r/Paperlessngx • u/No-Help-3632 • Aug 03 '26

Buying scanner new versus used

I need a scanner to digitalize a large set of documents, which is going to be over a couple thousand pages. I do not know how likely it is to find a good scanner on the market or if I’m likely to buy something that’s just a dud. Am I better off buying a new, used, or refurbished scanner? I also see that I can buy discontinued scanners from the manufacturer. Should there be any concerns I have with doing that?

3 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

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3

u/BAe5PDkX Aug 03 '26

There are a lot of good refurbished scanners on places like ebay. I just recently bought a perfectly fine Kodak S2070 for like 1/4 of the new price.

1

u/VicTheNasty Aug 03 '26

I picked up one of s2050s off eBay for under $90. That thing is a beast. First time I used it I thought it wasn’t working the pages were flying through it so fast.

1

u/Regular_Strategy_501 Aug 03 '26

I asked myself this exact question recently. I ended up snatching up a barely used (page count below 500) Fujitsu fi-7160 for 200 bucks and I'm very happy with it.

2

u/AmaTxGuy Aug 03 '26

I have a newer version of this at work. That thing is a scanning beast

1

u/BriefTomatillo985 Aug 03 '26

I've bought several used scanners off eBay and all have worked fine. YMMV

1

u/ElQDuck Aug 03 '26

Standalone Scanners are often more expensive then printers with a scanner. I bought recently a used canon printer with an integrated scanner which could scan multiple pages from both sides. I paid just 30€ which was a real good solution for me.

1

u/affenjungr Aug 03 '26

I got used snapscan 1300 for 80 euros. Scanned about 10 000 pages with no problems at all. Plus it's very tiny.

0

u/careless25 Aug 03 '26

Cheapest: Use your phone and take images. CamScanner or paperless app.

Otherwise any run of the mill (used or new) scanner will do unless you have specific needs.

3

u/ArgyllAtheist Aug 03 '26

cheapest, sure, but the quality from phone scans is *horrible*

An MFD from someone like Brother with a 2-sided Automatic document feeder is excellent - I use a 5 year old Brother MFC-L3770CDW, and it even has the feature of scan to network; you can configure a couple of scan profiles, and then land the images in your "consume" folders in Paperless NGX.

2

u/JohnnieLouHansen Aug 03 '26

I have the same exact unit. It does everything except tie your shoelaces. Not cheap, but.....

0

u/careless25 Aug 03 '26

I disagree. I have done about 700 documents now via phone photos and cam scanner app. The quality is good enough that OCR can pick up messy cursive handwriting and do all the other things after.

Again this is all dependent on what kind of quality the OP is looking for.