Introduction

On average, I wake up to 15–20 emails in my TechPowerUp email inbox. A third of these are spam or random review requests, most of which are promptly ignored. Sometimes, however, there are emails from people you have worked with before. Such is the nature of tech marketing these days that PR firms are quickly becoming popular as they handle marketing and press relations for multiple clients. One such contact asked a favor of me to cover a new client of theirs, and I offered to do a quick look article to help out.

CZUR (pronounced “Caesar” no doubt) is a Chinese company that is going all in with scanners, albeit not the kind you are thinking of. The company claims it is the inventor of the “smart book scanner,” having developed IP improving the world of portable and standalone scanners. These are not the type where you place a book upside down and have a laser scan the page; rather, the product lineup from CZUR shares more with 3D scanners in that you simply place the book—or any object—on a black mat and let a combination of optics hardware and dedicated software get you results CZUR claims are far superior than anything traditional scanner technology will provide. In fact, this combination has also led to unique products, such as a posture correction device, which I think is hilarious.

CZUR’s bread and butter is its book scanner line, and the subject of this article is the brand-new CZUR ET24 Pro being crowdfunded on Indiegogo as this is written. In fact, the campaign appears to be a marketing tool above anything else given the products are mostly ready to go and in mass production already, and if you need another reason to show you this is anything but marketing, the campaign is currently at ~70,000% of its original target of a measly $1000. The “24” in the product name is for the 24 MP sensor used in the scanner, and CZUR claims this is their best scanner to date for a full-fledged feature set, which we will go over in detail, but let’s begin with a look at the product specifications below. Thanks again to CZUR for arranging a review sample for TechPowerUp!

Packaging and Accessories

I was not going to show the shipping packaging, but then saw that CZUR had done something no one else has so far by including a tiny plastic pick to cut and peel off the tape holding the box together. The outer cardboard packaging snugly holds the product box out of thinner cardboard in a predominantly black color scheme. The handle at the top is handy for removing it, and opening the box, several components are neatly placed in separate foam compartments. Most of these come in labeled boxes of their own, making it very easy to identify and remove everything in order. Start with the thin envelope that contains a quick start guide and multi-language user manual, both of which are worth going through. The CD, on the other hand, is a reminder that such products are mostly going to be bought by schools, libraries, and universities, where antiquated tech is going to guarantee someone will be able to use the CD that presumably contains the software. Most others will be content with the installer on the CZUR website.

The primary accessory for the CZUR ET24 is side lighting—two sets of side lights with magnetic pins for power and data transmission. It no doubt simply clips onto the main body of the scanner as the guide illustrates, and there is a capacitive power button on the back. CZUR also provides two separate buttons, one for the hands and the other as a foot pedal, to initiate scanning without disrupting the scanner or item being scanned. As with everything else, both are predominantly composed of plastic, but feel solid and have good tactile feedback. Grippy surfaces on the back prevent the buttons from easily moving around.

To keep, say, an outward-folded book as flat as possible, CZUR provides a set of two finger cots marked L and R for the left and right index fingers. These have specific markings the software will look for to, in a perfect world, remove the cots from the scan similar to how a green screen works in video editing. We then get to all the cabling, beginning with the 13.5 W AC power adapter that comes with a few different wall plugs depending on your region. All these show me how over-engineered the UK wall socket is! The cable is 2 m long, which is enough for most environments. You also need to connect the scanner to a PC to get anything done since the scanner can’t be run independently, and we thus get a USB Type-A to Type-B cable, too. This one is shorter at just over a meter, making it more conducive with a laptop. Lastly, while CZUR does not provide one, I also recommend having an HDMI cable on hand for a neat feature we will talk about shortly.

Closer Look

The CZUR ET24 Pro is deceptively light for its size, coming in at ~38 x 22 x 39 cm, but only 1.5 kg. The all-black construction and stick-like profile also mean it’s easily stowed away, although some form of a folding mechanism would have been great. Still, there are engineering constraints to getting that done with the feature set and cost, including the small LCD display up top with the indicator LEDs below, and physical buttons on the base add to the functionality. Underneath the display pointing down is the 24 MP CMOS sensor capable of generating scans as high as 5696×4272 pixels at up to 320 DPI. Notice the row of LEDs shedding direct light onto the material to be scanned. On the back, placed about midway on the stem, is the magnetic pin connector for the side lighting accessory, with the base housing the I/O on the bottom. It includes a single USB port for either the hand button or foot pedal, a reset button, expected USB Type-B port for the controlling PC—I would have liked to see Type-C here—and power input jack. I like that there is a physical on/off button, but not as much as the HDMI port for the camera sensor as a video input to, say, a monitor or projector similar to an old-school transparency projector, but modernized.

One other accessory I thought best to cover now is effectively a desk pad with a neoprene rubber base on the bottom and a dark black smooth top you place the items of interest on. The black backdrop is key in getting the necessary contrast for better imaging, and notice the cutout at the top the base of the ET24 Pro perfectly fits into. This makes for the resting position of the scanner, and the scanning bed if you will. With a laptop that has the necessary software installed nearby, you are now ready to proceed, but I suggest taking the extra ~15 seconds to align and attach the side lights to the scanner to complete the set.

I randomly placed a few objects—all accessories that come with the CZUR ET24 Pro—on the scanning surface and powered on the scanner. There are three brightness steps for the integrated lights (0, 50, and 100 %) and a single on/off toggle for the side lights; unfortunately on the back, you will have to probe around for it. Notice how the display on the top gives you a sneak peek of what the scanner will see, which works well in telling you where to place the object and how to best align it. As lag to the display is minimal, it’s a worthwhile feature. I also like that CZUR markets the ET24 Pro as a desk lamp when not scanning—the lights certainly get bright enough!

Scanning and Software Control

There is no integrated storage or controller, so it’s not the smartest of scanners, is it? Either way, given the ET24 Pro is still not officially a retail product, I received a copy of the latest software build via Google Drive. It should be up on the CZUR software page associated with the ET24 Pro. Note that the drivers are device specific, so make sure to install the correct one. It also asks you to input the serial number of the unit during installation as a check to confirm compatibility and ownership and takes up ~550 MB of space. The software instantly recognized the scanner and prompted me to start scanning, at which point the screen above showed up. Notice the auto alignment, and that multiple objects were picked up, with the scanning area changed accordingly. There are handy options for the type of object being scanned and nature of processing. Try out the logical options and see what works best for you. For example, the third image above is a scan of the objects as seen on the first screen itself. In the absence of any processing, the chosen settings did not account for the finger cots, making it a raw image based on the detected capture area.

Once you do set the software to account for the finger cots, their rejection is still a lottery at times. It works as expected most of the time if you align the borders properly as pointed out in the manual, but as seen above, remnants sometimes still remain. CZUR got back to me saying that the finger cots are expected only with books that have pages on a curve, as opposed to flat pages as seen here. This means that you are recommended to not use the finger cots in this situation, and of course that works fine. Let’s talk about the lighting options since those will influence the nature of the scan. The integrated lights on either side directly shed light onto the sample, and the first image above is the manual scanned at 100% lighting, which is brighter than the previous image with the finger cots as it was taken at the default 50% brightness, but some detail on the semi-glossy paper is still lost. If you have a reflective object, only going with side lighting is better. Consider this an equivalent to dark-field microscopy, if you are familiar with how optical microscopy works. The central image here is with side lighting, and all the text is now clearly visible; let the software do its job and you will be left with a flat image of both sides without the finger cots or the curve in the middle of the spine.

The scanner is best used for 2D objects, especially documents and books. This is where CZUR boasts scanning as fast as 1 second per page, and an optimized setup of the foot pedal and finger cots can have you scan entire books in a matter of minutes. Do ensure scanning image quality and DPI are set to your liking, which will influence file size. By default, all scans are saved at medium quality, 320 DPI JPEGs of whatever the device sees. For fun, I used a set of headphones whose review I am working on, and while it won’t replace my dSLR, or even the camera+AI processing on most smartphones today, it grabbed the details and pulled contrast out of the dark headband against the dark surface well enough that I was left impressed. I have seen people scan action figures and other memorabilia with such smart document scanners, but typical users will digitize old photos, scan important documents, and of course use the ET24 to get around physical textbook constraints in academia. The HDMI output also makes this a quirky tool when giving presentations, as you may simply write or draw on paper and have it appear on a larger screen.

Here is an overview of the software once the scanning is done. CZUR provides a plethora of post-processing options. You can re-align the scan, crop and rotate images, change the color and quality metrics, and set the scanning parameters, which will affect the scanning time, too. The images can be given specific naming schemes, saved in the format you prefer, and exported in a non-image format. Multiple files can be selected and exported as a PDF, which is the logical way for scanning and saving books in a single file. You can also select and view specific pages, including left or right-sided scans depending on the chosen scan type.

CZUR also boasts OCR in as many as 120 languages, but how well it works is a different matter altogether. I can only speak for English here, and image-to-text OCR capabilities from the likes of Google or your favorite smartphone provider will likely work better than what CZUR has here. Paid software on your PC dedicated to scanning and OCR will also get you closer to what you want, if not all the way there. So in just that regard, it is hard to call the CZUR ET24 Pro a value offering. But what it does right are the very high quality scans when set up correctly, which takes a couple of minutes. The scans are not only easily done via the multitude of provided options, but also very fast. It certainly blows any of my scanned documents out of the water, so I will be re-scanning everything important using it. If you agree and find a tangible use case for the CZUR ET24 Pro, know that it is currently on sale for $399—a 50% discount from MSRP—for the remainder of May on Indiegogo, although street pricing thereafter is unlikely to be $800. A few other optional accessories are available, including an assistive cover to get around the finger cot need, carry bag, and studio box to block ambient light and uniformly diffuse the provided LED lighting. It’s an interesting product for a niche application, but such is the nature of this field that CZUR seems to have made a strong name for itself already, and the ET24 Pro should be a fine addition to the CZUR lineup.