CZUR Aura Pro Book & Document Scanner,Capture A3 & A4, Auto-Flatten & Deskew Powered by AI Technology, Foldable & Portable, Compatible with Windows & Mac OS

Recently, I decided to reduce my storage space of old documents I held but whose information with which I did not want to part. On Amazon, I saw scanner options that were quite different from my old, slow, large-format scanner. I came across two scanners that impressed me with their speed and quality: the ScanSnap iX1300 and this project, the CZUR Aura Pro. Each of these scanners was priced around the same -- in the $250 range. I saw value in each type of scanner. The ScanSnap iX1300 provided me with the ability to feed stacks of documents to quickly make them into a single PDF (usually what I wanted). The CZUR Aura Pro offered me the ability to scan larger-format items to make them into a single PDF, when the ScanSnap iX1300 couldn't handle their size. First, I bought the ScanSnap iX1300, and it was only a few days later that I committed to also buying the CZUR Aura Pro -- mainly because I had a lot of notebooks I wanted to scan and the Aura Pro offered that ability in a fast-paced way -- plus, I was also interested in scanning books. In the end, I've spent about $500 in scanners for my project, and although some may gasp at that investment, the cost savings should work out because of the reduced physical storage costs I will inherit (and the virtual storage costs will be trivial if anything with all of the new digitized documents). In addition, I will inherit the sleek technology to aid my habit shift toward parting with paper and digitizing and backing up paper I would be otherwise inclined to keep. As for the CZUR Aura Pro, most of the other reviews already hit on its merits, and they are what sold me on it. Plus, some YouTube videos on it really drove home the point of how remarkable this device is. I have rated it 5 stars, though it does have some minor flaws but ones that I do not feel are worth suggesting this is an inferior purchase or product. There is room for improvement in nearly every product, and in my mind, this is solidly in the 5-star zone of products. As for the design, it is astounding. I love that they thought of making it a light as well as a scanner, encouraging a use case that is always available. For me, I do not have the desk space for it to be always out, so its folding design means I will be able to store it easily. It is also lightweight, so that is an added benefit over having something super heavy. Although I don’t use it, I thought it was really a nice touch to have the screen atop the scanner. Most of my scanning its seated and occasionally looking at my computer, which is why I don’t use the screen on the scanner as much. The snap-on light is super convenient, and toggling between light modes is effortless. As for the function, it is also astounding. My favorite feature, by far, is Auto Scan. In Flat Single Page mode, I can rip through scanning of spiral-bound notebooks in no time. The intelligence of the Auto Scan is what really surprises me, because although it seems to go at a pace of about every two seconds, it only does this when it detects no movement, so if you’re still turning a page or adjusting it, it doesn’t suddenly scan your hands and ruin your workflow. When you’re ready, you back your hands away and you’ll see red scan lines quickly flash, so you know your document has been scanned and you can proceed to turn the next page. The pace is fantastic. Seriously, removing the need to click or push the foot pedal really picks up scanning time, making it a breeze! Another amazing feature is auto-rotation that the scanner does. I can throw down a document at any angle, and when it scans, it is automatically aligned. Although sometimes it gets the orientation wrong, about 99% of the time it gets it right (and when it gets it wrong, you don’t blame it because the item is understandably confusing). To fix any rotation issues, using the Rotate feature usually does the trick -- or else scan again. Most of my scanning is done in Auto Enhance, and when I scan most documents that have no or minimal color (blue ink, for example), it tends to scan as black and white. I can, of course, adjust this to Color to capture richer color if I want. I have to use Crop on some of my larger documents or those that the scanner adds in the background (the mat), but that happens infrequently. The software has a small learning curve that can be overcome with a little practice scanning an item at the beginning, as you nail down your workflow. For me, I click the + sign to select the primary destination of my scanned images, then the > button to Scan, then put the item on the mat, check off the Auto Scan box then hit the Scan button, and then I just watch for the red lines on my item before I turn the page. When I’m done, I exit out of scan, click the orange checkbox icon to select all of the scanned images, then select Searchable PDF to export all of the scanned images as a single searchable PDF to an external drive that syncs to online backup. Then, I throw out the item I just scanned! (Depending on how large your Searchable PDF is, it may take a few minutes for the software to export the file, but exporting as a regular PDF is faster (and it still seems to make any text it detects as copy-and-pasteable. Exporting can run in the background, so I don't have to wait for the first PDF to export before I move on -- I can just start scanning the next item!) Here are some minor issues I have with the CZUR Aura Pro. Let me stress these are not deal-breakers, and I would highly recommend this scanner and I am extraordinarily pleased with it. - Sometimes, my computer (Macbook Air, M2) has trouble finding the device. To date, when this happens, I try a number of things. a. Disconnect the scanner from my computer and try again. b. Disconnect the USB cable from the scanner and try again. c. Disconnect the power cable from the scanner and try again. d. Do any number of these things several times. e. Try connecting to my computer rather than a hub or vice versa. - The USB cable is relatively short for my use, which is a fixed laptop in a small room outside which is the scanner. a. When I added a USB-A extension cable, the first time the scanner would not display on my Mac. I bought a higher-end USB-A extension cable, and the first time it didn’t work. When I added a USB-C adapter to it, my Mac recognized it. b. To date, I think USB-A and USB-C connections will work, it just may take several tries and some patience for the device to be recognized. - Facing Pages mode is a little tricky. This mode is for scanning books and having the software split the scanned image into two separate images to make separate pages. a. Admittedly, I haven’t worked with this much yet. b. When I first tried it, the scanner kept rotating my scanned images, often around 45 degrees. c. Others reported this as a relatively recent issue (as of December 2024), which suggests to me a software issue that might get fixed in a future software update. d. I am not certain, but my rotation issue may have been the result of ambient daylight on the mat, causing to confuse the scanner. I will have to play with this to see. (Now, I try to shield my scanner's mat from light leaking onto it by putting a simple box on my desk to block window light from pouring onto the mat.) - The mat ships in a scroll, so it takes days before it will lie flat — if ever! a. The curve created by the scroll means the far edges will rise up off the desk slightly, possibly confusing the scanner or showing your desk in your images. b. One edge might calm down with time. The inner part of the scroll makes that edge really curved, so it may take more time. I have had my scanner several days and it hasn’t relaxed yet — and when I store it, I might be going back to square-one with the issue. c. This issue is surmountable. Generally, it doesn’t interfere with scanning — it just would be nice if the mat would stay flat. - The software is designed well, though the workflow could be perfected. a. When I have a single page I want scanned and exported to PDF, I can do this with the Aura Pro. However, this is much faster to do with my ScanSnap iX1300. b. So, I use my Aura Pro on items that ScanSnap iX1300 can’t handle — either in terms of size or texture. c. After I scan an item with the Aura Pro and I want to adjust the scanned image, I have to check off the image, then apply the adjustment (Rotate, Crop, etc.). Then, I have to remember to uncheck the scanned image. If I don’t do this and move on to another image to tweak, I might end up inadvertently applying the new adjustments to the prior image — even undoing my work on the first scanned image. I just have to be careful — there is something not intuitive here. - The multiple Confirm buttons in the software are annoying. a. Although they are likely a safety issue, there seem to me too many times I have to click a Confirm button. I think these should be reduced, or one should have the ability to request not being reminded. b. All in all, the fewer clicks I need to make, the better! In the end, though, these are trivial issues. The Aura Pro is, by far, an ingenious scanner, and I am so happy I made this purchase. You should, too!

I don’t really write reviews but the experience with this scanner has been nothing short of AMAZING! Even from opening the shipped box which included a plastic box opener. So no need to go fiddle around with a knives, keys or scissors. Once you’ve opened the shipping box you’re greeted by a beautiful all black box that has a handle and opens without any hitches. The presentation inside the box is laid out beautifully. Everything fits perfectly in its own spot and you know that while I’m this box your Aura-B is going to be well protected. The actual scanner feels really sturdy made out of some type of metal maybe aluminum and even extending the camera/ lights you can tell that it was all put together with care and no corners were cut. The base has a display at the top which shows you what’s currently in the cameras view and at the bottom of the Base it has a power indicator, lamp mode indicator and Camera mode indicator off to the right side you have a knob that both rotates and acts as a button. You rotate the knob to go through the 5 different light brightness setting and holding down the button for 2 seconds powers on the device. If you click on the button after powered on it will switch between lamp mode and camera mode. The Czur also comes with a foot petal that allows you to activate the camera while holding down the pages with the given finger cots. It comes with software on a CD or you can also download it from their website for both PC or Apple Computer. The software is really snappy and works as expected. It is able to scan a book with the fold and separate the pages which is awesome. It also has OCR that allows your scans to become searchable documents which is huge especially for books. It will give you the ability to go through a book with keywords instead of trying to remember what chapter or page it’s on. The scans it takes are really good quality but the OCR makes this thing absolutely amazing!

I got this to digitize my books for portability and for the OCR to speed research and the ability to digitally quote references in research works. The English texts I scanned the OCR was almost perfect including picture placement on pages, etc. I have a large collection of German texts printed in various Fraktur fonts. Unfortunately, the OCR is not up to par with this but there are ready work around via Gemini for example to get the texts read. The set up and software download and set up were very easy to do. The user interface is pretty good and fairly intuitive. It takes a little getting used to some of the ways it operates but overall a good experience. Scans are quick and I was able to do a 200 page fragile book in less than 20 minutes. I'm sure I could get quicker with practice. The main issue is that the scanner won't always recognize the page borders and will get your hand even using the finger cots. Overall a good addition to my library but because of the issue listed above I would give it 4 out of 5 at this price point.

First off, I purchased this product with my own money, stretching a very limited home office budget to do it. I maintain a library of vintage sales brochures and technical documents and often need to copy them. Many are Ledger size (11x17) and a real bear to scan in (slow), using my aging large format, EPSON WF-7620 MFC. And at under $300, a better or at least faster way to scan 11x17 docs would be more important than almost any other office machine, at least to me... I am in sales, and I hate to return items -- I really do --but this machine had a few flaws that I could not reconcile -- so back to Amazon it went (thanks AZ and CZUR and I really tried to make it work). These flaws prevented it from replacing my super slow, unforgiving LED scanner .... So , I wanted to leave a serious, real review to hopefully answer some brief questions about things not mentioned clearly enough on the CZUR site. First off, no affordable camera, not even a full frame DSLR can match the DPI of a flat bed scanner. So going in, I knew to expect only about 240dpi-ish max , which is good enough for most documents, but is not going to wow anybody. You can do the same thing with a phone or a DSLR camera and wide angle lens -- but the workflow is allot slower, making this product **very** worthy of a close look at this price, **if** you need to scan lots of thick books. The software is clunky, but it does stuff better than most solutions I have seen, even from big companies like Canon and Xerox. -- in a nutshell, if you are scanning 4 page documents or photos, stick with a scanner. -- I don't often scan books, but did try the feature out -- it works fine, but there is some distortion at edges, similar to the type you see if you use your iPhone with Apple documents scanner. Furthermore, the overall quality was only slightly better, than an iPhone 8s plus -- both devices rely on heavy processing and trickery to clean up documents, adding sharpness and contrast and in some cases, make line art, simple color artwork and other simple non-screened documents look almost better than the original! IT also seems to be resistant to dreaded Morie patterns seen mostly on screened print documents. -- The quality, fit and finish and packing of this document camera, are nearly PERFECT. Design is practical, with one major flaw to me...which was not impressed upon me before purchase: This scanner (and maybe not the new model?) sort of relies on a faux leather mat the size of an A3 ledger (big). This mat came tightly rolled, and would not lay flat for me, at least in my cold office. IT would not settle flat over the several days I had it, despite putting some weight on to hold it down. This was really a pain, because the curl also kept the documents from laying flat..messing up the quality slightly ( docs should lay as flat as they can to avoid the distortion and focus problems). If this mat was not required, no big deal, but according to what I read, the mat serves as a calibration marker, and is needed or at least very helpful to the correction software. -- The software was the deal killer for me in the end. A keen reviwer warned that the Aura Scan program "phones home to China" -- I took this comment at stride, thinking if it was otherwise good, it would be live-able (ie just don't scan secure documents)...I did not expect or think how SLOW, it would make the software boot up. On a modestly equipped Macbook Pro, with 8gb of Ram and an SSD -- the software took a minute or two to load and connect to the mysterious China based cloud every time (annoying), and the Aura Scan software is several GB's of space on the local drive, so you'd think it should be standalone....after all an iphone can do similar processing with no cloud needed. I don't have fast DSL, and the ritual of phoning home to CZUR caused serious reliability problems everytime my Macbook went to sleep on DSL/wifi between uses. Without standalone, non bloated software -- no way it could replace the walk up convenience of even an old WiFi MFC scanner (which also happens to be higher quality)... Once you are up and running, the software did it's job, but was a chore to navigate. Like I said above, I did not want to return this document scanner. The idea is right. The hardware is cool -- and if it were more practical to do "run up and zap a multipage PDF" without lots of spinning beach balls (for Windows guys, thats the hour glass), then I would probably overlook the obvious quality hit vs the drudgery of a flatbed. If you have great internet service, and allot of big books to scan, and you need a cool desk lamp -- give this thing a good look! I could see it being worthwhile for some users with big jobs.

I had high hopes of scanning my paperback collection and converting it to EPUB. That really isn’t going to work out. It took a while to get hang of scanning a paperback book. That went alright. The post scanning clean-up took longer. Had to do a lot of cropping. Then the OCR worked well but the formatting into Word wasn't great and it didn’t translate well into EPUB. Bummer. But I’ve got a great PDF copy. It just didn’t work out as I’d hoped for this aspect. Now as a scanner it is awesome. Very good at scanning flat pieces of papers and can do so very rapidly. Way better than the flat-bed scanner I replaced. So that is great.

Tried several scanner and this was my favorite so far. It offers the ability to just lay it out and click a pic easily. I scan a variety of things from ads, to books, to old ephemera. Because each is unique and different sizes I required to be flexible. To my surprise it really is. It's fast, accurate and always multi-use capabilities. Works well with MacBook setup without any issues, no compatibility issues. The software interface was great. The foot pedal feature is a breeze to use. The scans are sharp and crisp with the ability to change outputs and settings. The colors were clear and clean. I like the 2 sided scan for postcards and photos.

I am a pianist and this scanner has made scanning music for my iPad a breeze. In the past I have used flatbed scanners and well as my phone and the results were mixed at best and time consuming. I can open the music book and scan two pages at a time AND the software will not only flatten the pages, but will automatically take the next scan after the page is turned. The quality of the scans is excellent and the ease of use cannot be overstated. I was thinking I might have to find a a place in the house where I could set it up for scanning, but am able to it right at my crowded desk (see pictures). If you are a musician needing to get your music in PDF format for whatever purpose, this is the best!

Very good scanner, accurate colors and surprisingly good results. The software can accurately straighten the image, there is no need to have a fixed point as in a flatbed scanner. I’m still learning the ins and outs of using the scanner, but once the item to be scanned is on the mat and connected to the computer, this is like taking an image—there is no waiting for the scan head to scan the item. I’m very happy and like the features I’ve explored so far, including the ability to brighten the scanner’s light.