Canon imageFORMULA R40II Review

Dated software, a vintage-feeling user experience, and a higher price tag distract from the Canon imageFORMULA R40II's ability to handle large tasks, produce high-quality results, and get those tasks done at speeds that won't leave you idling and waiting all day.

Scan Quality

The Canon imageFORMULA R40II stood out in our tests for producing high-quality receipt, text document, and handwritten document scans.

Receipt text is dark and easy to read, and a lack of fill is only noticeable when zoomed in. Text document scans also result in text that is dark and easy to read, with crisp, well-defined edges, even under magnification.

Handwriting is no exception to great scan quality. Text is crisp with deep saturation, and digitizing retains the character and pressure of the pen in the handwriting. Numbers and other characters are thick and continuous, and the overall color is rich and deep. With regard to scan quality, it's hard to find something to critique; the quality and color accuracy are exceptional.

Speed

The Canon imageFORMULA R40II is a fast scanner that is ready to handle large office tasks swiftly. It operates at higher speeds and includes features that make it feel more like an office machine than a home office machine.

This model will handle a black-and-white, 10-page, duplex document at an impressive rate of 20 pages per minute, which is about twice as fast as the average for the test group. In other words, a 10-page double-sided document will go from the feed tray to document on your computer in as little as 30 seconds.

The Canon imageFORMULA R40II is an office-ready machine, in a footprint that better resembles a home office piece of equipment. For large jobs, a 60-sheet automatic document feeder and collapsible output tray will scan 40 double-sided, black-and-white pages in just over a minute and a half.

File Management

The Canon imageFORMULA R40II doesn't provide very accurate optical character recognition for handwritten notes, but is fairly accurate with black-and-white text documents. What was less impressive was the lack of format preservation when copying and pasting text to a Google Doc, where words were misspelled and text completely rearranged.

The onboard software called CaptureOnTouch felt a little dated compared to what ships from other manufacturers, and options are limited overall, but it does have the option to send scans to folders, drive, email, or Dropbox. With the current state of cloud storage and modern UI frameworks, we felt like Canon should be offering a little bit more with the software it ships.

Photo Scanning

Photo scanning isn't the Canon imageFORMULA R40II's greatest strength. It struggled a bit in our tests with color accuracy and brightness, but we found resolution is one of its strengths. Generally, colors come out oversaturated, which blows out subtle gradients and washes away finer details. The saturation looks acceptable on windows and reflections, but next to the original it's obvious how much brighter and more vivid the digital output is.

While some people may like the extra pop, oversaturation and overcorrected brightness and contrast washed out too much detail for our liking. We found clouds, for example, turned a flat bright white and lost their shape and character. Resolution is where the Canon imageFORMULA R40II does best. There's a slight bit of grain when you zoom in, but lines, edges, and fine details, such as the reflections on glass, remain easy to make out.

Should You Buy the Canon imageFORMULA R40II?

Outside of being pretty snappy, we can't find a compelling reason or niche to recommend the Canon imageFORMULA R40II. It has a large document feeder, so if you frequently scan stacks of 20 to 60 sheets, it might be a good fit for your home office. However, other models are just as fast, offer better all-around performance, and include better file-management software at the same price. We have a hard time recommending it outside niche office use, where you may only scan documents between 20 and 60 pages long.

What Other Scanners Should You Consider?