Epson WorkForce ES-60W Review

The Epson WorkForce ES-60W is an incredible portable scanner and relatively inexpensive when compared to other top models. It gives up some scanning quality and speed (because it lacks a feed tray), but it makes up for it with user-friendliness, convenience, and, most notably, portability. USB power, a compact size, and wireless scanning directly to the cloud are also modernizing changes to the typical scanning experience most of us are accustomed to.

Scan Quality

The Epson WorkForce ES-60W leaves little room for improvement in scan quality, but not much. Its overall performance is above average, which we found incredible for such a compact scanner. It was only outperformed by the most premium desktop models we tested.

For black-and-white scanning quality, the Epson WorkForce ES-60W is impressive. Its results were more similar to the top models in our product lineup than we expected. The resulting scans for measuring receipt quality and text clarity were above average, falling just short of the more premium performance seen in products like the Canon R40. When we digitally zoomed in on the scans, the differences were small but clear.

Handwriting clarity was even better than that of receipts and document text. It matched the top-performing Fujitsus we tested for the sub-metric and, again, was just shy of perfect quality.

Scan Speed

For a device without a feed tray, it is still impressively fast. While I didn't expect it to be as fast as devices with a feed tray that can handle large stacks of paper, I managed to feed and scan at a surprisingly quick rate.

At 600 DPI in color, a single-page scan takes 22 seconds. Of course, other models don't require manual feeding of each sheet, whereas the ES-60W does, and it underutilizes that fast digital scanning performance when handling bigger tasks.

For 10-page documents, I got frustrated with how long it took to manually load each one. It took a little over two minutes to scan a 10-page document with a black-and-white 600 DPI setting, and the added effort of flipping over a double-sided document takes more than double that time at a little over four minutes.

That's an average of only 2.2 pages per minute, which pales in comparison to top models with an auto-feed capable of processing 18+ high-resolution pages per minute. But that is obviously an unfair comparison, as the WorkForce is intended for mobile jobs. It is, without a doubt, one of the fastest single-sheet-fed mobile scanners available today. At the time of writing, it is also the lightest and the most compact.

File Management

The Epson WorkForce ES-60W was top-notch in our software testing. The optical character recognition is automatic and very accurate, missing only a small percentage of words.

Multiplatform compatibility is no problem for this model either. The Workforce is compatible with PC, Mac, iOS, and Android devices. It features a clean, intuitive user interface on desktops and laptops, making it easy to find settings and tailor them to your scanning needs.

When it comes down to optical character recognition, this model excelled. It recognized and digitized characters with greater accuracy than the top overall model in our product roundup. The included software can create searchable PDFs and editable Word and Excel documents with repeatable results. The ES-60W makes digitizing receipts or other important documents easy and reliably puts them into convenient digital files.

For a device that is meant to be easy to use, especially on the go, Epson nails it. Both the initial setup and day-to-day use do not disappoint. Our product testers walked through the installation on a personal computer and found every step straightforward and well explained. Total setup took 10 minutes, which is about the current standard and expectation for a modern scanner.

The WorkForce ES-60W earned high marks for a great interface. It may not be the fastest scanner because it lacks a feed tray. While it does have an auto-feed that pulls a photo or document through the device, it still requires you to position each sheet manually. What the ES-60W lacks in standard scanner features, it makes up for in simplicity, custom profiles, and plenty of settings that make repeating tasks easy.

Once set up, the Epson WorkForce ES-60W is straightforward to operate. Simply align a document in the scanner and press the start button to begin scanning. Depending on the selected settings, scans can go directly to your device via USB, wirelessly, or directly to the cloud.

The Epson WorkForce ES-60W software supports PC, Mac, iOS, and Android devices and is USB-powered, but it lasted long enough on a battery charge to make it through all our tests. LEDs indicate wireless status and battery charge level, so it's easy to tell when you need to diagnose WiFi issues or plug it back into a device for power.

Photo Scanning

The Epson WorkForce ES-60W also excelled at photo and color scanning tests but again could not perform as well as the top products on the market. It did best in color accuracy, nearly earning a perfect score for capturing and digitizing color accurately. However, for brightness and sharpness, the Epson was above average, and scans looked almost exactly like the originals but were slightly brightened in the process.

Should You Buy the Epson WorkForce ES-60W?

The Epson WorkForce ES-60W is a great choice for mobile scanning. It is light, fast, and challenges our typical thoughts about scanners by squeezing great performance into a small enough package to take anywhere. Once on a job site, it is incredibly intuitive and simple to use. Good software, wireless operation, and direct cloud scanning make this single-sheet feed scanner one of the best in class for portable scanners we've tested.

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