Rheinner Review: Panasonic KV-S1025C Series Document Scanner
The KV-S1025C in many ways represents a fairly radical approach to what one would expect a color desktop scanner to do. It has the capability to scan virtually anything from plastic credit cards to cardiograms, and to do so with a high degree of performance and in a quiet and ergonomic fashion.
Numerous other industries such as everything from automobile to equipment rental, police departments,government agencies and financial services companies would see a similar appeal in those features. So much attention to detail has gone into the physical design of this roughly $1,000 scanner, that its almost hard to believe. Many scanners in this class come as stripped down versions of higher end mechanisms, that it is hard to believe that Panasonic actually went out of their way to include so many unique features for this device to make life easy and trouble free for the operator. A recessed power button on the rear of the device powers it up. Its recessed in order to avoid being inadvertently tripped during the scanning process. Given the attractively small foot print, and light weight of the device it could easily allow this unit to grow legs and disappear from your desk. In order to thwart such efforts, Panasonic engineers have added security loop which can be used to lock the device to a desktop. It is not uncommon in this type of device to have to give the top of the stack of paper a little nudge in order to get it to start feeding through, not necessary here. Panasonic has avoided that hassle by putting plastic rollers on the feeder slide in order to neatly feed the paper in. Guides allow for sizing the input tray according to the paper being scanned, and an additional extension for longer paper is built in as well.
A separate plastic attachment, properly sized for feeding credit or ID cards is neatly stored in its own unobtrusive slot on the back of the device. Adding the credit card feeder to the input slide is literally done in a snap. The device also has the ability to feed from the ID card slot and the full size paper slot sequentially or simultaneously. The scanner can be set up to feed directly into your hand, or onto your desk, or you can simply flip down the paper tray which is so neatly integrated into the body of the device that it is barely noticeable. The scanner is operated by the use of a single button to start and stop operation. The button is dimpled in order to allow a visually impaired operator to feel the symbols on the button and be able to easily start and stop the machine. Audible and visual error alerts notify the user if there is a problem. The audible alert is a user selectable option.
As we have pointed out, the scanner is small, lightweight and compact, making it practical for use at a reception desk, or individual desktop. Panasonic engineers took that practicality one step further by attaching a user adjustable base to the machine. Removing the base entirely lowers the device by nearly 3 inches, attaching the base and re-positioning it in a variety of ways tilts the device in such a way that is alters its footprint while simultaneously positioning it in a more ergonomic fashion to suit individual user tastes and desktop real estate.
The attention to detail, extends to the interior and serviceable parts as well. A single release lever (one handed operation) opens to expose the interior of the machine. User serviceable parts are clearly indicated by turquoise colored plastic, and makes them instantly locatable against the black interior. Opening the scanner shows the entire paper path making the removal of jams and the servicing of the unit a simple and fast process. Two sets of rollers front and back, (rated at 50,000 and 100,000 scans respectively) can be easily replaced. The rollers come as single units. Instead of other roller kits that require an assembly of the roller set, these can be replaced in seconds, the whole process is so easy a child could do it.
Another key component of the scanner is the charge coupled device (CCD), the eyes of the scanner. The CCD comes inside a scratch resistant lens enclosure. Should image quality begin to suffer due to lens scratches only the lens, and not the entire CCD (which is costly) can be quickly replaced.
Performance
While it is clear that Panasonic spent a great deal of time and effort on the packaging and exterior design of the machine, in this next segment we will look at the performance features of the device. There are two elements to this, the physical performance of the machine, and the image processing capabilities it has.
The KV-S1025C is rated at 26 ppm or (52 ipm). The basic PPM (Page Per Minute) rating of the
KV-S1025C is one page per minute faster than its simplex cousin. But as a duplex scanner it can
capture both sides of a single sheet of paper, or of a credit or ID card. So if more than 10% of your work items contain information on both sides, and you need to capture that, then you really should buy the duplex version. In running through the basic test of paper handling and performance on the KV-S1025C, we saw no evidence that the machine had any problems at all meeting its speed rating using either the TWAIN, ISIS or Panasonic?s own driver.
Probably the neatest trick we have ever seen is when you load a small stack of credit cards into their separate hopper, and simultaneously load some 8.5 x 11 documents into the document feeder located just behind it. (Watch the video) The KV-S1025C scans both, in order, allowing you to capture say a drivers license along with a job application at the same time. The automatic dual feed detection alerts the user in the event that documents or cards did not feed correctly. Not only that, but the KV-S1025C has the ability to capture the front and back side of the ID or credit card and place in in a single image. Not two separate images, a single image. While we have never seen a scanner do either in 22 years, we're pretty sure that combining the front and back of a credit/ID card into a single image is something no other device can do. We can't imagine that there is a
government agency of medical office that wouldn't want that feature.
Another uncommon performance feature of the KV-S1025C is the ability to launch an application from the scanner. Usually its the other way around. The scanning program detects the scanner, and then you feed in your documents. The KV-S1025C can do that, but it can also reverse the process. Simply feeding the documents into the device immediately invokes the application where the images will be used. This is a crucial feature for the user because it means that you can scan whenever you want to without having to leave the scanning application running on your PC the entire time. It is only launched when required. Additionally, this feature gives the system administrator (or the integrator) the ability to configure the launching process in the way that requires as little as possible system knowledge from the scanner operator. In other words, the entire capture process can be so customized that all the user has to do is feed in the documents.
Image Enhancement
The KV-S1025C comes with all of the normal image enhancement features one would expect, not just in this class of device, but those usually found in more expensive devices. There are two features however which stand out. The first is Panasonic's own exclusive Multi-Color Dropout, and a technology called Multi-Stream, licensed from EMC/Captiva, which unlike Multi-Color dropout is found in other scanners albeit not usually in this class of device.
Multi-Stream is the ability to capture a bi-tonal (black and white) image while simultaneously capturing a color one. Since color images are typically considerably larger in file size than black and white images, in order to optimize system performance people commonly use the color file in screen resolution (smaller file size but not ideal for printing) in order to see the document, and the black and white image is used as the final stored version. A second benefit of Multi-Stream is using the black and white image for OCR purposes. While it is technically possible to OCR a color image, the performance and accuracy is not quite the same as using OCR on a black and white image. Hence Multi-Stream gives you the best of both worlds.
A second powerful and Panasonic exclusive technology is something Panasonic calls Multi-Color dropout. We have discussed this technology in previous reviews as it is something that comes with the entire current Panasonic product line-up. Multi-Color Dropout is a powerful enhancement technology, the results of which are best seen, and far more difficult to describe in words. (See video.)
A full color image when captured in color will be anywhere from 10 to 20 times larger than they typical 50KB black and white image. From the point of view of system performance, such as networking, storage and OCR the smaller black and white image is infinitely more preferable. When converting a color image or an image containing multiple colors (such as your Fedex receipt for example) to black and white the various colors and shadings can have disastrous effects on the legibility of the image. Some common image enhancement options can help mitigate those results, but nothing we have seen does so with the level of control that Multi-Color dropout provides. Usually once a sample image (say a Fedex receipt) is supplied, the scanners scanning parameters are adjusted in order to provide the best possible black and white image. While some software does that automatically by looking at the image and making its adjustments, Multi-Color Dropout provides far more finer controls. Multi-Color Dropout provides the operator with a "spectral" analysis of all of the colors and shades that are found in the image, and lets the operator select multiple colors or shades of colors and determine via the preview screen which to digitally remove or keep in order to create the best possible final image. The settings once saved will be automatically implemented as more of that type of document is scanned. The fine level of control provides the system manager with the ability to enhance problem documents to produce results that are in a word, astonishing. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, the enclosed video demonstrates those features.
Conclusion
Major features like the overall thoughtful design, the powerful image enhancements and the little design touches demonstrates to us that Panasonic designed this scanner specifically for a personal user working in a variety of commercial settings. They could just as easily have taken a basic design and stripped all of the features out and sold a personal machine for the same price. Instead they created an entirely new machine and designed it specifically for a personal user working in a distributed commercial or government environment. The feature set of this scanner provides something for everyone. The system administrators working to implement this device on multiple desktops will find the system level functionality like application launching and image enhancement provides them with powerful application features. The individual user will no doubt appreciate the numerous ergonomic, performance and thoughtful design features of this scanner as well as more sophisticated power that lies directly under the hood. This is for the time being, a document scanner in a class of one.
About The Author
Raimund Wasner has provided professional research, analysis and consulting for over twenty years. As Managing Director of The Rheinner Group, Mr. Wasner is one of a select group of highly regarded experts in the field of document management, workflow and e-business automation.
Panasonic Communications Company of North America
3 Panasonic Way 7D-8
Secaucus,
NJ
07094
UNITED STATES
Phone: 201-348-7309
http://www.panasonic.com/scanners
