A New Benchmark in the Midrange

by Doug Henschen

Late last year, Kodak made a grab for some of Fujitsu's dominant market share in the low-volume production scanning market with its new i260 scanner. Now Fujitsu is fighting right back with the fi-4860C, a fast, versatile and highly price-competitive sheetfed scanner aimed at the heart of the mid-volume production range - one of Kodak's strongest markets.

By our estimation, the fi-4860C sets new benchmarks for performance and value in its range. It scans in portrait orientation at a fast 63 pages per minute (ppm)/125 images per minute (ipm) at 200 dpi, and that's in both color and bitonal. It's even faster in landscape orientation, capturing 74 ppm/146 ipm in bitonal or grayscale (color landscape speeds are actually slower than the portrait speeds).

Quick Scan Vendor: Fujitsu, www.fcpa.fujitsu.com Product: fi-4860C Description: Color-capable sheetfed scanner supporting duplex scanning of documents from 2.9 inches square to 11.7" by 17" (longer documents can be scanned in manual feeding mode). Rated Speed: (8.5" x 11" at 200 dpi) 63 ppm/125 ipm portrait in color, bitonal or grayscale; 74 ppm/146 ipm landscape in bitonal or grayscale. Max. optical resolution: 400 dpi Strengths: Aggressive pricing. Fast mid-volume production speeds in both color and black and white. Extensive standard feature list and options including Kofax VRS and pre- and post-scan imprinters. Weaknesses: Infrared doublefeed detection isn't designed for batches with highly variable document sizes and weights. There is a six-second pause between hitting "scan" and the start of feeding. Price: $16,995. Options include Kofax VRS 3.0 ($1,995) and pre- and post-scan imprinters ($2,595 each).

What's more, this $16,995 scanner offers a 10,000-page-per-day duty cycle, a 500-sheet document feeder, and length and thickness-based doublefeed detection. The maximum optical resolution is 400 dpi, and image processing includes bitonal/grayscale deskew and cropping. Onboard JPEG conversion gives the operator the choice of seven levels of compression, and the bundle also includes the full version of Adobe Acrobat 5.0.

Fujitsu didn't leave much out, but options include both pre- and post-scan document imprinters, and you can also add Virtual ReScan 3.0, a $1,995 option from Kofax, for state-of-the-art dynamic thresholding for ideal exposure control as well as auto crop and deskew.

Our test model turned in a solid performance on a moderately fast 1.6GHz machine with 512GB of RAM and a 7200-RPM hard drive - by no means the state of the art in PCs. Bitonal speeds were faster than expected at 64 ppm/128 ipm portrait and 74 ppm/148 ipm landscape. Color speeds also beat the ratings at 64 ppm/126 ipm portrait (color landscape speeds were actually slower than portrait speeds). The deskew, cropping and doublefeed detection features all performed their tasks without fault.

Uniform documents fed without jams or doublefeeds. We also had little problem with sets of highly variable documents including everything from onion skin to card stock and index cards to legal documents. We had one or two jams on some tattered documents we've used for a few too many scanner tests.

We do have two minor complaints about the fi-4860C. For one, there is a six-second pause between the time you hit "scan" and the start of feeding. This delay slows throughput if you're dealing with lots of small batches, but it helps that there's a "small batch" setting that lifts the feeder closer to the pick roller.

[ BACK | NEXT ]