Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #95914 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Planon
• Dimensions: .13 pounds

Customer Reviews

The equivalent of an extremely stupid pretty blonde
I cannot begin to describe how disappointed I am with this product.

When I first heard of it, I thought it was a dream come true. I am a researcher and often have access to documents which I cannot take home to scan (archives, maps, etc.). My previous methods were either lugging my bulky flatbed scanner around with me and praying to find an electric plug, or taking pictures with a camera (blurry results even with an SLR). So this handheld scanner would've solved a big problem.
Despite all the negative reviews on the net (complaints about cheap presentation, slow speed, constant shutting down, etc.; I recommend you read up before trying to buy it) I figured I'd give it a shot. I could put up with all of that for the sake of having something portable. I was sooo wrong. The product does live up to all its negative reviews and more!! You would've thought that Planon had actually improved its product (it has been on the market for more than a year). But No, they didn't!

So to sum things up: The scanner is meant to be independent, small and rechargeable. You turn it on, swipe it over the scanned material at moderate speed, the motion is detected and the scanner is turned on, it saves the image to an internal memory and shuts down. Afterwards you plug it into your PC and download the images for saving/ processing.
After trying it, the only positive thing I have to say: it is indeed a very small and nicely shaped machine. But read below before you decide it's good enough as a show-off tool.
The negatives: looks too cheap for its worth; feels too cheap for its worth; acts like a 99p child's toy: the general operation speed is very slow, slow to start up, very slow to transmit pictures to computer, very very slow to format. The interface looks very outdated (something from 1995), and has very few options. The scanner would scan only one picture before shutting down, and not without problems. I did not get even one satisfactory image scanned by this thing. The motion detector would not operate until the scanner was moving too fast and by then it would be too late to try again, as it would shut down moments later. It would not save all of my scans even after installing a 2GB memory card. The best scan I got was half an A4 page; with only 2cm long, distorted strips of scanned documents most of the time. I still can't figure out if the product was mal-functional or just mal-designed.
After 3 very frustrating days of trying over and over again (I thought it was my fault at the beginning), I returned the scanner for a refund.
For now, and until a similar operational scanner is available on the market, I got myself a Canon LIDE90. It is flatbed, but very small (26x38cms), light, and is powered via USB. So carrying it is like carrying a laptop. It is a more bulky solution, but it Works!

I would've given negative stars for this product if I could. Avoid like the plague!!

it's rubbish
Given the two widely differing reviews, I decided to risk it.

There is a big need for a product that is a small portable scanner -but the Docupen isn't it and it is hard to believe something that performs so poorly can be marketed for as long as it has.

You just cannot get the scanner to move slow enough to scan a whole page. It will start scanning a few inches down from the top and decide to stop before it reaches the bottom no matter how consistently and smoothly you move it.

There is no point using the offer to buy this with a Gb mini-SD since the according to the documentation and my own experience the device won't work with cards of large capacity.

Brought mine from Save4, who gave me a refund but kept 15% for a product that does not perform as advertised, so I'll not be dealing with them again.

Docupen is rubbish. Someone invent something that actually works.

Rubbish, Flakey, Cheap - doesnt work!
what can I say, costs loads, flakey software, cheap feel, dodgy usb cable (feels like the connector will break at some point) rubbish images, takes ages to save a page to the scanner, then ages to download then ages to clear the memory, providing you can get your images off!! - I lost an entire day at the libarary scanning! - got home, all that was on the scanner was gobble de gook!!!! - Avoid! - wish I had!