Canon imageFORMULA DR-M160II Office Document Scanner

At over $800, one would expect better. I also have a Fujitsu fi-6130 which costs around $700. Although the pages feed and are rendered more quickly with the Canon, there are very often problems with the feed. Probably due to the speed. The Fujitsu has never had a double feed. The Canon already has had several. We often scan pages of varying thickness, oftentimes these docs that were sent folded & taped with no envelope. These types of docs sometimes have a slightly thicker page than the normal doc. The Fujitsu handles them great. The Canon thinks it’s a double feed and halts. I have to go over to the Fujitsu to scan it. The Canon just will not do it.

I thought it would be smarter than my older, cheaper, slower Fujitsu scanner, but I was wrong.

This scanner is fast, can scan both sides at once, and is easy to use once you figure out how to set it up (more about that later). It’s heavy, but seems to be well made. It has scanned all the different media I have thrown at it: regular paper, store receipts, various small cards, and thin notepad paper. This scanner is targeted more for business use, so if you are expecting features and software that would typically accompany scanners marketed for home use, like easy automatic organization software, you could be disappointed. Instead, it come with good (for the most part) business software.

I mostly just use the CaptureOnTouch scanner software that automatically scans whatever is in the tray with the press of a button. I’m considering uninstalling the other software because I don’t like how it runs on startup and sometimes in the background. I’ve had to terminate one process manually so far (eCopy PDF Pro Office), because it has a tendency to interfere with the CaptureOnTouch software. Maybe the software on the disk is outdated, but it’s not worth it to me to go through another lengthy installation process to install an updated version. The initial setup is bad enough.

More about the setup process… I understand it is marketed towards businesses, but it shouldn’t require an IT team just to set this up. The included manual instructs you go online to download the drivers, which leads you to a needlessly complicated list of drivers and other downloads for all canon scanner models. Then it instructs you to install the two included disks, which include various software that also has many individual steps in their installations. The setup time was ridiculously long and complicated, and could be overwhelming for people who are used to simple plug and play devices with one disk to install the essentials.
It would’ve been much easier if they would have included all the basics to get started (including the driver for the scanner) on one disk, and the bonus software on another. The way it is presented causes confusion as to which software is required just to start scanning.

The bottom line – I really like the scanner itself, it’s well-made, scans quickly, and I like the features. That said, they really need to hire someone to streamline the set-up process and software.

My cousin bought one and we love it I’m thinking of getting one for my home also

Update – just by accident I found out the problem with the Canon onetouch software not working was due to that crappy ECopy PDF pro software that is bundled on the driver disc – it is terrible and I even had a difficult time uninstalling it because it runs all these background processes that jam everything up (and I had to reinstall the scanner drivers after I uninstalled ecopy for some reason). I don’t know why they bundled this software with it, as it really is badly behaving software – installing search filters and trying to take over browser plug-ins and even a registry hook – basically this behaves like malware.
Do yourself a favor and save yourself some time and frustration and skip the installation of that. If you need PDF editing software, I recommend going ahead and spending a few dollars to get something decent. We like Foxit Phantom PDF and it is reasonably priced for a PDF editor. Once I uninstalled ecopy pro then the scanner behaves much better and I can rate it 4 stars instead of the original 3. I won’t go to 5 stars because I firmly believe that Canon should not include such terrible pdf software with it, but now that I’ve uninstalled the ecopy pdf I’m in love with this scanner and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it.

*Original*
Man – for the price of this scanner, I expected to be able to just install the software and go – NOPE. On both of my laptops running windows 8.1 I can scan fine using wia and twain with other software but for some reason Canon’s own onetouch software which is supposed to launch and scan when you press the start button can’t seem to communicate with the scanner. I updated all the software and still no go. I’ll keep trying, but this is just really disappointing that I can get it to scan using other software but not Canons own software. Another disappointment is that it is not a network scanner – sure using usb makes it transfer to pc faster, but we are all using laptops and so it would really be nice to not have to plug the scanner into the laptop every time we want to use it.

However as far as just scanning goes, this scanner is so fast it’s ridiculous. You can scan multiple pages both sides in one pass faster than other scanners could even feed a single jammed sheet out. If you want a faster scanner, I’d be surprised if you could find one faster than this.

Pros – super fast scanning and decent software included
Cons – buttons on front are useless because canons own onetouch software says it can’t find driver, even though it is fully installed and updated. Also disappointing that it’s not a network scanner, usb only.

Out of the box, this document scanner is smaller than I expected. It’s a little harder to set up than the home office grade Canon printer and scanner I already have, but it is worth the trouble because it is SO MUCH BETTER. The scanner comes with two CDs that have the software. My laptop does not have a CD drive so I had Mr Fuji load it onto a different computer and airdrop it to my laptop. I was not able to find the software to download from the Canon website – which is odd because they have other software easily available.
The Setup CD contains the scanner driver and CaptureOnTouch software. These work fine on my Mac. The second CD contains the KOFAX VRS software which is not necessary to scan and is Microsoft Windows only. I’m not sure what exactly it does, but I think it cleans up the images.

Once the scanner is turned on and connected to the computer with USB, scanning is very fast and straightforward. Load the document face down and push the scan button. Lightning quick, it will scan the document and deposit a pdf onto the computer. It will also autofeed a stack of documents and scan both sides simultaneously. I was able to scan a 52 page, double sided document very quickly and easily. You can also scan from the CaptureOnTouch program which gives you more control – like naming the document and selecting where to put it prior to scanning. It will also warn you if the document is getting to big to email. You can override this if necessary. At first, it was balking at any document over 5 pages but I was able to change the settings to accept up to 99 page documents. If you’re scanning a lot of documents in sequence, using the software will help you keep them organized. Otherwise, you can just go hunt down the pdf and rename it after it’s scanned. I’ve always been a little bit annoyed by the way Canon scanners name files and dump them – it doesn’t make them easy to find when the names are all long strings of digits. In my opinion, Canon could find a better way.
Mr Fuji tried out the scanner to scan some bulky documents that he needed to keep, but didn’t want hogging shelf space. He was very impressed with the speed and image quality as well.

I’ve been purchasing stuff on Amazon since the beginning and this is the first review I’ve ever been inclined to write. Please don’t make the mistake I did and buy this scanner. It is a truly bizarre design and doesn’t perform well enough to justify the cost. It looks fine on the pic but unless your desk has overhang space behind it the scanner wont fit when fully opened. It turns into a large bird looking thing with over a two foot wingspan which requires you to reach really far to load it. Please see picture. The scanning mechanism is fair if you’re using heavy duty paper. The thinner, inexpensive paper however will get pulled through in bunches and jam when you’re scanning a large stack. It also has a tendency to stubbornly say there is no paper loaded, which requires you to move the stack around or reload it to trigger the sensor and allow it to scan. Finally, it often times stops scanning on the last page because the aforementioned sensor mechanism doesn’t work properly. The is especially annoying when you grab your “completed stack” and email it to a customer only to look up and see there was a page left behind. If you want a quality Canon scanner spend a little more and go with the imageFORMULA DR-6010C. We have both and this one is a workhorse(wish I had sucked it and just bought two).

I settled on this machine because of most of its features. It’s really fast and very quiet. But if you’re running Windows, there are a few things to note.

First, use CapturePerfect and run the unit from the computer. Ignore the other freebie software, they’re terrible to try and learn or use.

Second, in the scanner settings, under “Feeding”, UNCHECK double feed detection. If you have post-it notes attached to your documents, this scanner will treat them like double feed and will stop the scan. You have to open the machine, reset the paper, reset the program, and start again from where it left off. It would be faster to fix a real double feed than it would to deal with endless choke-ups.

Third, when you turn the scanner on and load something to scan, the software (CapturePerfect) will fail to run every time. The first attempt after the machine has been off will always be an error message. The second identical attempt will work just fine.

Next, when the document is done scanning, the only way to go back and look at the pages is to click the ‘previous page’ icon. The designers decided not to activate PgUp and PgDn or the slider bar so you could easily look through the results. Very stupid and inconvenient.

Finally, if any of the documents has any folds, like a 3-way fold from a mailed letter, the chances are good it will re-fold and create a slowdown but the next pages will continue to scan right over top of it. You’ll end up with a big scattered mess, pages out of sequence, etc.

I bought this scanner a few months ago to scan boxes and boxes of files to the cloud to save space.
As other reviewers have suggested, the installation process is very cumbersome and confusing.
The scanner came with some software for Kofax VRS, and Kofax Elite Upgrade Key. I still do not know what this is, or how to install it, as Canon’s support is very terrible. There appear to be many features that I still cannot figure out how to use, or even what they are.
I found the sheet feeder capacity to be far less than the 60 pages it claims, and the true capacity is not more than about 35 pages. If you load more pages than this, it will jam. However, it does a good job of scanning pages of different sizes.
That said, the quality and speed are amazing, and make up for the software and support shortfalls. If Canon had an even basic level of support, I would rate 5-stars.
The OCR features that this scanner should have appear to work only about half the time.
I find this scanner to be overpriced, but the speed and quality make me happy with my purchase. I only wish I had the spare time, and technical savvy to utilize this scanner to its full potential.
UPDATED:
I have now had this scanner for seven months, and the capacity is declining. Now, if I try to scan more than 15 pages at a time, it jams every time. Downgraded to three-stars.

I have been using this scanner for more than a year now and have no complaints. I have procured several of them for our clients and they also really like them. With regards to the comment that the output tray is too short, that is incorrect. It’s possible that they have not pulled the output tray all the way out as I routinely scan legal documents with no problem. To date I have scanned more than 100,000 pages with no problems whatsoever.

I have purchased quite a few of these scanners for the company that I work for and they are little work horses. The price is right on them and the bonus with these is the Kofax software that comes bundled with the purchase. A true bargain!!!