Wolverine PASS200 Handheld Portable Documents, Books and Photo Scanner

After years of fighting software conflicts between my computer and various flatbed scanners in every price range, it was refreshing to work with this low priced, handheld scanner. I had become accustomed to having to trick my flatbeds into producing even a single page of material without at least a system reboot every time I wanted a copy of something. The Wolverine skips the computer altogether until I'm ready to work with the scanned jpg images. Then I just plug in with the supplied USB cable and find the Wolverine immediately recognized, just as a flashdrive or external hard drive would be. The choice of 300/600 DPI in either color or black and white is all I need for my purposes. I've scanned book pages, magazine pages, actual photos, receipts.... even pictures from the newspaper, something that never scanned well with my flatbeds. So far I haven't had a single error code with the Wolverine for moving too fast or too erratically; I find it quite forgiving in that regard. And finally, in the area of portability, the Wolverine can't be beat. No more trying to squash full size open books flat for successful scanning on my flatbed. Instead of bringing the book to the scanner I now take the scanner to the book, and scan page after page, both text and pictures, effortlessly.Suggestion: for ease of scanning something small or clumsy, like a newspaper clipping that wants to curl up, I've found that putting a piece of clear plastic (like those used as desktop calendar protectors) over the target item works great, just run the scanner right over the plastic; no distortion or reflection.

It worked fine at first. Almost a year later of very light usage, it went kaputt. It turns on but no mattter what i do, midscan the rollers just lock.

There are a variety of ways to scan materials. The most frequent for me are using ScanSnap scanner from Fujitsu, followed by using an Android phone application called Cam Scanner, followed by this scanner. The scan snap works on anything that lays flat, or was flat at some point in its life. But despite its small size, it's not portable enough, as it require and adapter etc. The Cam Scanner app uses the phone's camera, and does okay, but not great. This scanner does produce good quality scans, especially flat items. I use it most often to capture articles or passages out of a book or magazines, to organize or reference later.The Scanner will never get lost! Its vibrant green color assures that! The image quality is good in all settings, and the storage to SD card means it's self contained, and simple to pull out and use, no fuss.It does eat batteries, but this trade off for simplicity and portability is worth it.Scanning some books is difficult, as the rollers often fall off the page causing a poor scan, but usually not a problem with magazines or periodicals.Overall a solid value so long as your expectations aren't too high.

It scanned normally for several lines, then it began to fade out, no matter how slow I tried to it. So I returned to Amazon.

PROs- Light weight.- Smooth scanning.- Great images.CON- Every scan, as in EVERY scan, needs to be cropped to eliminate the surface being in the scanned image.There are other scanners out there with the same performance for a lower price, but what sold me on the PASS200 is that it has a dual-roller set-up, which facilitates smooth scanning on a wide variety of surfaces. I have not had a single document slide or skip on me, nor have I had a bad scan from an imperfect surface. This isn't critical to someone scanning things on their dinner table, but for someone that works in the field, the dual-roller set-up is a godsend.I purchased this scanner to scan records and documents when my dad fell ill and required admission to a long-term nursing facility. I was spending a lot of time between my house and his, so lugging my all-in-one printer was not an option... nor was the flatbed scanner I realized was broken at the worst possible moment.While the main reason I purchased this was to scan documents and medical records, I soon discovered that it creates color scans with beautiful resolution, even in "low quality" mode! At 300dpi, it trumps the quality my old Canon flatbed scanner produced at much higher resolution. This was a great surprise considering my job requires frequent photo scanning.The portability of the PASS200 is great: I carry it in my office bag with my Nikon DSLR, ZOOM recorder, lenses, and laptop. With ten pounds of gear, I'm carrying everything I need to cover any situation that comes up in the field when I'm working. The PASS200 adds very little to that kit, and with Eneloop batteries and a GoalZero Nomad solar panel, I've always got juice to get what I need no matter where I'm at.Now if they only offered it in a more subdued color.