Doxie One makes on-the-go scanning simple

We live in a digital age, but there’s still a lot of paper out there to contend with, and it can get messy. Luckily, the Doxie One portable scanner ($149) provides a simple solution for dealing with stacks of receipts, documents, recipes and photos, then saving them to a PC, Mac or a cloud service.

Even better, the Doxie One isn’t just functional, it’s also good-looking, with a sleek and compact design available in a rainbow of colors (black, pink, purple, green, yellow, red, orange and blue). Measuring 10.5 by 1.7 by 2.2 inches and weighing just 13.6 ounces, the scanner will fit easily on just about any surface and won’t add too much heft to a purse or messenger bag.

It’s a good thing too, because the Doxie One is designed to be used on-the-fly. There’s an integrated SD card so you can scan and save documents even when you’re away from the computer. There’s even the option to pop in four AA batteries (not included) for true portability.

You can also power the scanner via the included AC cable, which has global adapters for the U.S., U.K., Australia and Europe.

In addition, you get Doxie One’s companion app, which is essential for organizing scanned items and accessing your digital library from anywhere. The software lets you create searchable PDFs as well as sync to Evernote and Dropbox. Unfortunately, unlike Neat Receipts, this software doesn’t automatically organize data from documents, such as contacts from business cards or amounts and vendors from receipts. This makes it a less appropriate choice for business or tax purposes.

However, the scanner and app are easy to use and nicely designed, which make the system more than suitable for personal use. And it can scan about five documents per minute, which is very speedy. Just be forewarned that you’ll need to feed items individually, so the speed depends a bit on the dexterity of the user. Image processing is also very quick once you connect the scanner to your computer via USB.