Doxie One - Standalone Portable Document & Photo Scanner

I was super-excited to receive my Doxie One with the goal of going (mostly) paperless in a household full of stacks of paper. Out of the box, it is pretty easy to get started. Plug it in. Calibrate it (all you do is feed the included calibrating card into the scanner). Scan away! Pros: - Virtually no set up time to get up and running. No annoying setup CD or pages of instructions to read before you get started. You install the software direct from their website. - Compact size by far, makes it superior to larger scanning options like all-in-ones. - Quick and quiet scanning. Im a pretty impatient person, but Im happy with the speed of this. - Comes with memory card so you dont even have to have it plugged into the computer to scan. Also nice if youre in a situation where you just want to share the card with someone else or save to cards instead of your hard drive/cloud. - Option for battery operation is nice to reduce cord clutter or for portable on-the-go scanning. - Easy to operate. I admit my daughter (almost 5 years) LOVES putting papers through here. I hand her a stack of papers and she scans them for me. - Most of all, Im really happy with how straightforward and user-friendly the software is. Several quick and easy options for saving, including a staple function for merging multi-page documents into a single PDF file and option to save as JPG. I hate reading lengthy instructions. This product has a simple set up, simple software, but all the functions I needed to dive into my paperless quest. Cons: - Sometimes feeder can be very fickle. Ive struggled every now and then with papers that are not perfectly flat. The slightest bend in a corner has made it so that the document would not feed through. In those instances, I scanned the document upside-down. The good news is since the software is easy to use, rotating documents is quick and easy. - AC adapter plug on the unit is ill-fitting, in my opinion. It doesnt really snap into place and loosens fairly easily. I love the small size of it and it just sits on our bar counter, where mail and bills and important papers usually pile up. Instead, the Doxie sits there and is ready to scan papers immediately before being disposed of. I originally used a large all-in-one during my first quest to go paperless. The advantage there was that it had the option to stick a stack of papers in and allow them to auto-feed, but Id often get jams and the software that came with it (A Brother all-in-one) was annoyingly difficult to navigate. If youre using the Doxie as a means of going paperless, its a bit of a time investment to get caught up if youve got stacks of paper. Once you reach the point of maintaining, its the perfect tool. Versatile, simple, and easy. Overall, Id give the Doxie One 4.5 stars. -------------------- Edit: A rep from Doxie contacted me regarding my statement in my review regarding the plug coming unplugged easily. She said it was a defect in some units and had me a new unit shipped right away. I sent back the old unit using prepaid postage from them, and the newer unit has a more secure plug. They have AMAZING customer service. The fact that they even spend time reading all reviews, even ones that are overall positive, and then addressing any issues speaks volumes about the company. They really want their customers to be completely satisfied. My Doxie is still getting regular use and Im still really happy with it.

This product was my first attempt at going paperless. I have yet to find any major problems with it. I have noticed that the paper feeder can be a bit temperamental, but if I encounter any problems, I just feed it through again -- it scans so fast, it doesnt matter. The software bundled with it is a bit dumbed down for a technology nerd like me, though in general it was useful software. I will say that the Evernote integration is really just Send to a program on this computer... integration. It wasnt as tightly integrated as I expected. I do give them props for doing this in a generic way though, so you could pass these documents to a PowerShell script or any other program. Tip 1: Dont scan with the USB cable plugged in to a computer. It scans faster just powered and writing to the SD card, since it doesnt re-register this way as a disconnect/reconnect of the device on every scan. Tip 2: The PDF files is creates can be large. Adjust the quality of graphical scans or make sure you have a method to shrink / compress images in PDFs. 25 pages will be in the tens of MB in size.

Ive been reading reviews on the Doxie One for a few weeks now and finally decided to go ahead and get it. I ordered it last night around 6:15 pm and requested one-day delivery for an additional $3.50 (Amazon Prime). My scanner was delivered this morning at 9 am! I couldnt have gotten this scanner any easier, quicker or cheaper, so I was thrilled before I even opened the package. The scanner was well packaged and very simple to unpack and set up. The scanner is so user-friendly you wouldnt need to use the included owners manual, but it is so well-written and easy to read, you may as well. It includes all the information you might need and nothing you dont. Its also available on the manufacturers website, so you dont even have to worry about keeping that piece of paper. I downloaded the necessary software from the website, also a quick, easy process, and went right to scanning. Papers go in smoothly (just remember to put them through the scanner face UP) and downloading to my MacBook via USP was a breeze. Its easy to rotate pages, staple multiple pages together and send them to Evernote or Dropbox (or other location) for archiving. I havent yet tried scanning photos, but there is an included photo sleeve to protect your photos and I expect that to be just as easy as scanning papers. I live in an RV, so space and weight are at a premium. Ive been wanting to scan papers and photos for a while now, but it was such a hassle with my larger printer/scanner/copier (which now lives at my mothers house). Using this Doxie One is exactly how scanning papers and going paperless should be.

The 5-star rating is also a reflection of the customer service. My first doxie was malfunctioning on arrival. I contacted customer service and they were extremely courteous and helpful. After some quick troubleshooting, ( very quick, done in one conversation) they sent a replacement and had me ship the broken one back in the same box. They paid for all shipping of course. The replacement was brand new (not refurbed) and worked flawlessly. The Doxie One ships with AC adapters for the US, United Kingdon, Europe and Australia. If you really want to take this thing places, you wont have to buy an adapter. It will also run on 4 aaa batteries. A 2GB SD card is also included. The USB cable is only used for transferring the digital images from your Doxie to your PC. The USB cable does not power the Doxie One. When my new Doxie arrived I set to work digitizing 29 years of documents. This kind of task is best performed with a machine that can handle batches of paper but, I am cheap err, frugal yeah, lets say frugal so, I did it all one sheet at a time by hand. I didnt see the need to spend a few hundred bucks just to get through the initial batch of personal documents. Everything after that will be in manageable portions and a portable scanner will be more than enough.The Doxie was a workhorse and performed perfectly. The only bad scans were my fault and related to damaged documents The Doxie performs best when fed a diet of perfectly flat sheets of paper and sitting on a flat surface. If your document is damaged, I suggest feeding the sheet through starting at the least damaged side. Like a photo the image can be flipped later. Taking the time to remove staples and smooth out creases is well worth the effort. Much like painting, you dont HAVE to do the prep work but, if you dont, youll pay for it in labor. For those who are unhappy with the need to feed the sheets carefully, I suggest looking at some handheld scanners on the market. They cost almost as much as the Doxie but YOU move the scanner over the sheet of paper. I used to own one of those. They work well but take FOREVER. After experiencing those devices you, like me, will truly appreciate what the Doxie does and how well it performs especially at this price. Unlike its closest competitor the Neat portable scanner, the Doxie One will work with PC or Mac. The Neat scanner has to be purchased in the model that is designed for your OS and will not work with a different OS. The Neat portable scanner also costs $30 more. If you adjust your expectations for a portable scanner and dont expect it to work like a commercial machine, you will be very happy with the Doxie One. I highly recommend it.

This is one of the best scanners you can but at this price point right now. It just arrived today and right our of the box I put this thing through the tests. 250- 300 photos non-stop. This thing performed beautifully. I have just have a couple of complaints. Pros and Cons. Cons first. Con 1. The free software that comes with it is not the best. 3.5/5.0 Plus the editing software also had trouble decoding some of the pictures, because it could not translate it fully It just put a huge pink X where the picture was supposed to be. The editing software such as the cropping, saturation and stuff is okay. But hey, its free. Con 2. The Doxie did fail once out of the 250-300 photos I put through it. The scanner just stopped. Froze up. Easy fix though I restarted it, and went on my way. But I put very little fault on the product. I ran this thing much harder than it was supposed to go at one time. 3. This unit CANNOT scan directly to a computer. You have to take out the SD card then put it in your computer. I have a Mac. Late 2009 model. I do not have a SD card slot. Luckly this unit comes with a transfer cable just in case of this situation. But you HAVE to have a SD card. Again, This unit only scans to the SD card. PROS 1. This unit is flat out awesome. It scanned 250-300 photos non-stop with only 1 fault. 2. This unit comes with a 2 GB card. 2 GB can give you about 400 photos. 3. Comes with really cool accessories. Very cool photo protector as it goes through. If you have a very delicate/fragile piece of paper it keeps it from coming apart or being damaged while its scanning. It has a cleaning tool made out of plastic and a micro fiber cloth. and 4 different wall outlets just incase you go to different countries. 4. Super easy to setup. Very easy to read manual. 5. Simple Unit, not all these fancy buttons and gizmos. A 7 year old child could operate this machine. 6. It runs on a wall charger, plus rechargeable batteries (Not included) if you are not near wall. 7. Automatic shut off when not used. 8. Extremely quiet. No dying whale sounds coming from this unit. 9. If you are worried about the 300 DPI on photos, dont be. These photos look great at 300 Dpi. Left nothing to be desired. 10. For the money you pay. You definitely get your return on investment. Very happy buy with this. Will post updates if anything occurs with this product. Thank You.

(Originally 2 stars...) I wanted so badly to give 5 stars! On day 1 it was great - with some down sides (below), and it is exactly the tool I need to manage the complexity I deal with. But these things unfortunately have detracted enough from the quality, and now from the operation, of the Doxie scanner: 1. The most important problem is that 3.5 months after buying it, it stopped pulling paper through. Sometimes it stops half way, sometimes it doesnt recognize the paper at all. The most common manifestation of this problem was/is that it will grab the paper, meaning its sensor and motor are working but that the electronics are probably getting confused. But it is now doing this most of the time and is essentially useless. 2. Low quality of the physical connections. The power connection does not have a strong connection (it does not snap into place, and the cord falls out easily, and the cord stops delivering power when only 1mm out of the slot). The card reader does not have a snap feel to it, and does not actually fit the size of the memory card very closely, leading to a loosey-goosey feeling which causes me to constantly doubt whether it is plugged in properly. 3. Bad failure modes. What I mean is that any of the above problems requires pushing & holding down the power button for a few seconds to power off, fixing the problem (plugging the card and/or cable back in), and powering back on and waiting for a 5-10 second boot cycle. This wouldnt be so bad except that the only feedback is the light on the power button, and the speed of its blinking, which is cryptic at best. And that if you get it wrong, or if the problem is different than you expected, another boot cycle and another guessing game at the cryptic feedback. I love the idea of this product and I would have loved to give it 5 stars, but I am unfortunately still shopping for the perfect compact scanner. UPDATE: Changing this to 4 stars because of customer service. When they heard about my scanner, Doxies support staff overnighted a new one to me. The new one does appear to have more sturdy connectors and the pauses dont seem to be so bad. It works like new, of course, so hopefully this one will work out. Thanks!

The scans are ok but what I really dont like at all is the overall workflow. The way this works on the mac (Im assuming its similar on windows) is as follows : 1) you scan to the unit (which has its own SD card memory) 2) to move the scans to your computer you either plug it in via USB or insert the SD card into your computer 3) you then can use the software provided by doxie to view and rename and post process the scans 4) to save files you then need to manually save each one from the software to your folders on your computer This is just dumb and kind of a hack. This is sad since the company seems to be really trying to make a good user experience but they forgot to pay attention to the user. Say for example Im scanning bills (a common use case). In this case I most likely have some folders on my computer set up to hold them : one for the gas company, one for cell phone, one for my bank, etc. When I get a bill I want to scan it and then send it to the right folder in one, maybe two steps. Thats not possible here. I need to scan, transfer, and then save to the correct folder manually. If I have 2 bills scanned then I need to save each one to its folder. What I was expecting was a unit that plugged into my computer and scanned to the software directly and then inside the software it would allow me to drag it to some saved folder structure. The website says they have amazing software while its actually very pedestrian. What would be cool (and what I would do if I were the designer) is to have it remember the look of the scans and then auto name and auto drop into the correct places. It already has OCR abilities.. This is an ok scanner. But not a good solution for bill scanning and getting organized. The way it is, it would take me weeks to scan a box of old bills and get them to the right places.

I ordered this in January and its now October. No problems. It works well and does what I need. Im using this mostly for receipts and some full page scanning. There are a few who have mentioned its hard to feed straight. There is an issue with that. The wheels can pull the paper in crookedly, so one has to be sensitive to how they are pulling. However, I find after the first one or two receipts, Ive got the pattern back down and it becomes a simple rhythm to feed them in properly. Someone mentioned that the power cord on the Doxie side is loose. Thats true for mine as well. It does not hold in well. However, I dont find that to be a big problem as Im generally sitting in one place using it. If Im not, I have batteries in it. The scan quality is good. Ive got receipts of varying lengths. Some are close to 12 inches long, possibly longer. They feed well (again with the occasional slip to one side or another [see above]) and even when they dont, I can clearly see the image. My receipts are wrinkled, wadded, and altogether not very flat. This hasnt been a problem for me. I open them up, smooth them out and make sure the leading edge is as flat as I can get to start. As long as that edge catches, its good to go. Even on wrinkled receipts, the print can be read. The image looks wrinkled as well, but everything is legible, its not a problem. Im happy with this purchase. I needed something portable, dependable, and clear for my record keeping. I did not get this to scan pictures, so I cant say as to any details on that. But what I have scanned looks good. The software is easy to use and I found it quick and easy to combine scans, and save it to my files.

I bought the Doxie One, and I dont regret it. The most important criterion in a purchase for me is reliability, and having soldiered through a massive backlog of paperwork and receipts, I feel reasonably confident giving the Doxie One a positive mark on that score. Once during the process, a discolored line began to appear on my scans, but a quick treatment with the included cleaning tool took care of it in short order. I have not tested the included software, but thats because one of the things I was looking for in a document scanner was the ability to operate without any special software - too many bad experiences with gaudy monstrosities of drivers. The Doxie One ticks that box as well - stick an SD card in the slot, start scanning, your scans appear as JPEG files on the card, plug in the USB cable and it looks to your PC the same as a thumbdrive or card reader. No options to configure the scanning when operating without the software, but for my purposes, I havent missed them. Theres only one standout bad thing about the Doxie One, but it can be very annoying: the document feeding mechanism is very fiddly. It actually deals with folded and wrinkled paper fairly well - such documents wont look beautiful, but theyll be readable. What it does not deal with well is paper with a less-than-crisp leading edge, especially if its a receipt. If you have such a document to scan, its probably going to take several frustrating attempts before you get a successful result. The machine will grab the edge and start rolling, one side will get stuck, the resulting image will be smeared beyond recognition, and youll just have to fiddle with the edge and try again until it works - I always managed to get it to work, but the experience wasnt terribly fun. Another reviewer commented that it was not unlike trying to get a wrinkled dollar bill recognized by a vending machine, and I have to agree. One more minor issue I experienced was that the scanner would cut off the bottom of any document longer than something like 14 inches. Not a problem if youre dealing with most paper documents, but annoying if you happen to be scanning the absurdly long receipts that seem to be popular with too many retailers these days. On the whole, it works well enough and itd be a really great product if they just put some more effort into the feeding mechanism.

I got this for myself to help reduce home paperwork. I initially hesitated because of some of the reviews and the fact that Doxie implies that only their more expensive scanners can do legal sheets, but decided to evaluate it anyway. Using it on a flat surface, it worked well. Legal and longer sheets work just fineMaybe one out of 50 pages generated a misfeed, usually when the paper had a sharp wrinkle near the end. I also use a desktop Snapscan at work and a large scale copier/scanner. I found misfeeds pretty even across all products. Image is crisp and clear with little to no smearing. Battery usage is fine for 5-10 sheets at a time, but when I tried doing it in large bulks, it had a propensity to act as if the battery was dead. Taking them out and putting them back solved this. With the AC adapter, no such problems. The scans go onto an included 2GB SD card as individual JPGs at a decent resolution in a DCIM folder, like a digital camera. You have to use the downloadable software package to save to other formats and combine pages into multipage PDFs. It will save PDFs with OCR if desired and this worked very accurately on the statements I scanned. I found ithe whole process pretty slow, however. This is an idea of the process involved: - Load SD card - Startup Doxie software and import scans (approx 5 secs per image) - Group scans together and staple (just a logical grouping in the software, takes no time) - Export each group to PDF with OCR (approx 8 secs per image) - Delete scans in software to save space (1 sec per group) My biggest gripe with the software is that it doesnt let you magnify or preview the scans large enough to see things like dates on statements. I would often have to export the image as a JPG to see what the date on the statement was in order to staple like documents. That area could be greatly improved. Otherwise, great product. I wouldnt recommend it for bulk scans, as its tedious and slow. ================= Update 2014.01.31 ================= Doxie actually contacted me via email and pointed out that I was probably using regular alkaline batteries (I was) and should use a quality set of rechargeable batteries, which they offered to provide to me for free. Getting these in place definitely improved the battery situation mentioned above. Very nice touch of customer service there that I must applaud them for. They also asked me if I knew about the Quick Look feature in the software per my comments about not being able to preview. The software does include a button that does a simple zoom of the page, but to me, its still insufficient. I cant read the date or account number off a scanned statement with this preview, which is critical to knowing which pages need to be grouped together - particularly if youre scanning a lot of statements in batch.