At first glance, this machine is very impressive! The Panasonic KVS1025C is the smallest of the document scanners currently available with a scanning speed of 26 pages per minute and capable of holding 50 sheets in the feeder. It is designed for a small office or for personal scanning.
Within the box alongside the scanner you will find a USB cable, power lead, sheet feeder, output tray, scanner manual and the software. The scanner is very small but also it gives you a sense of sturdiness, it feels robust and reliable and would sit nicely in any office.
As usual we have put the scanner through a number of everyday tests to try to assess how it copes with a variety of different scanning tasks.
The KVS1025C scanned 50 text documents in 1 min 59 seconds; which is almost spot on the quoted 26 pages per minute. This test was set at scanning at 200pdi which is fine for most text documents and keeps the speed up too. It is possible to change the dpi setting anything up to 600dpi, although this is usually used when scanning high quality images / photos and usually in colour or greyscale.
The scanner does only have a 50 sheet feeder but given that Panasonic have their sheet feeders taking pages from the bottom, we were able to add to the batch whilst it was still scanning without affecting the order in which documents will appear onscreen. As a test we scanned over 150 sheets in one batch, although this did mean we had to be next to the machine whilst scanning to top it up a couple of times, but it did work with no problems.
The Panasonic KVS1025C will scan business cards. We put a number of them through in one batch and had no problems at all. It's probably worth noting that the moveable paper guides which determine the size of the paper (therefore keeping each sheet straight) only reduce down to A5 size and so a few cards went slightly off line but nothing too serious.
While it is not recommended to scan staples or paperclips, accidents do happen. When we tested the KVS1025C it took the stapled document through as normal. This is not ideal because until you look through the resultant scanned file (by which time you may have shredded the paper) you wouldn't be aware that a page (or several) had been missed off.
(IMPORTANT NOTE: please remove all staples prior to scanning!!... No manufacturers recommend you scan staples, paperclips etc - this will very quickly scratch the scanning lens and will not be covered in your warranty!)
The Panasonic KVS1025C is a colour, duplex scanner. When scanning photos the resolution will need to be higher than when scanning simple text files. To test this part of the scanning we used some magazine pages, this not only tested the scanning quality of images and text together but also meant we were able to see if the scanner could cope with glossy paper. The scanner picked up the pages fine. We scanned in 10 double-sided pages set at 500dpi - this took 1 minute 7 seconds but the quality was pretty good.
Another good test is to put through a number of invoices which are all different sizes and on various qualities/types of paper. This is the most common use for many end users. The KVS1025C coped very well with these.
All of the Panasonic scanners come built with RTIV (Reliable Throughput Image Viewer).
This software is similar to Kofax VRS and very handy for image enhancement. Some of the benefits the software includes,
Auto Binary/Color Distinction,
Multi Color Dropout,
Blank Page Removal,
Double Exposure,
Smooth Background,
Automatic Cropping and De-skewing,
Dynamic Threshold to name a few.
Conclusion
A very reliable scanner; it will fit nicely into any home or office without taking up too much space. The scanner is also very quiet and does not take any time to warm up. We didn't come across any issues while scanning and it seemed quite happy to take most types of document. The free software, RTIV, is brilliant and works great with the scanner. A big thumbs up for the Panasonic KVS1025c.
Please note that all of our reviews are based on one sample scanner and may not therefore be a statistically correct assessment of the model in question. Given the simplistic nature of the tests, in an attempt to keep the reviews comparable with other models, many of the features available to each model were not tested and we strongly recommend visitors to our website to view the official product specifications provided by the manufactures. Whilst all reasonable efforts have been made to ensure all information is accurate we accept no liability for any inaccuracies or omissions and any decisions based on information contained in this review are the sole responsibility of the visitor.
At first glance, this machine is very impressive! The Panasonic KVS1025C is the smallest of the document scanners currently available with a scanning speed of 26 pages per minute and capable of holding 50 sheets in the feeder. It is designed for a small office or for personal scanning.
