Kodak i40

Offices with little desk space but heavy document scanning requirements find that most flatbed scanners are just too big - and very often not designed to be carthorses. The i40 steers a different course: as an upright sheet-fed model it has a petite footprint, and it's capable of scanning 1,000 pages per day.

At first glance, the price tag might look a bit steep. You can pick up scanners with a far higher optical resolution than the 600x600dpi offered by the Kodak for a fraction of the price. However, you'll struggle to find anything cheaper that can match the i40's tireless duty cycle.

Setting up the scanner is an uncomplicated experience. Operation is reasonably quiet, although in a large office polluted by dozens of machines this is unlikely to make much difference. The claims made by Kodak of 25ppm (pages per minute) in colour or mono proved spot-on - and this is much more important to a business.

The optical resolution of 600x600dpi may be relatively low, but the results weren't bad at all. Most businesses wouldn't usually need to scan at such high resolutions.

A genuine gripe is that we'd have liked a larger input feeder (the Kodak can cope with only 50 sheets at a time), but given that the i40 is all about compactness, this isn't a surprising fault.

Verdict Kodak should have bundled more software than only ReadIris Pro, and we reckon the price is a little high, but the i40 is a good, solid performer that won't let you down. Judging by the build quality, it will last for years and years.