The speed in which your book scanner scans a single page will have immense effect on the total time it takes to scan an entire book, but that’s not all. In this article we’ll discuss the different book scanners features that determine affect scanning speed.
How Fast is a Book Scanner?
Modern book scanners can scan a page in under 2-seconds and a 500-pages book in ~17 minutes.
The speed at which a book scanner works will vary largely depending on the brand, what kind of technology the device uses, and the type of book scanner.
The old scanning technology is something like a flatbed scanner, which will take around 15-30 seconds to scan a single page of a book, though this is on the slower end of the scale. At that rate, a 200-page book could take anywhere from 1-2 hours on average!
However, modern book scanners are far superior. When a book is placed flat underneath the camera of these scanners, they can capture the images of both open pages in less than 2 seconds, and you can get through a 200-page book in a matter of minutes rather than hours!
Fully automatic book scanners are even way faster than that. Some automatic models can scan up to 3000 pages per hour (pph). But these are big and expensive machine that are not really suitable for home use.
Why is Book Scanning Speed Important?
The speed of your book scanner will affect the total time it takes to scan an entire book.
As you can imagine, there are some pretty lengthy books out there that researchers, archivists, or enthusiasts might want to digitize into a digital format.
And if you have to go through an entire library of books and/or documents, then every second counts.
This is why so many book scanner manufacturers will advertise how fast their machines are.
What’s the Fastest Type of Book Scanner?
When the ScanRobot 2.0 MDS was created around 2011, it was the fastest in the world, able to scan over 3000 pages per hour!
When it comes to book scanners for home use, the fastest scanner is probably the Aura series scanner by Czur that can scan a page un under 2-seconds.
If you’ve read our book scanners comparison list you probably noticed that there are other book scanners that can scan a page in under 2-seconds. So what’s special about this one?
The thing that makes Czur’s scanners the fastest is the extra software features that come with it; page curve detection, page turning detection, position detection and more.
While these features don’t directly affect the scanning time of a page but they will have immense affect on the total time it takes to scan an entire book. Read more all about these features and more in our article about book scanning features and specifications.
What Makes a Book Scanner Fast?
The camera speed and the book scanner’s software are what makes a book scanner fast.
A lot of manufacturers will advertise how many pages per hour a scanner can digitize. This often simply refers to how quickly the book scanner’s camera will pick up the information on the page and process it before being able to move on to the next page.
But as a buyer, you must pay attention to other time-saving features like page turning detection. With this technology, the book scanner will automatically begin scanning a page as soon as it notices a page has been flipped. This ultimately saves a lot of time, not having to press a button every time you turn the page of a book.
Other software features to pay attention to for higher speed:
Automatic image adjustments
Scanners that have automatic image quality adjustments know to automatically zoom, focus, crop, flip, flatten, and correct the curve of the page they are scanning. This saves a tone of time not editing the images at the end of the scan.
Software interface
An easy-to-use interface that works fast without any bugs is precious to have. A simple software that arranges the pages without any mistakes or bugs means a lot and you should go over the software review before choosing a scanner.
Continuous Scanning
This feature is a bit like page turning detection but less advanced. It let’s you specify a time interval for the device to scan a page, for example, every 3-seconds. Than all you have to do is flip the pages.
Pedal Control
Some software and scanners can be connected to a padal which allows you to hit ‘Scan’ with your leg other than your finger. This leaves your hands free to align the book and flip the pages.
OCR
Another term you may have heard of in relation to book scanners is OCR scanning. This is Optical Character Recognition, and it’s a fantastic way to convert books to a variety of digital formats.
Instead of simply capturing the image of a page in a book, this technology recognizes the text on the page of a book and converts it into a new format. For example, you can use an OCR book scanner to convert an entire book into a PDF document which can easily be searched, examined, and edited on a computer.
The amount of time it takes the scanner to complete the OCR depends on the software and how well it was designed.
What’s the fastest way to scan a book?
The fastest way to scan a book must be with an automatic book scanner, and if you need to scan a book fast you should consider contacting a service that has one of these scanners.
Book scanning services are a great method for digitizing your books without too much effort. You should definitely consider this option if you need to scan just one or two books, and you need it done fast. Especially if it’s an old book that needs to be scanned in a professional way.
Another option you might want to consider is paying a visit to the nearest public library. Many libraries nowadays have book scanners free for the public to use.
How Long Does it Take to Scan a Book on Your Phone?
We evaluate that scanning a 500-pages book on your phone would take at least 40-minutes. More than double the time it would take to scan a book using a professional book scanner.
There are more than a few methods to scan books, and scanning a book on your phone is not a bad idea. There are plenty of book scanning apps available online that will use your phone’s camera to capture the image of each page and convert it to a digital format.
However, as you might imagine, this method is a lot slower than using an actual book scanners.
The amount of time it takes will largely depend on how well you can hold your phone in place and how quickly you can work through the functions of the app.
Even if you had a robot to hold the phone for you and scan the pages with perfect efficiency, it would still take longer than a regular book scanner and an app would likely be able to scan no more than 700 pages per hour.
Conclusion
If speed is your main consideration when buying a book scanner, make sure to pay attention not only to speed, but also to other software features, especially page turning detection and auto-adjustments.
And before you start scanning books you might want to read our articles about book scanning laws and how book scanners work.
Happy book scanning!