ScannerPro or Scanbot Pro

I “scan” a lot of documents with my iPhone because I hate to accumulate paper and a lot of the time I’m far from my ScanSnap. I’ve used just about every scanning app available on the iPhone but I’ve settled on ScannerPro. I have no particular allegiance to ScannerPro so I gave the new version of Scanbot Pro a good try. I’m sticking with ScannerPro.

ScannerPro is simply faster to scan a document in my hands. Both apps attempt to find the page edges and adjust focus, but ScannerPro was about ten times faster. Scanbot often sat there declaring that it was adjusting the perspective or locating the page.

I really like the Scanbot interface once a page is captured. It’s easy to see what I can do and the most recently used actions are right there, front and center.

It’s also very simple to export from ScannerPro as well. The built-in actions are presented on a custom share sheet and server pretty much all of my needs. I prefer ScannerPro’s quick option to share either PDF or JPEG versions of the scan. Scanbot requires these to be separate actions.

Scanbot wins with its control over image enhancements. The default adjustments are almost always what I want but the obvious controls for contrast and brightness are helpful.

The final image quality for both apps is stunning for a pocket scanner. First up is Scanbot. The de-skew of the page is well done which is easy to see from the graph paper lines and the bottom text of this scan.

ScannerPro also does a good job of capturing the page and converting it to something worth saving. Note that ScannerPro cuts off a bit more of the top edge of the page but still managed to de-skew.

But now we have a winner because the OCR of each app is different. Scanbot captured the image of the page fine but copying the text of that bottom banner produces this gibberish:

3'9560-24 ’iBEAf‘ www.ldealConcreteBlock.com

ScannerPro, as I’ve come to expect, is much more accurate. The text it shares with the PDF is identical to what I see on the page.

1-800-24-lDEAL www.ldealConcreteBlock.com

“Close” does not count with scanned phone numbers. It’s either correct or it’s a wrong number.

While I really like Scanbot and the new updated action options, I’m sticking with ScannerPro on my home screen. It’s faster and more accurate and those are the two things I care about the most.

ScannerPro | $4

Scanbot Pro | $7