Vupoint Solutions Magic Wand Portable Scanner (PDSWF-ST44-VP) with WiFi - RED

I choose 4 stars because of the ease of use, scanning quality, and quick transfer abilities.What I liked:1) Easy to get started. Up and running in minutes.2) Easy settings. After picking image quality and image mode, it runs with a single button.3) Image quality4) Easy to pop the SD Card into a PC or transfer images via USB cable. Also includes imaging software.5) Works best when combined with the $15 scanning table accessory.What I disliked:1) Needs option for a USB Power connection. Drains batteries after about 80 pictures.2) HIgh contrast images are overexposed (e.g. new receipts with a white glossy background). No problems with any other image type. Flat matte images such as old papers or photos work well.Recommend for:- Digital archiving of frail papers or images in combination with the scanning table- Travel- Gifts

Update: It does scan well and decent quality. But it EATS batteries. If you're using this for any amount of time, you'll tear through a pack.Original review:After mixed reviews I was torn on whether or not to buy this but it did exactly what I needed it do to and the scanned quality was good. Anything scanned printed image will only have limited quality because the scanner is going to see the halftone dots but this gets every bit of quality out of it it can. My best advice to users is to go slow, be steady, definitely work on a flat surface that doesn't work. I'm excited to try it out on some of my larger pieces of artwork.

This scanner is perfect for coping books in the library. It also works great on pictures. Cannot tell the difference between pictures scanned with the Magic Wand and pictures scanned with regular printer/scanner. The only drawback it the wifi drains the batteries so advanced lithium or ultimate lithium batteries should be used. The other drawback is the wifi does not work very well with the iPad App. I could never get it o display the image on my iPad screen.

With a steady hand and reasonable expectations for a hand held scanner you can expect some reasonably good scans. I usually scan some articles off science magazines for my Evernote library. This scanner works well for that. You can simply hook it up to the USB port of your computer and simply drag and drop the scans into your Evernote notebooks from the microSD folder. However, this scanner has some serious usability flaws! First, the small LCD screen makes it difficult to read the current settings which all appear at the periphery of the screen within the shadow of the bezel. The format button (which erases the microSD memory) is middle and center and too easy to press by mistake! In a few occasions I had to remove the batteries to abort an accidental formatting of my memory card. There is no cancel button. Setting the date is a primitive process that needs to be repeated every time you change the batteries!(I've discovered that you can preserve the time settings if you hookup your scanner to the USB before changing the batteries). And you will change the batteries FREQUENTLY. Even if you don't scan anything but leave the scanner OFF for a few days your will almost certainly need new batteries when you come back to reuse it (and that is with the WI-FI off!)For transferring to the computer the Wi-Fi is functional but impractical. I no longer use it and I always favor the USB cable which is faster and easier to pair with my computer. Instead of the scanner acting as a router I would have liked the Wi-Fi to permit the scanner to connect to my home network and transfer the files automatically to my computer, like the  Eye-Fi 4 GB Connect X2 SDHC Class 6 Wireless Flash Memory Card (EYE-FI-4CN-FF) . VuPoint will have to work on these issues before they really have a useful hand held scanner on the market.

I had so some high expectations when I purchased this, and it met or exceeded them all. I scanned over 200 pictures with this for a video I was working on, and I was amazed at how quickly I was able to scan them all. It takes a little practice to scan the images without a square look to the images, but once you get the hang of it you'll be scanning them perfectly every time. The picture looked good next to the HD video it supported in the movie I was making. Never needed to scan any documents or books with it, but I did manage to get some on my table cloth in the background when I was scanning pictures and it scanned pretty good too. You'll probably get a better image quality with a table top scanner, but like I said the images I got with scanner held their own next to HD video. Very happy with this purchase.

Good, fast, good quality scans, it works as expected. But for the wi-fi the device acts like a personal access point that you should connect. Of course you have to disengage from your wi-fi network wich is less than ideal. If you are on the move then this may be practical because your device will try automatically to connect to the scanner.Also, no automatic preview: when the wifi is the scanning is disabled automatically.

You can be out in the field and decide you need a copy of something (e.g. a magazine article) and snap it up with the Magic Wand. The only reason I didn't give it a 5 star rating was because it's a little draining on batteries, but, of course since they are standard batteries (as opposed to being rechargeable) you can just carry spares.