feeding two through at a time, very impressive.
Bad Points:
Not a bad point per se, however the scanner (as mentioned above) can sometimes feed the paper in at a very slight angle which if your have an eye for detail you might spot on the scan itself. The software can realign this easily though and I guess it’s a consequence of the scanner being so narrow.
Storage:
The scanner comes with a handy pouch that can hold the scanner and the USB cable to is can be out into a drawer/laptop bag neatly knowing that it’s covered and protected.
Overall:
All in all, very impressed with this scanner, taking one star off for the less than perfect paper alignment but wouldn’t let this put you off from buying this machine, it really was a close cut thing to a full 5 star review.
Hope you guys find this helpful.
I use this daily for work and would not be without it. You can put up to 10 pages in the paper grab and it will feed happily. If you are sneaky you can top this up as it goes along if you have more pages. You can single sheet feed and file multiple pages into one document and it is easy to delete any pages that are not right, re scan and reorder them. It is no good if you wish to scan from books or magazines unless you tear the pages out!
The carrier bag (which is extra) is well worth the money for keeping dirt and dust out of it in your bag and keeping the cable with it!
To me, comparing it to a flat bed scanner, would be like comparing wifi to dial up! Slick, quick, quiet, light and easy to use.
A winner winner in my book!
Edit update November 2019: I’ve now updated my Mac to Catalina. When I then tried to use this scanner again it said it was only 32 bit and needed to be updated to 64 bit to be compatible with iOS Catalina. I went onto Canon website and they said that this product does not support Catalina and I have to buy a new scanner! I’ve only had it 2 years and probably only used it 6 times. Not happy as now I have to shell out for a new one. It will still work on Mojave.
Below is my original review, which is all still true except for the above (which may not apply to you):
Superb scanner, incredibly easy to use. Worth getting the carry case too as it fits perfectly and carries the lead and docs. Read David French’s review for full details but just wanted to say, it’s easy for those of us who are not tech experts, anyone could use this and with brilliant results. Worth every penny. I’ve cleared my desk of all those bits of paper and saved myself spending hours filing and then rummaging to find them again. I love this machine. Carry case link: Canon Carry Case for Canon ImageFORMULA P-208 Portable Scanne
Generally duplex scanners with ADF cost 150-300. I decided to take a bit of a punt on this. After all, surely a small, portable, USB-powered scanner couldn’t really be up to much, could it?
In fact it’s a brilliant bit of kit. Don’t let the size fool you. It scans A4, both sides simultaneously, taking a few seconds per sheet. The ADF function works better than averagely well, with few misfeeds. (If you’ve not used an Auto Document Feeder before, it means you can put in up to 10 sheets at once (perhaps a few more) and the scanner will automatically pull them through in sequence, scanning both sides of each sheet automatically.)
The manufacturer’s Mac software is very well-designed and easy to use, with options to scan to PDF, or direct to email, Evernote, Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, or a printer. If you choose the automatic settings, it will automatically detect page orientation (even when it varies within the same document), and even discard blank pages – ideal when scanning things like multi-page pension statements where half the pages are single-sided and half are duplex printed.
When scanning to PDF, the software automatically OCRs the document and embeds the text data within the PDF, making PDFs fully searchable with the ability to copy and paste text from the image on screen. This is a valuable bonus as it takes out a step and another piece of software in your workflow.
Scan quality can’t be argued with; I’ve not tried photos, only documents, but for documents it’s great.
If you have bits of paper lying around and find manually scanning & filing them a chore, this is a great investment in time-saving. I used to scan hundreds of pages, one side at a time, in a manual flat-bed scanner. I can probably do with the P-20811 in ten minutes what used to take me a couple of hours.
There is a separate USB Power Lead but not had any need to use it yet as it works perfectly just plugged in with one. There is NO Power Brick to lug around so this makes it a TRUE Portable scanner (it fits in my Briefcase & goes everywhere I go).
Sheet feeding can be a bit temperamental at times, especially when loading up multiple pages or different thicknesses but once you get the hang of it it just eats through pages like a knife through butter.
The scanner can scan dual or single sided & will AutoDelete Blank pages on Dual Sided. The quality of the scans is impeccable & with built in OCR it could not be simpler.
The additional Card Reader Slot is a bonus & is fantastic for Credit & Business Cards and with the built in OCR Engine both Orientates the Card & Crops to size.
If I had one complaint it would be the Price, but then Quality & Functionality in the Scanning World will not come cheap.
I no longer have shelves & drawers full of Bank Statement, Telephone Bills, Invoices, Letter & Instruction Manuals thanks to this little baby. Go Digital…Go P-215ii
If you do buy this then I HIGHLY RECOMMEND the Protective case if you intend to use this on the road or travelling. This too is available on Amazon at the following URL:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Canon-Carry-ImageFORMULA-Portable-Scanner/dp/B002SCPGWU/ref=cm_rdp_produc