Hi Friends,
A quick question; is anyone tired of shoveling snow yet? Well, here in the Northeast, I have thrown the towel in, and I am done with all the snow!
The only thing tougher than snow is traveling during the middle of a rough, cold, snowy, and icy winter, and as many of you know out there, I do quite a lot of that, just so I can be there for my clients, while of course, observing social distancing. As a matter of fact, I happen to know that a large percentage of you reading this are also on the road a lot, and it is not for pleasure trips! The popularity of Zoom meetings can only bridge the gap during the pandemic, but there is nothing like being face-to-face with your clients.
The benefits of that personal touch come along with some issues, because as we all know, business travel means 24/7 work, and in many industries, that means a lot of paperwork to keep track of and to organize when you are on the road.
Why the long lead-in? Well, I have had the extreme honor of testing out one of the newest scanners from Epson, the Epson RapidReceipt RR-70W Wireless Mobile Receipt and Document Scanner. Along with testing it out, I have written up a review about this handy new portable scanner, and I have a feeling that many of you fellow "road warriors" will be quite interested in the RR-70W!
Now, when I say "portable", I truly mean portable! This is the definition of "compact", and exceptionally light (I didn't weigh it, but it cannot weigh more than a pound, maybe less!). In terms of size, it is just about a foot long, and has a low-profile of about 1-2 inches tall and wide. However, do not left the size fool you, because this is a full-functional, sleek, sharp, and powerful scanner that will shock you, and will make a substantial impact on how you do business and get organized, at home, in the office, or on the road!
Before we dig deep, I want to give you the 30,000-foot overview of this manual sheet-fed portable document scanner. First, on the topic of documents, this is truly a versatile scanner, with a wide realm of potential items that you can scan. The reason that I call them "items" is that they really are items; not only receipts, invoices and documents (financial, etc.), but the scanner also will scan checks, business cards, identification cards, as well as some pretty large pages (based on the specifications, the max size would be up to 8.5 x 72")!
SET-UP:
The entire process of un-boxing and unpacking the RR-70W is quite easy, and of course, you must make sure you remove all of the wrap and the protective plastic before you can get rolling. I buy a lot of electronics, and a lot of products that always work better when you give them a charge for the first time, so I followed that same rule here. Taking a step back to let you know, the RR-70W has an extremely efficient built-in rechargeable battery, which allows it to operate without requiring it to be permanently connected to a USB power source. However, if you are a fan of cables, the RR-70W will run with power over the provided USB cable when connected/tethered to your laptop or desktop. On that note, I did not have the USB charger that I use for my smartphone nearby, so I connected the USB cable from the RR-70W to my laptop. However, I fully believe that the scanner would charge substantially quicker plugged into a smartphone wall charger (Please note that the USB cable comes in the box, not the charger or wall charger).
Since I happen to be one of those folks who likes to charge electronics before using them, then in order to make good use of my time while letting the RR-70W charge up, I figured it would be the perfect time to download the software and drivers from the Epson site to get things going. This download includes any drivers needed for Windows. After downloading the installer, I made some coffee and answered a few E-mails, which took all of 30 minutes, and I figured that by now, the RR-70W was at a good enough charge level to start rolling!
I ran the set up for the installer that I had downloaded and followed the prompts as I went forward. At a point during the installation, it will ask you to connect the Scanner to your laptop or computer, but if you are charging the Scanner via USB connection to your laptop or computer, you are already on your way!
At another point during the installation, it asks if you want to configure the device as a wired device (USB) or as a Wi-Fi device. Why would I choose Wi-Fi? The answer: Because I want to Wirelessly scan my receipts and documents. After the scanner is detected and the updates are downloaded, it will also tell you to flip on the Wi-Fi toggle switch on the RR-70W. When the whole process completes (and you feel that you have enough of a battery charge), you will no longer need the USB cable to configure the scanner.
I mentioned the Wi-Fi toggle switch in the last section, but there are some other parts of the control panel area on the RR-70W that are worth mentioning. The control panel is the section where all of the action is in terms of the buttons and switches on the right front and right side of the RR-70W. For example, your Power button and Scan button are located there, as well as small LED status lights on the side that will display the status of your connection, of your battery, your mode, and any errors. That is where you will also see your "Ready" status light. Everything is located intuitively, without needing to search all over the device. Also, on the right side of the RR-70W is where I plugged in the other end of the USB cable earlier when charging the device and configuring it.
SPEED, QUALITY, & SOFTWARE/INTEGRATION:
So now, with everything installed, configured, and ready to go, I prepared a pile of multiple types of documents and business cards and receipts that I planned on using to test the RR-70W, and I will give my review based on the intersection of multiple factors, consisting of the speed, accuracy, and the software/integration features. I will provide the review of these factors together, and I apologize in advance for not separating these out to sections with headers, as there is a lot of correlation between these factors.
SPEED: This is a sheet fed scanner - and I manually fed 15 pages of a contract that I removed a staple from. In total, with my stopwatch feature on my phone, it took 1 minute and 9 seconds, which is not bad, because the specifications state the speed at 15 pages per minute. I was also able to feed through a bunch of older receipts that were a little bit "mangled" to say the least, for example, folded/creased and some were faded. Not only did these zip through pretty fast, but I thought that they might rotate left or right a little bit when the scanner hit the creases or tears, but the RR-70W was able to feed all of these through neatly and, getting the jump on my review of the quality and accuracy, the scans were not skewed and the images and text looked enhanced, almost making it look as if the receipts did not have any fading, and excessive area around the receipt was cropped out. Great job, and it saved me a lot of touch up work and enhancements I would normally have to do after scanning (or sometimes, having to repeat scans multiple times until I got it right and feeding without skewing...before even starting to crop and enhance images once I complete the scanning part). This scanner saved me a lot of work! Incidentally, I had the same success scanning business cards, and some of them were thick, and some of them were in less-than-perfect shape from my wallet, and this process was just as seamless!
QUALITY/ACCURACY: When reading the specifications, I noted that the RR-70W features a 600-dpi optical resolution for detailed image capture, so I was naturally very curious to see how accurate the scan results would be. I figured that one of the best tests I could do was a page that I had with multiple images and logos on it, and I proceeded to initiate the scan from the application. At the completion of the scan, I was extremely impressed with how sharp the images were, and how clear they came out. Some of these were quite detailed images, and it did not miss a single section of the images!
SOFTWARE/INTEGRATION: The key factor...the key "pitch" with the Epson RapidReceipt RR-70W, from what I can see from testing it and reviewing it, is being able to scan receipts and documents on the go, and after that, being able to make use of the scanned content and images. For that reason, Epson include a receipt management software (ScanSmart), which helps you accomplish the goal of making use of what you have scanned, and it is quite efficient and clever, all at the same time!
The software that comes with the Epson RR-70W, as I mentioned, is a receipt manager, allowing you to extract data from your scanned documents...basically, it intelligently reads the scanned data and pulls it into fields within the ScanSmart database. This is the feature that allows you to do something with that data (instead of letting your receipts and documents sit in folders!). What I found most helpful is that it lets you edit the fields, so you are able to categorize the data and save it in a way that works best for your purposes, for example, I split my data across fields/categories for each of the clients for which my receipts and documents apply.
Just to go off on a "geek" tangent for a moment, the technology that allows the ScanSmart software to be able to read and extract data from scanned images is known as "OCR", or "Optical Character Recognition". The OCR functionality that comes with the RR-70W is incredibly accurate and on the very high-end of this technology. I am comfortable saying this because I cross-checked most all of what I scanned and what the software extracted, and I was hard-pressed to find even one letter or number that was different from what was on the hard copy/copies that I scanned. Think about that for a moment, and you will realize just how important that is when it comes to dealing with critical financial documents!
You might ask, "What can you do with this categorized data?". Well, when you downloaded the software, it also included TWAIN drivers that can help you quickly and efficiently take that data and export it to/integrate it with many other 3rd party programs, such as, per Epson; Quicken, QuickBooks, TurboTax, Excel, CSV, and more. For my purposes, I like to export to the universal data format, CSV, or "comma separated values", for use across both Microsoft Office (Excel), as well as some proprietary systems that I use for my company. Doing it this way, I just had to change a few of the fields to make the export/integration as easy as apples-to-apples, which it was, but from what I understand, exporting to/integrating with popular apps such as QuickBooks and Quicken are even easier, and close to seamless (but we do not use these specific apps).
SUMMARY:
Testing and reviewing the Epson RapidReceipt RR-70W was a great experience for me, and it was quite easy, mostly because of accurate documentation, and an intuitive button layout.
The compact size of the RR-70W, and the fact that it is super lightweight make it easy to slip this scanner in your laptop bag and go on your way!
Are you the type with folders and boxes of receipts and documents that are stressing you out? The RR-70W allowed me to cut down on at least 3 folders and a box with receipts and documents, and now they are safely stored to my cloud drive, after being extracted to the categories that make my life easier, especially when it comes to tax time!
Of course, nothing is ever perfect, and if I could make one wish for the RR-70W, I would love to have an Automatic Document Feeder (an ADF) that comes along with the scanner or that would be available as an add-on. This way, I would not have to manually feed each page to scan them. However, after a little while, it becomes second nature, and it helps you stay present and keep better track, granularly, as to what you plan to scan and what you have already scanned.
Overall, this is a great, portable, compact, fast, accurate, cutting-edge receipt and document scanner that is likely to make your life easier, and to help you escape the paper jungle that most of us still live in on a daily basis!
I highly recommend the RR-70W to anyone looking for a comprehensive scanning solution for use at home, in a small office, on the road...or actually...for all of the above! Once again, Epson is a class act with this high-performance and sophisticated scanner, and they really hit it out of the park with the Epson RapidReceipt RR-70W!
Thank you!Have a Great Week, and Happy Rent-to-Owning !
Regards,
Rob Eisenstein
HomeRun Homes - Rent to Own Homes, since 2002
"Located at the Corner of Technology and Real Estate"
Rent to Own Homes and Real Estate Blog for HomeRun Homes: http://blogging.lease2buy.com
HomeRun Homes Websites: http://www.lease2buy.com and http://www.homerunhomes.com
TAGS: #Epson #RapidReceipt #RR-70W #Wireless #Scanner #Color #Document #Receipts #RealEstate
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS:
Specifications:
Type Mobile, sheet-fed simplex color scanner
Sensor Type Color Contact Image Sensor (CIS)
Light Source 3-color RGB LED
Optical Resolution 600 dpi
Max. Interpolated Resolution 1200 dpi
Color/Grayscale Scan Mode (Bit Depth) 16-bit input/8-bit output
Buttons Scan Start/Stop, Power, Wireless Connect, Wireless On/Off
Capacity Single sheet feed
Document Size 8.5" x 72" max. (up to 300 dpi), 2" x 2" min.
Paper Weight 35 – 270 g/m
Scan Speed (Letter-size)4 15 ppm (300 dpi Black-and-White, Color, Gray 1-sheet scan speed)
Connectivity USB 2.0, Wireless 802.11 b/g/n
Peak Daily Duty Cycle 300 sheets
System Requirements:
Windows 10 (32-bit, 64-bit), Windows 8/8.1 (32-bit, 64-bit), Windows 7 (32-bit, 64-bit) SP1
Mac OS X® 10.11.x to macOS® 10.15.x
Software requires Internet connection for download and installation.
General:
Environmental Conditions
Temperature (Operating): 41 ° to 95 °F (5 ° to 35 °C)
Storage: -13 ° to 140 °F (-25 ° to 60 °C)
Humidity (Operating): 10 – 85% (no condensation)
Power Requirements 5 V DC (USB Bus)
Power Consumption
Connecting: USB
Operation: 2.7 W
Ready: 1.6 W
Sleep Mode: 1 W
Power Off: 0.2 W or less
Connecting Wi-Fi
Operation: 3.1 W
Ready: 2.4 W
Sleep Mode: 1.9 W
Power Off: 0.2 W or less
Warranty 1-year limited warranty in the U.S. and Canada
Country of Origin China
Weight and Dimensions (W x D x H)
Product Only: 10.7" x 1.8" x 1.3"; 0.66 lb
Product in Package: 13.3" x 5.6" x 2.6"; 1.3 lb
Software Included:
Epson Scan 2, Epson ScanSmart® Accounting Edition, Kofax Power PDF
Software requires Internet connection for download and installation.
Driver Support TWAIN
What’s in the Box:
RapidReceipt RR-70W receipt scanner, Start Here poster, USB cable
Eco Features:
ENERGY STAR® qualified
RoHS compliant
Recyclable product
