Hardware

Review: Fujitsu fi-8170 Is Ideal for High-Volume Document Retention

This scanner provides great image quality backed by industry-leading reliability.

Carlos Soto is an award-winning reviewer and journalist with 20 years of experience covering technology and business within various sectors and industries.

From collected tax records to processed licenses, state and local governments need to gather and store a multitude of documents, and many of those records need to be kept for years, if not forever.

States, for example, often have requirements that specify records series commonly found in local government offices, provide an assessment of their value and indicate when (or if) those records can be destroyed. Such rules are intended to assist employees of local government agencies when managing records in their offices, but those records can number in the hundreds or thousands, if not more.

The task of digitizing paper documents for long-term storage — and to make them more easily searchable — is simply impossible without a large fleet of easy-to-use digital scanners to help state and local governments retain, process and preserve records. Few scanners can handle the volume that some agencies require, but one I recently reviewed, the Fujitsu fi-8170, is ideally suited for the task.

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Fujitsu fi-8170 Provides Superior Scanning with Easy Use

The Fujitsu fi-8170 offers superior image quality, easy feeding procedures and the industry-leading reliability that has come to be associated with Fujitsu scanning products. It’s also one of the speediest scanners in its class, able to batch scan up to 70 single-page documents per minute loaded into its 80-sheet input tray.

Measuring 11.8 by 6.7 by 6.4 inches and weighing a little under 9 pounds, the scanner is small enough to fit on any desk as a personal unit, although with its speed and features it can also work as a shared unit for a medium-sized workgroup.

Scanner Deftly Handles Variety of Documents for Preservation

When testing scanners, receipt scanning is one process that is always heavily scrutinized for quality. The ink used to print receipts is problematic for many scanners because it’s often very light. And because paper receipts are not designed for longevity, they can smear and fade quickly. When I loaded some poor-quality receipts into the Fujitsu fi-8170, it was able to fully decipher them using optical character recognition while preventing them from degrading further.

Other types of documents were also perfectly captured. Where many scanners have around 30 color settings, this latest Fujitsu has 4,913. In all cases, the Fujitsu fi-8170 captured even very fine details that were part of submitted documents, including photographs.

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SPECIFICATIONS

Max Scan Resolution: 1200 dpi
Top Scanning Speed: 70 pages per minute
Max Doc Scanning Size: 8.5x14 inches
Connectivity: USB or network cable
Dimensions: 11.8x6.7x6.4 inches
Weight: 8.82 pounds

Top 3 Characteristics of a Good Agency Scanner

Effective scanners in government service need to be versatile enough to handle various paper types and document sizes, quick enough to keep up with ongoing scanning needs and sophisticated enough to produce quality output that perfectly preserves original paper documents in a digital format. Failing in any one of those three areas means more work for overstretched agency employees and potential delays in providing citizen services.

So, the best government scanners should score highly in three critical areas.

Versatility: The Fujitsu fi-8170 is amazingly easy to use when scanning various documents of different sizes and paper types. With an impressive 80-page input tray capacity, this scanner makes light work of heavy tasks. Scanners for government use also need to support document size of at least 8.5 by 14 inches, and a maximum document size of 220 x 220 inches. This empowers agency users to process various document types without having to reconfigure the scanner every time. They just need to load everything into the input tray and let the scanner sort it out.
Speed: In tests, the Fujitsu fi-8170 easily sustained over 60 pages per minute with mixed document types, and reached close to its 70 pages per minute maximum speed during scans of more common and unified document types. This rate and the massive capacity of the input tray make it simple for agencies to process large stacks of documents in batches — in mere minutes. Also, the fi-8170’s document feeder design minimizes jams. I never experienced one during the test period.
Quality: With a grayscale depth of 8 bits, 256 gray levels and 24-bit color depths of 16.7 million colors, the fi-8170 is able to capture almost any kind of document while preserving even the most subtle or highly detailed features of the original. It boasts a maximum optical resolution of 600 dpi and a maximum interpolated resolution of 1,200 dpi, ensuring that both colors and text pop off the screen once documents are scanned.

Effective scanners need to be versatile and speedy. They must capture high-quality images to be suitable for government service. The Fujitsu fi-8170 fits that bill. This scanner could find a good home with any state and local agency that needs fast, high-quality scanning capabilities for documents of all sizes and types.