Review: The Doxie Go SE portable scanner will help you organize your life

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2021
The Doxie Go SE is an ultraportable scanner that doesn't require a computer in order to use it. It's great for those last straggling bits of old paperwork, photos, and artwork that you haven't converted to digital formats yet.

Doxie Go SE with included quick start guide and cleaning kit


We're living in an increasingly digital world-- we take our pictures with our phones and store them in the cloud, we fill out and submit forms digitally, and email has nearly eradicated the need for the humble fax machine. However, that doesn't change the fact that many of us have spent decades in the pre-digital era.

The Doxie Go SE can help bring years of physical bits into the digital age without taking up too much time or space. And, since it doesn't have to be tethered to a desk, it can travel with you wherever you need it to.

Form factor

The Doxie Go SE is an upgraded version of the original DoxieGo, which I'd also had the pleasure of using many years ago. It's an ultra-portable, "bedless" scanner. Doxie says it's a great solution for on-the-go scanning, but I posit that it's a great scanner for every day use.

The new Doxie Go SE can be stored where traditional scanners can't, including desk drawers, shelves, cubbies, and more. It doesn't take up precious desk space, either.

Perhaps most importantly, the Doxie Go SE isn't part of a scanner-printer combo. There's no chance of you needing to keep a broken printer just to scan in any documents.

And, yes-- the Doxie Go SE is portable. If you've got a relative who is trying to go paperless, grabbing the Doxie and heading to their house is an extremely easy task.

What can you scan with Doxie?

The Doxie Go SE is fairly versatile, and for most people will be able to scan most of the things they're going to want scanned. Perhaps most obvious would be receipts and photos, but I found that it worked well for standard 8.5-inch by 11-inch paper, business cards, collectible card game cards-- pretty much any flat object that was as thin or thinner than standard cardstock.

Doxie scanning

Ease of use

Using a scanner that doesn't have a bed takes a little bit of practice to get used to. It's easy to accidentally scan something terrifyingly askew, especially if it's a larger item. However, once you get used feeding items into the scanner, it's extremely quick.

When scanning, it works best to use two hands to make sure you're keeping the item at least relatively level. You'll feed the image in on the left, where a small switch will tell the Doxie Go SE to start the auto-feed. There's also a lever that can be moved across the opening of the scanner to help keep scanned items from feeding crooked as they enter the scanner.

By default, Doxie scans at 300 dots per inch, which is more than enough for most uses. Pressing the power button a second time will turn the light to orange, showing that Doxie is now in 600 dots per inch mode, giving you a much higher resolution scan which some users may want for photos.

Scanning an 8.5 by 11 inch page takes a little over seven seconds when scanning at 300 dots per inch, and about 11 seconds at 600 dots per inch. When scanned, images are automatically straightened -- within reason -- and cropped. Unless you're retouching, there's very little image editing needed following the scan.




The Doxie Go SE has an internal battery that can be charged with the included cable, and will be able to scan about 400 scans at 300 dots per inch before it needs charging. However, if you have USB power available, the Doxie does work while plugged in and charging.

Storage and transfer

Doxie scans directly to its included 8GB SD card, which will hold roughly 4000 scans at 300 dots per inch. This means that you'll be able to leave your computer at home if you're away from your home base. In order to transfer the scans to a computer, you can either pop out the SD card and put it into a card reader, or you can connect the Doxie via the included microUSB cable.

Doxie SD card


And yes, we want it to be USB-C instead of microUSB.

Software

Doxie's included software is surprisingly intuitive. The suite includes a built in basic image editor, the ability to "staple" pages together into a single document, and perhaps most importantly the ability to export multiple scans into a single PDF. This is especially useful if you're a freelancer who may want to keep multiple documents combined together for tax purposes, or a student looking to digitize notes into a PDF for later reference.




We're reviewing the original Doxie Go SE which does not have Wi-Fi. There is a higher-end Doxie Go SE with Wi-Fi, and for that model, there is an iOS app that is available as a companion to the scanner.

The downsides

There are very few downsides to using the Doxie Go SE, but it's worth making note of them. The most obvious downside is that you can't scan books or anything that is thicker than a piece of standard cardstock. This means that for artists who prefer to sketch in books, or those looking to digitize physical copies of books or magazines, you'd be better off finding another scanner to use.

Doxie also recommends that you don't run any paper that has glitter, white-out/correctional fluid, or crayon through it. I'd extend this warning to charcoal, acrylic paint, and gauche as well, as I could only assume that they would leave residue on the scanning surface. I believe that as long as the paper is completely dry, watercolor paint and artist's inks should be fine.

Overall impressions

The scanning functionality included in iOS is pretty good. However, it isn't a substitute for a lot of scans at once, which the Doxie Go SE can handle with aplomb.

The Doxie is an excellent home-use scanner, or for those who have a small home office and primarily scan looseleaf documents. If you're in the process of going paperless and are looking to compile years of documents in a short amount of time, it's the exact scanner you're going to want.

However, if you're planning on scanning cook books, sketchbooks, or anything larger than 8.5-inch by 11-inch paper, you're going to want to invest in a more traditional flatbed.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Where to buy

The Doxie Go SE can be purchased from Amazon or B&H Photo for $178.00 and the Doxie Go SE Wi-Fi can be purchased for $198.95 at B&H and Amazon. Both scanners come with the Doxie scanner, a cleaning kit, a microUSB, and a quick-start guide.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 16
    maccadmaccad Posts: 87member
    I use Evernote's Scannable on my iPhone. It would be a step backwards to use a scanner again.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 2 of 16
    This review skips over the most crucial piece of information -- how long it takes to perform a single scan of an 8.5 x 11 page. Your hypothetical example of taking the Doxie Go SE to a friend or relative's house is a total fantasy. A single box of files would take many hours of nonstop scanning. I still occasionally use a small;l portable USB scanner with a similar footprint and it works just fine --- except that it's so gigantically time-consuming.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 3 of 16
    AmberNeelyAmberNeely Posts: 14member, moderator
    This review skips over the most crucial piece of information -- how long it takes to perform a single scan of an 8.5 x 11 page. 
    Good catch. I added in the times. It took the Doxie a little over 7 seconds to scan a 8.5 x 11 at 300DPI, at 600DPI it tipped over 11 seconds. 

    Your hypothetical example of taking the Doxie Go SE to a friend or relative's house is a total fantasy. A single box of files would take many hours of nonstop scanning. 

    And I've helped my parents go paperless with my Doxie from 2016 or so. Yeah, it's slow going, but like, they're my parents. I gotta help 'em where I can. 
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 4 of 16
    I use a Fujitsu Scansnap and it works great.
    pscooter63watto_cobra
  • Reply 5 of 16
    DAalsethDAalseth Posts: 2,783member
    I use Scanner Pro on my iPhone and the bright kitchen light over the Island for the same thing. Works fine for letter, legal, and small documents.
    pscooter63watto_cobra
  • Reply 6 of 16
    I have just purchased a similar scanner, the IRIScan Anywhere 5 from IRIS, a Canon subsidiary (which made me choose it): https://www.irislink.com/EN-BE/c1698/IRIScan-Anywhere-5---IRIScan-Anywhere-5-Wifi---Cordless-Scanner.aspx I was amazed how fast it scans, even at 1200 DPI, at least as fast as the big copier/scanner at work. I need it for scanning 50y old stencils, which are a bit wider than A4 and some 2" longer. It will simply scan until the paper runs out, so length doesn't matter. This means I don't need to scan A3 for stencils. This scanner is a bit cheaper than the Doxie, I got it for 2/3rd the price in a promotion sale. It comes with its own software, but you can use any OCR app with it as you let the scanner produce standard image files. They have a book version of this with which you move the scanner over the page by hand.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 7 of 16
    linkmanlinkman Posts: 1,035member
    Micro USB is one of the most hated connectors in history but vendors KEEP USING IT. Why why why?
    pscooter63planetary paulwatto_cobra
  • Reply 8 of 16
     I recommend Fujitsu SnapScan scanners. Their tech-support is excellent go 20+ Years. I now have the 1300i that is  a small portable one, and really like it.
    pscooter63watto_cobra
  • Reply 9 of 16
    linkman said:
    Micro USB is one of the most hated connectors in history but vendors KEEP USING IT. Why why why?
    One possible reason is that the EU wants it to be THE standard for phone chargers.
  • Reply 10 of 16
    KiwiPhreddKiwiPhredd Posts: 3unconfirmed, member
    Genuine question, why would I use this over my iPhone? There are some very good document/picture scanning apps and it's way faster to just point and shoot.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 11 of 16
    pscooter63pscooter63 Posts: 1,080member
    +1 for Scanner Pro (iOS).  Even lighting and a music-stand-like angle to prop your work against helps maximize the quality, but it's still great without those.

    Fujitsu SnapScans are great too, for really big jobs you need scanned yesterday (its sheer throughput at printed document grayscale DPI still blows my mind).  Works best with perfect source pages (no wrinkles or dodgy edges).
    edited August 2019 watto_cobra
  • Reply 12 of 16
    linkman said:
    Micro USB is one of the most hated connectors in history but vendors KEEP USING IT. Why why why?
    One possible reason is that the EU wants it to be THE standard for phone chargers.
    Backwater EU. I agree with the initial sentiment against the masses of uninterchangable chargers, but they fell into the trap of settling on the worst common denominator. The whole idea went nowhere. Idiots.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 14 of 16
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,844member
    Genuine question, why would I use this over my iPhone? There are some very good document/picture scanning apps and it's way faster to just point and shoot.
    While I appreciate the convenience of iphone camera “scanning”, it’s not quite as good as a real scan when you examine the documents. 
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 15 of 16
    What I miss in this review, is a mention of the quality of the scans. Are they REALLY better than the Scanbot app on my XS Max?
    Especially scanning photos should be better than with the iPhone, otherwise there’d be no use for a separate scanner...
    Did you test the difference in quality?
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 16 of 16
    slurpyslurpy Posts: 5,382member
    I don't even see the point of these anymore, except in very niche cases where scan quality has to be absolutely amazing for some reason. With the resolution, quality of today's iPhone cameras as well as post processing, automatic perspective distortion removal and cropping of today's apps, I don't see why this is needed in 99% of scanning cases.
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