Epson RapidReceipt RR-600W

The flagship of Epson’s new line of RapidReceipt Receipt and Document Scanners, the RapidReceipt RR-600W Wireless Receipt and Document Scanner ($499.99) is a powerful desktop document scanner designed for the small office, home office (SOHO) market. It replaces the WorkForce ES-500WR Wireless Document Scanner—Accounting Edition (still on the market for $400). The RR-600W's capacious ADF (automatic document feeder) allows you to scan up to 100 two-sided documents in one batch. Given its low price, relatively fast scanning speeds, highly respectable accuracy, and excellent Accounting Edition add-on to Epson’s ScanSmart software, the RR-600W easily lands an Editors’ Choice nod for a midrange receipt scanner.

A Small, Unrelenting Powerhouse

The RR-600W measures about 6.9 by 11.8 by 6.6 inches (HWD) with its trays closed and weighs 8.1 pounds. Of course, when you open its trays, its footprint from front to back almost triples.

These measurements are about average for desktop document scanners in this class. The ES-500WR mentioned above is identical in size and girth; so is Brother’s ADS-2700W. Canon’s comparable imageFormula DR-C230 Office Document Scanner is a little bigger in all dimensions, while Fujitsu’s Image Scanner fi-800R is much smaller.

The RR-600W supports Wi-Fi and USB 3.0, and you can scan directly to a USB thumb drive plugged into the back of the machine. A good-size 4.3-inch graphical touch screen control panel lets you access every scanning configuration or workflow profile.

The RR-600W captures documents and processes them according to predefined profiles that Epson calls Actions. Actions contain all the pertinent properties, such as resolution, file type, and destination. The scanner comes with several preconfigured Actions that you can modify, or you can create your own from scratch.

A spacious 100-sheet ADF can handle pages up to 8.5 inches wide. In long-document mode, the RR-600W can scan documents up to 240 inches (20 feet) long.

Epson rates the RR-600W’s daily duty cycle at 4,000 scans, which is a lot—you’d have to load the ADF with 100 items 40 times a day to achieve it. Among its competitors, only the Fujitsu fi-800R's daily volume rating of 4,500 scans is higher, and its ADF holds a mere 20 pages. The ES-500WR, Canon DR-C230, and Brother ADS-2700W all have 50- or 60-page ADFs and duty cycles in the range of 3,000 to 4,000 pages.

Receipt Scanning Software That Learns

The RR-600W comes with downloadable access to Nuance Power PDF (for Windows), Nuance PDF Converter (for Mac), Presto! BizCard, and ScanSmart Accounting Edition. A conventional scanner interface is a standalone app for processing and managing documents, but ScanSmart integrates with utilities and programs, helping them to interact with one another and the scanner itself more smoothly and efficiently. 

The ScanSmart Accounting Edition add-on, also known as Receipt Manager, can learn how to identify recurring data, including vendor names, logos, and monthly expenses. The more you use it, the more efficiently Receipt Manager obtains the financial data from the receipts, invoices, and expense reports you scan. It recognizes and extracts the data and then saves it to the appropriate fields, efficiently populating its own built-in database. Receipt Manager can then export the data to QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks, TurboTax, or Excel-compatible CSV files.

Speed Without Sacrificing Accuracy

Epson rates the RR-600W at 35 one-sided pages per minute (ppm) and 70 two-sided images per minute (ipm). I tested it at 300dpi over USB 3.0 with ScanSmart Accounting Edition on our standard Intel Core i5 testbed PC running Windows 10 Professional. 

The RR-600W scanned our 25-page one-sided text document at 39.6ppm and our 25-page two-sided document at 78.4ipm, or somewhat faster than Epson's ratings. With the processing and saving time factored in, it scanned the same test documents to image PDF at 37.9ppm and 68.8ipm, a respectable performance in comparison with its ratings and its competitors.

Those scores are 2.1ppm and 7.1ipm slower than the ES-500WR, 4.2ppm faster and a negligible 0.2ipm slower than Brother's ADS-2700W, 4.6ppm and 8.2ipm faster than Canon’s DR-C230, and 0.9ppm and 7.9ipm slower than Fujitsu’s fi-800R.

When scanning to searchable PDF, a versatile format more suited to document management and archival applications, the RR-600W scanned and saved our 25-page two-sided test document in 45 seconds. That score is 11 seconds ahead of the Canon DS-C230, 5 seconds faster than the Brother ADS-2700W, 1 second behind its ES-500WR sibling, and 3 seconds slower than the Fujitsu fi-800R.

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Like most scanners nowadays, the RR-600W performed very well on our OCR accuracy tests. It scanned our Arial test page and converted it to editable text error-free down to 5 points, and its conversion of our Times New Roman test page was error-free down to 6 points. It’s possible to get slightly better accuracy scores than these, but you're unlikely to need to scan documents with type smaller than 6 points. 

I also scanned several business cards into BizCard. This and most other card-archiving software does a fine job of scanning and converting data from simple cards without a lot of backgrounds, decorative fonts, and other complex design elements. However, you'll need to manually enter data from fancy and fanciful cards.

A Powerful Machine at a Modest Price

Epson's technical expertise is on display throughout the RR-600W's hardware and software, especially the highly accurate scans and Receipt Manager's ability to categorize data. For just $100 more than the ES-500WR, you'll get an ADF that holds twice as many pages; a large, easy-to-use touch screen; and the ability to scan to USB thumb drives. Clearly, the new RapidReceipt model is a better value, and well-deserving of our Editors’ Choice nod for a desktop receipt and document scanner.