By Robin Owens 7 days ago, Scanners
What are the best pen scanners on the market?
A pen scanner resembles a regular highlighter and allows capturing the necessary info be it a single sentence or a whole paragraph in a trouble-free way.
Such devices are really small, thus convenient to transport and use, so more and more people are interested in getting them. We have studied the current offers and are ready to name the top 5 picks for your regular needs.
With special attention to their key features, we have selected 5 reliable pen scanners and listed their strong and weak points for you to make an informed choice. At the end of the article, you’ll find sections with tips that are bound to simplify your decision-making process.
Font size range: 6.5 - 22 pt | Scanning speed: 15 cm/sec| Interface: USB | Battery capacity: 1200mAh
⊕ Stand-alone scanner
⊕ Numerous built-in dictionaries
⊕ Scans in different English languages
⊖ Not for buyers with limited funds
This is undoubtedly the best pen scanner for anyone learning English as a second language as well as for people with literacy difficulties, e.g. dyslexia. The scanner is very small and lightweight, so you can easily take it with you wherever you go.
You just need to move the scanner across the printed text and it will read words aloud and even show the definition of each of them. C-Pen Reader allows uploading paragraphs to Windows and Mac computers for further editing. Being supplied with an accurate OCR engine, the scanner flawlessly grasps the printed text and saves it instantly.
Font size range: 6-24 pt | Scanning speed: 10 cm/sec | Interface: Bluetooth | Battery capacity: 100mAh
⊕ Small size
⊕ Weighs next to nothing
⊕ Great shape
⊖ Leaves traces after scanning
Scanmarker Air Pen can assist anyone, who deals with large documents on a regular basis and want to filter out key points and save them for future use in a convenient way. This mainly refers to teachers, students, writers, journalists, lawyers, scientists, etc.
The device allows you to scan text and send it to your smartphone or any related application on Win and Mac computers. Either you want to capture a particular fragment in a textbook, magazine, invoice or other docs, here is a great tool to use.
Font size range: 6-22 pt | Scanning speed: 10 cm/sec | Interface: USB | Battery capacity: 600mAh
⊕ Budget-friendly
⊕ Scans barcodes and bink fonts
⊕ Can extract text from screenshots
⊕ Translates in numerous languages
⊖ May scan incorrectly
Frequently advertised as the most reliable pen scanner for Mac and Windows users, this tool also attracts with some additional features, mainly agile multilingual translation (supports 200 languages). After scanning, you can save the text to multiple apps and continue working with it later. While choosing the target languages, you can specify whether you need a business translation or a regular one.
Without typing a single word, it is possible to scan a large document both in vertical and horizontal directions. The device support outputting text fragments to desktop computers and amending them with the help of Microsoft Word, Outlook, Excel, and similar programs.
Font size range: 6.5-24 pt | Scanning speed: 12 сm/sec | Interface: Bluetooth | Battery capacity: 850mAh
⊕ Designed to last
⊕ Rich connectivity
⊕ Built-in battery
⊖ Recognized misspelled text
Connect Pen is a great highlighter scanner that can be paired with iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac devices for convenient work with text. Once you activate it, the light turns on and when you drag the scanner across the text, the captured words appear on the screen of the device.
Connect Pen is a really efficient tool if you need to scan text in books, magazines, and other printed media. The dedicated app allows you to save, share, switch on reading out loud and translation.
Font size range: 6-24 pt | Scanning speed: 10 cm/sec | Interface: USB | Battery capacity: 200mAh
⊕ Reasonably priced
⊕ Very accurate scanning
⊕ Straightforward operation
⊕ Quick text processing
⊖ Some issues while scanning
Similar to other devices described above, Scanmarker boasts an amazingly portable design. This is a wireless pen scanner that connects to your desktop computer, tablet or phone via Bluetooth. It uses interactive scanning technology to capture text and convert it into an editable document.
Such an approach is helpful when you take notes from research papers, single out fragments from historical manuals, etc. Being an OCR pen scanner, it accurately captures the text and provides you with editable documents for future work. The scanner can work in conjunction with Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS devices.
| Image | Name | Features | |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
C-Pen Reader
Wireless |
CHECK PRICE → | |
 |
Scanmarker Air Pen
Best for MAC |
CHECK PRICE → | |
 |
Penpower
For Windows |
CHECK PRICE → |
While looking for the best pen scanner, you are likely to find numerous options and you need to understand the subtle differences between them to get a really long-lasting and convenient tool. We have covered the major factors that you need to consider before deciding on a particular device.
Most pen scanners available nowadays show amazing scanning speeds and can process a whole page in less than a minute. However, some digital scanners still work more slowly justifying such a speed with an impressive scanning quality.
The choice depends on your specific needs – if you use a scanner from time to time and typically work with short text fragments, that speed isn’t of such great importance. But if you need to scan huge piles of documents almost every day, that using a slow device can have negative consequences.
A good rule of thumb is to spend money on a text scanner pen that can work for a long period of time without recharging. Thus, you can take it with you, scan texts and don’t worry that a battery is going to die soon.
The higher the resolution your digital pen scanner has, the better quality of scans will be. Typically, it is measured in dots per inch (DPI). In most cases, pen scanners have a DPI of 300 and brag about the satisfactory quality of the scanned images. Of course, you can always go for 600DPI or even higher if you want.
This is a very important factor to consider, because a good pen scanner should have a rather capacious internal storage. If it doesn’t, you’ll need to empty the space all the time and this is rather annoying especially during intense working sessions.
We believe that Connect Pen deserves this title.
C-Pen Reader is one of the best wireless pen scanners currently available.
Scanmarker Air Pen is ideal for Mac devices.
Amazon has proven to be a reliable platform, where you can find all our top picks and many other models.
