CZURET16 Plus Advanced Book & Document Scanner, 2nd Gen Auto-Flatten&Deskew Tech, 16MP Camera, Capture A3, 186 Languages OCR, Convert to PDF/Searchable PDF/Word/Tiff/Excel, Run On Windows&MacOS

If you are new to digitizing a book, be aware of time use expectations:The major time consumption in digitizing is NOT the scan time, it is the cleanup time.This will depend on the quality and sophistication of the original and how good you want the book to look and what device you want to read the book on.Old books or books with lots of tables, illustrations or symbols (like math, polytonic Greek, extensive footnoting) are likely to produce marginal results that require extensive cleanup.The scanning might take 12 minutes, the cleanup might take 12 hours. If you anticipate commercial distribution, it could take several days.Your expectation and usage plans make the difference. If all you want is readability of skewed pages and no searchability on a desktop PC, CZUR will deliver quickly.Most e-ink readers like Kindle, Kobo, Nook, etc will do very poorly with a pdf file and much better with epub or mobi searchable formats.Searchable also means speakable, the text-to-speech feature of readers will function as expected only when documents are in OCR format.It is much easier (and less desirable) to achieve a non-searchable image view than a searchable OCR view depending on who will use the scanned output and how professional you want it to look.The auto-repositioning of images feature of CZUR has limited accuracy and if you want clean image based pages that look straight and well marginated to the human eye, you will need to hand crop and rotate the images. This takes time.The CSUR will correct the rotation of pages to within two or three degrees of straightness, the offset is easily visible when it is present.The type of layered pdf file where you can both see the original page image and simultaneously search the underlying textual characters is a format beneath it is not generated by the CZUR software.That layered format is the quick and dirty way that the google book project and high end unattended robotic digitizers achieve fast results.No human supervised spell check is performed and consequently hundreds, even thousands of errors remain hidden from the person reading the book.You only see those errors if you can export the document into .epub or .docx format to pass it through software with slow human mediated spell checking.OCR machine spell checking often misrenders the images it sees. The image of a distorted "O" may render as (] or (j ,may render as "O". Italicized letters like b,h, rn and cl are especially vulnerable to confused interpretation. Letters or words may be randomly italicized or bolded by mistake.The presence of page numbers or page headers/footers may interfere with your intended purpose and may have to be manually removed.An index set in extra small type (eg 6pt) may end up as mostly human readable, but chopped up in a confusing format and randomly misspelled. Many of your lower case "e" letters can turn into "c".Expectations realized with CZUR scanner:High scan rateBetter than average resolutionA set of JPEG files that may be loaded into other higher quality OCR softwareThumbprint removal happens most of the time, but is quirky--very unpredictable and the erasure eats into the page past the actual size of the thumb image sometimes chopping into words by removing leading or trailing letters.Virtually non-existant documentationExpectations N OT realized with image CZUR output:Uniform marginsStraight untilted pages that are not distracting to the eyeQuality rendering of half-tone photosAutomatic contrast detection may create background color driftExpectations NOT realized with OCRd CZUR output:Quality rendering of half-tone photosRapid OCR and accurate human mediated post processingThe amazon product listing mentions a bundle with ABBYY which was not present with the shipped unit.No matter how you slice it, book digitizing takes time and the better you want it to look, the more TIME it takes.In some ways the CZUR is a revolutionary packaged device for high book scan rates at a consumer-oriented price.But it does not quicken the time-consuming postprocessing aspect of digitization production.If you already own a very high-resolution 20MP camera you might achieve a similar outcome with third party software like booksorber.The absence of any meaningful documentation on such a sophisticated product is inexcusable and reason enough to return it in my view.On the other hand if your computer skills are self-taught by trial and error, this may be just the product for you.So in the end, just how fussy are you when you read the printed page, ie the distortion distraction factor? How much mental and physical energy are you willing to invest keeping things tidy?This review is based on personally digitizing several challenging books, but just doing a hardbound novel would be a piece of cake, doing poetry or a mass market paperback is a bear.My sense of this software [from a former developer] is that it is still at beta level, not enough features and definitely not up to an ADA certification audit, the type is too small and the contrast is loo low unless you have young eyeballs. To my senior eyeballs the screen has an uncomfortable washed out fuzzy look and is functionally at less than ten percent what you would find in the freebie Paint program that comes free with windows.There is a similar order of magnitude difference between the free copy of Omnipage that comes with a low end Canon flatbed scanner and the inability CZUR to allow for human mediated corrections.Sometimes the automatic image "correction" makes the image worse rather than better producing a very wavy baseline effect for lines of text.Sales claim:"Quickly book to ebook (Less than 3 mins for a 200 pages book)" After some practice, I would not attempt to scan a 200 page book in less than 30mins with this product just for the scan alone for a simple book.If you try the CZUR ET16 you will have a chance to answer such issues from personal experience. If you do decide to take the plunge, here are some tips:There are lots of youtube ET16 tutorials & tips better than the ones on the CZUR site, like those from D&H Innovation & John Willis & E-Z photo scan.If you are editing an image and want to rotate it, you can press the right and left arrow keys on the keyboard to go clockwise and counterclockwise by one degree in the rotate tool..Make sure the book is dead center in the viewfinder, serious parallax distortions result from items placed near an edge because the camera is so close to the page.If you accidentally scan the same pages twice, you can just delete the extra images without have to renumber anything, the same is true of deleting blank pages.Some users that digitize glossy pages prefer a light shield box or shield for better results, others do their scanning in a dark room, lighting can be critical for the reflections from coated stock.Interacting with "support" is fast and easy, their reply will be "Thanks for your question, watch our videos several times, have a nice day."Assume you will end up buying either OmniPage Pro or ABBYY Pro if you expect to do any serious work, both can import folders full of images from the CZUR.Also assume you will have to make several cleanup passes for top notch results, one for human-mediated OCR, one for duplicate or missing pages, one for a word processor spell check, one for page aesthetics including margination and justification, and a set of searches of OCR misread trigger words like arid,arc, riot, sonic, clay, yon, ina, docs, tip, nay, and hut.And of course the final test is actually reading the book for ugly surprises, even if all you do is read one or two chapters you will learn funky things that will repeat all through the book that you can search for.As pretty as the packaging is, the bottom line costwise is that this item will set you back about twice what I am willing to pay considering the very low cost of a Sony 20 mp cameras and the weak software.The unit was returned until the price/product usability becomes more realistic. Other options are way more attractive to me. A user friendly product would require a total rewrite and a clear, complete manual.

I got this scanner for humanitarian reasons: We're all out of space at home. Our house is filled with thousands of books, most of whom can just as easily be read in PDF, and the books keep multiplying when we're not watching... I was looking for a means of eliminating most of the physical books and replacing them with PDF files that I can then read on my tablet. Some books will have to remain: Reference books, certain textbooks, dictionaries... But most other books can be replaced with PDF files.And this is where CZUR ET-18 Pro comes in. It's a life-safer, it's a must. If you have too many books at home, just get it.Cons:- The scanner is not cheap. But if you take into account that you're recovering square feets in your apartment or house, the cost of the scanner becomes negligible. If you plan on scanning books (e.g., from a library or books borrowed from friends) then the scanner will pay for itself rather quickly.- The software that comes with the scanner is not of great quality: It will crash after scanning a large number of pages (between 450-500 seems to be the magic number). The solution is simply to save every 300 pages, and then use other software to combine the documents into a single book.- The software lacks many options that come with software made for other scanners. It's ability to edit the document is poor. The user-interface is not very friendly.- The documentation that comes with the scanner is rubbish.- There is a certain learning curve to operating the scanner and the software properly: You will need to learn how to switch between different options, e.g., for the cover of the book vs the inside. You will need to learn how to hold the book open using the plastic finger thingies that are provided. You will need to learn at what speed you can scan. This takes time, and you're going to mess up the first N scans. But then your hands and foot (yes, it's operated with a foot pedal) will get the hang of it, and your copies will come out perfectly.Pros:- Less than 1.5 seconds for scanning two pages. I don't know of any other scanner with this speed!- The foot pedal is pure genius. That said, the pedal is too light, and the cable is a bit on the short side. I'd rather they made the foot pedal much heavier so that it would be stabler...- The software, as clunky as it is, actually does a fantastic job when one needs to replace sheets, and this can be done in much less time and with no hassle.- The scanner lives up to its promise: You can scan a 350+ page book in under 10-15 minutes, and get a perfectly usable PDF file.- Even though the software lacks OCR for right-to-left languages (Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi, etc), it does handle right-to-left documents well in terms of splitting and ordering pages in right-to-left books.- The scanner is very forgiving when it comes to page size: It handles page sizes from very small to A3! If you check youtube, you'll find ways of using this scanner for even larger documents, simply by elevating it a bit above the scanning surface, using, e.g., a small stack of books.The scanner lends itself to a crazy workflow & reading schedule:- I scan books at full speed- While I scan books, I'm listening to ebooks from my tablet- When I'm done scanning a book, I add it to my tablet. ☺I've increased my rate of reading dramatically since I started using this scanner.My advice is to get yourself tiny rubber thingies you can place on your finger, to help you turn pages. They're dirt-cheap, available online on aliexpress and ebay, and will really speed-up page-turning. If you don't want to get these or can't find them, make your own by cutting a finger off of an ordinary latex glove, and using it to turn pages…In two days of casual scanning, I've managed to scan well over 20 books, and read 4. This is becoming my weekend hobby! If you love reading books, but are running out of physical space for all the books you've collected, you really owe it to yourself to have them scanned! You can fit thousands of books on a micro-sd card in your tablet, and carry your library with you!

In early January 2021 I bought CZUR’s ET18 Pro Scanner, mostly in anticipation of a research project scanning tabloid size newspapers from 1880-1920 to supplement issues available on microfilm. The project is on track, but a little delayed due to Covid. Since I received the scanner I have scanned perhaps 600 pages of “regular stuff.” Good job! I scanned a 200 page three-ring binder “memorial” album with many photos and many pages of text and converted the pages to searchable PDF and all went swimmingly! OCR is quite good on old newspapers...of course not perfect.Over the past year CZUR’s technical support has been quick to respond to a few mostly mundane questions. Always a reply within 24 hours, which I think is very good given the 13 hour time difference between Eastern time in US and Hong Kong vicinity time.Unfortunately, the scanner died about two weeks after the warranty expired. CZUR’s response to the defective scanner was prompt and proper. We diagnosed the problem to ensure I hadn’t done something stupid. We determined “the power board is broken.” Bingo! Instant decision by CZUR to have Amazon send me a new scanner, and it is confirmed to be on its way as I write. I would call that EXCELLENT SERVICE.As to the software…I do like the software. Very plain and simple, no clutter is a good thing. The kind of software that, even if there was no manual, can be figured out with a little experimenting. Of course a good manual, with ALL the details with respect to possibilities, is a very good thing, and CZUR should expand the manual to give FULL details regarding what can be done and how. And please CZUR, get rid of the solid black background on the manual’s title page and at the end! Try printing that out! Ugh….It would be useful to have a native English speaker (better yet, two or three) check the English version of the manual to suggest revisions before it goes online or on CD. The manual is functional, but could stand some editing and, as noted, should expanded. Editing the English is not a big deal, I bet CZUR could even get some volunteers 😊. It would take very little time to revise a draft English manual to read as if had been written by a native speaker.Perhaps a self-focusing camera would enable a user to put the scanner on a book and be able to accurately scan a larger area. If the non-fixed focusing slows things down perhaps(??) the user could have an option to set the camera to the (current) fixed focus. Best of both worlds. The user might need to extend the black mat with black construction paper or something. I do not know if the scanner’s camera now saves the BEST possible images it can generate. I understand (am I wrong?) that TIFF is the original camera format, and all other images ultimately derive from TIFFs. The CZUR ET18 website says the ET18 image format is JPG, but JPG is “lossy.” CZUR says it can EXPORT the JPG to TIFF or other formats such as PDF. Seems like it should be the other way around. TIFF first, save TIFFs because highest resolution, and go from there. But, overall, I am very pleased with the ET18. Four and One-Half Stars.

El producto viene embalado con un mimo y lujo fuera de lo común, piezas y componentes robustos que denotan calidad por los todos los lados. Quiero empezar por el veredicto final y como el titulo dice es el mejor scanner que he visto en mi vida debido a que los demás no tienen una I.A tan conseguida. Realizar un scanner tan tan automatizado tiene sus contras y es que no son perfectos, éste Czur ET16 comete errores deescaneo enormes, saltandose páginas y errando en muchas de ellas, aproximadamente en un 20%. Tengo una colleccion de revistas de 50 años y por supuesto que me compensa un scanner así con su velocidad de vertigo, púes lo que antes tardaba una hora ahora son 5 minutos.Otra cosa muy importante a mencionar es que éste scanner es exclusivamente para documentos, libros y algunas revistas, olvidarse de la fotografia, se escanean con muchisimo ruido, falta de definición y si son con brillo saldrán quemadas por su propia iluminación.Por último y quizá lo más importante que lo que se valla a escanear no tenga brillo ni sea satinado, su propia iluminación quemará parte de las imagenes, le afectará a la imagen incluso la luz de las propias ventanas al detectar brillos.Como veredicto diré que el auto escaneo inteligente es la mayor proeza de éste articulo, escanear a ritmos que ni siquiera te dan tiempo a pasar paginas es increible, y su propia I.A enderezando imagenes y recortandolas parecen de ciencia ficción, por lo recomiendo mucho éste producto si el numero de escaneos será de miles como es mi caso pero para escaneos menos numeros no se necesita para nada un scanner tan rapido y tan caro.

Updated: 04/04/2017. Thanks to CZUR, I had another chance to test the device after they released the Mac version software. I am happy to say that both the hardware and software have great improvement.First, I would like to clarify the issue with abrupt exit of the software during my previous test. It appears that the Czur windows application can't work in Parallel virtual machine. This has been confirmed by Czur tech support. Now they have Mac software, this issue no longer exist.Second, the issue with scanning glossy paper has also been greatly improved after they offered two LED lights and the proper instructions of using them. As long as you turn of the LED lights on the main device, by using the two stand alone LED lights. The quality of scanned glossy paper actually is pretty awesome. Scanning regular book with these two LED lights also have improved quality.Third, the quality of the LCD in the machine has also improved, I no longer see any vertical lines on the LCD. Overall, it's a solid build machine with small foot print. The Mac software of course still has bugs, I have offered suggestion for improvement. Hope you guys will enjoy the product, and check out the new images I uploaded with annotation._______________________It’s a great idea to have a product like this. I wish some of my books could be converted to PDF files by using this product. It is promising from what I saw on YouTube. So I ordered one from Amazon to test it. Unfortunately, both the hardware and software are half finished and can’t live up to its promise.Hardware - Cons:1. The device’s WiFi mode does not support 5G Hz wireless band, it only supports the 2.4G Hz band. The device recognizes and displays the 5G band network on its mini LCD screen, which makes me think it supports 5G network. However, it was only able to connect to the 2.4G network after several failures on the 5G network.2. The onboard TFT screen is cheap, you can clearly see several vertical lines on the screen, which is annoying.3. No WiFi mode for PC connection. To use the PC mode, you must connect the device using a USB cable. To scan a book, you really need the PC software rather than the Czur Cloud app.4. You can’t scan too fast. In the wifi mode, once you click “scan”, you have to wait for the images to be saved/uploaded first with wifi LED light blinking blue. Once the light become steadily green, you can scan the next one.5. There is no progress indicator on the device LCD screen or the Czur Cloud app. So sometimes after clicking the “scan” button, you don’t know whether the scan is successful or not until you confirm it on the Czur Cloud app.6. You need to wear some thumb cover to let the device know that those are actually thumbs, and should be removed after scanning.7. The Zoom In and Zoom Out button is designed for presentation mode only. In other words, the camera lens can’t be Zoomed In/Out during the Scan mode. You may not want to, but it is confusing.Software – Cons:1. The software is buggy. To use the PC software, I connected the device by using the USB cable. However, I was never able to start scanning successfully. As soon as I clicked “scan”, a black window splashed for a second then the whole software abruptly exited. I tried multiple times, the same problem persists. So I was not able to scan a book at all.2. The Czur Cloud app on iPhone does not support “delete” function. You can only delete scanned documents by logging into the Cloud web, the “delete” function is not obvious or intuitive on the Cloud web either.3. The device only supports the Czur Cloud service. And the Czur Cloud app does not integrate with other popular cloud services such Dropbox or iCloud or anything else.4. The built-in OCR function is a joke.5. The device is not that smart. It scans better when the document has a full page white background, otherwise it distorts things or cut things/edges – sometimes very bad (see the images I uploaded.)6. The PC software only supports PC. In other words, the powerful software they developed is designed for Windows only. The Czur Cloud app works on mobile devices such as iPhone and iPad, but it is really only optimized for phones. The Czur Cloud app on iPhone offers limited functions.7. It captures files in jpg format, not PDF unless you use the PC software.Pros: The idea is good, it looks good.Summary: The product definitely needs to be improved. Currently it can’t compete with the traditional two-side scanner in terms of speed, quality and price. A fixed camera with proper lighting can capture the same images as the device does. You simply need a better image processing software to handle those images. Adobe Acrobat can do the job well.