Vupoint PDS-ST510R-VP Magic Wand Jr. Portable Scanner, Red

I had to return the product. There are tick marks on the sides showing where the active 5" region is supposed to be. They lie. The output ends up cutting off an additional 1CM inside that.When you combine the distance from the edge of the device with this arbitrary cutoff of image data, you end up with about 2CM from the edge of the device that can't be scanned. This means if you have a small paperback book with crumbling pages you want to scan, and the width of each line is well under 5 inches, you can't scan it because the device itself cuts off the inside of every line (closest to the spine of the book).This device had to have been designed by a real jackass. The scan should start within 1CM of the edge of the device at the maximum, at least on one side. Why it doesn't is just plain stupid.

I bought Vupoint Solutions Magic Wand Portable Scanner (PDSWF-ST44T-VP), the longer one first. Although it uses 2 AA, battery used up quite fast and unit was too long to carry in a bag. Then I saw this unit. Amazon review shows people had concern of the built-in battery was not replacable. In such a good price $25 I thought I might as well give it a try. Turns out to be a wonderful scanner. I charged once and after hundred of scans of receipt, it is still showing full range of battery. It is especially good for receipt, notes, namecard, drive license and so on. Uses less battery power because it is shorter.

I like the design, size, and price, but got a lemon. The SD card slot is defective. It clicked when the card is only half in.I wonder they make in China.... I returned.

I have the regular size Magic wand. The pictures on this smaller one do not seem to be as clear as the ones scanned on the normal size Wand.

I'm in the process of converting a 1979 book into an ebook for the author's daughter, so I thought a scanner would speed things up considerably. This beastie, however, is NOT the ticket. The dead tree book is 5 inches, but the scanner won't read the whole page. I could live with that, more or less, but the ABBYY OCR software simply won't work at all. I've used scanners and OCR before, so I know how easy it can be.The Vupoint also loses a star right out of the gate for not coming with even a shred of memory, which cost me another week of waiting to even try it. Make sure you have a microSD card for it!!Lastly, the directions for the Vupoint are terrible and don't mention charging and deleting at all. The charging is particularly unfortunate because the "error" message comes on when it's plugged in, so a user can very well think there's something wrong when it's not. To this day I haven't figured out how to delete the files from the card, so I guess I'll have to reformat the card after it's full.Why do I give the Vupoint 2 stars when I'm so very unimpressed with it, you ask? I **suspect** that it would be OK for scanning photos and other small things, so I've given it the benefit of the doubt and an extra star.6/8/13: After one use, the battery has refused to take a charge. Enough is enough, and I'm sending it back (also taking back the extra star). This also leaves the separate problem of returning the microSD card and the adapter. Sure wish I could have negative stars...6/11/13: It turns out the battery's OK and, apparently, it won't work plugged in. Oh, how I wish for good directions! It also does, indeed, work nicely on pictures, so I gave the star back. I finally managed to get the ABBYY OCR software to work once, although it made gibberish, and I'll try to give directions on that as soon as I figure out what I did.2/16/14: This scanner really does a fantastic job with photos, so I've added back stars. It IS easy to use for that, but it still doesn't do OCR worth mentioning. You can, however, scan print and use the JPG, like as a way of taking notes or something.

1. You must be extremely slow & accurate while sliding it over an item. Make a small mistake (very easy to do) and your scanned item now looks warped. The wheels get caught on the edge of items (IDs, biz cards, etc) and then jerk when you get them over, causing a warp.2. The scanning area (where they show the little arrows to align to) is off by 1/4th of an inch. So the left-side of anything you scan will get chopped off.3. It scans things in reverse , and you have no way of knowing if you are doing it reverse. SO if you scan a document, all your text will be backwards (right to left).4. Does not scan straight to PC. You must first disconnect it, then scan it, then reconnect it to the PC to see the images.5. This is my biggest problem with this. You have no idea if you screwed up the scan, until you get home and find out that the items you scanned are all unusable.

When I bought this, I was not expecting it to be great, but hopefully make at least a decent enough image - especially since I am using it to scan images more than I am doing text. Scanning text is clear and crisp and really out does it self, and scanning images was much better than I ever thought it would be. And I am impressed that you can vary your scanning speed - I even tried to force it to cause an error but it is very forgiving and still produces a very good image. Very much recommended.Edited May 04 -- Reading some of the other reviews: when I first got the scanner, I did not try to use it but right away put it on the charger, so I would have no idea about arriving with a dead battery. As for some complaints about text, I have had nothing but success with it. The photos, sometimes would look a little grainy and trying to recover some old photos that I can not remove from an album to put into the scanner, the images could be a little crisper. But it is good enough, and especially for the price, better than what I hoped for.

Don't like it it was not user friendly for an older adult and I thought that it will be other wise I will rate this as I don't like it.