Doxie Go review

Can this clever portable scanner justify its lofty price tag?

Reviews
By
published
Doxie Go
Doxie Go can turn your documents into PDFs and export files to web apps such as Evernote or Google Docs

TechRadar Verdict

Pros

  • +

    Small size

  • +

    512MB of internal memory

  • +

    Can send to Google docs and Evernote

  • +

    Works with Eye-Fi cards

  • +

    Decent scanning results

Cons

  • -

    Set-up guide not very helpful

  • -

    Status LEDs are a tad confusing

  • -

    Quite pricey

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Doxie Go is a lightweight, rechargeable battery-powered portable scanner that can store scans as you go (there's 512MB of memory, enough for hundreds of pages) and then download them to your Mac or PC as image files, OCR-able PDFs and more.

But if you add the Apple Camera Connection Kit to your iPad, you can connect the scanner to it over USB; it shows up like a camera, so you just use the Photos app to import.

The Doxie Go + Wi-Fi is imminent, which adds a Wi-Fi-capable SD card to the scanner (actually a re-branded Eye-Fi card), so you can scan wirelessly, and also to more than just the iPad.

We used our own Eye-Fi card with the Doxie Go for testing, and found that we could wirelessly transfer scans directly to our iPad's Eye-Fi app without problem. Amazon UK is currently offering to bundle an Eye-Fi card for around £35, so we recommend this option.

Loading scans to an iOS device over a direct connection or wirelessly both worked seamlessly for us, and colour reproduction was good.

That said, the Doxie Go isn't without its niggles - things aren't quite as easy to set up as the too-basic quick start guide suggests, and you'll soon find yourself referring to the more in-depth guide online.

The status LEDs are a particular annoyance, and there is a distinct feeling that your life is slowly ebbing away while you're desperately trying to work out what they're telling you.

Follow TechRadar Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/techradarreview

Dan Grabham
Contributor

Dan (Twitter, Google+) is TechRadar's Former Deputy Editor and is now in charge at our sister site T3.com. Covering all things computing, internet and mobile he's a seasoned regular at major tech shows such as CES, IFA and Mobile World Congress. Dan has also been a tech expert for many outlets including BBC Radio 4, 5Live and the World Service, The Sun and ITV News.