Review: The Doxie Go with OneNote

A week ago, almost to the minute, a Doxie Go unit landed on my doorstep. The Doxie Go is a light-weight, portable scanner, great for turning paper into electronic files. I wrote up a Preview shortly after receiving (read that here: Doxie + OneNote Preview) that includes initial thoughts and photos.

What interested me in the Doxie Go was the recent announcement that it has added support for OneNote. This announcement was in conjunction with Microsoft's big push to make OneNote free across all platforms. I've thought about looking for a good portable scanner for what seems like forever. I was just never able to put my thoughts into action until now when I was offered an eval unit. I've just made do with using my smartphone camera to capture receipts for expenses and other physical pages like conference guide information. It wasn't the best solution, but it worked.

The Doxie Go is 10.5" long and 2.2" thick, with a weight of 14.2 ounces, making it a very portable scanning solution. For those that travel with a standard laptop bag, this will fit and carry nicely. For me, though, after spending time minimizing my travel gear last year, the weight is fine but the actual size might keep me from transporting it in my carry-on. Currently, all I travel with is the Microsoft Surface Pro (and charger, miscellaneous cables and Bluetooth devices) shoved into a sturdy leather Messenger bag. With this setup, I can zip through the airport. I carefully constructed my travel gear and there's no room for anything else, even the light, small Doxie Go.

But that doesn't mean that I don't want to carry it with me, or that I won't spend time trying to figure out how to rearrange my travel gear again to include it. The value of the Doxie Go is immense enough to make me want to figure it out. I truly doubt I'll be able to, but it'll at least travel with me in my checked luggage. The Doxie Go, however, is valuable for just day-to-day, inner office use. It can be moved desk-to-desk or office-to-office. As long as the software is loaded, any PC with a USB port can use it.

The Doxie Go is self-contained scanned content storage, meaning that it comes with enough memory on-board to hold 450 pages or 1800 photos. To be honest, I really have no idea how much on-board memory that relates to, as neither the documentation nor the company's web site gives any indication about it. They only say: "Stores up to 450 pages or 1800 photos." I wasn't able to test the memory limits, but I'm sure it's capable. My wife stole it from my desk early on to scan in documents and receipts for tax day. The unit does also come with a SD card slot and an extra full USB port so you can offload scans directly to removable memory.

Scanning is easy and automatic. Just insert whatever you want to scan (up to 8.5x15") and the Doxie Go pulls it in and stores it. Scanning is quick, too. I pulled in a pretty colorful manual (Rubik's cube) that was sitting around and it scanned in less than 5 seconds. The color is excellent, too.

When you want to pull your scans onto your PC, just hook it up using the provided standard USB cable. Software is required to make the connection, but can be downloaded from http://getdoxie.com/doxiego. The software is easy to install and requires the Doxie Go to be connected at the end of installation to create the PC/Software/Doxie partnership. Once the partnership has been setup, the software just recognizes that it's attached every time you connect the scanner and it shows you the stored scans.

Alternatively, there is a $30 Eye-Fi wireless SD card that you can purchase that allows the Doxie Go to connect wirelessly to the PC running the Doxie software. The wireless option works with PC, Mac, iPad, and iPhone.

The software is intuitive and provides a number of valuable options. Scans are completely customizable, allowing you to adjust, crop, and rotate directly in the application. One very cool feature is the ability to "staple" scans, meaning you can select multiple scanned pages and merge them into a single document. The single document can be saved as a PDF, or any of the other options provided.

The one piece that particularly interested me was the OneNote integration. Again, the software is required to make this happen, but it's easy to setup by going into the application's Preferences section and adding OneNote on the Cloud Apps tab. After I set this up, the application allowed me to save my scans directly to my OneNote account as a JPEG, JPEG attachment, or a PDF.

For things like expenses, uploading to OneNote may not be a great option, but attending a conference and capturing the entire conference guide to view in OneNote is hugely valuable to me. It saves me from having to carry extra stuff, since, you know, my travel gear is at its optimum. OneNote is not the only Cloud storage that Doxie Go supports. It also supports Evernote, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Flickr.

The Doxie Go is listed at $170 right now on Amazon and has received all kinds of rave reviews. And I have to agree with those reviews. If I were to submit my own Amazon review, I'd give it a 4.5 stars. I'd give it 5 stars if the unit were a bit cheaper. $170 is a sure value for any business, but an individual may balk at the price.

If you want to see pictures of the Doxie Go, definitely check out the photo-heavy preview:

Doxie + OneNote Preview