Best Cheap Scanners in 2022

Why the Canon CanoScan LiDE220 is the best scanner

The Canon CanoScan LiDE220 has received accolades from reviewers and consumers alike for its speed, ease of use, and its quality output.

Its scanning light is LED, which means there's no warm-up time needed — it can scan a letter-sized page in roughly 10 seconds.

When scanning documents, its Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is capable of returning searchable and editable text documents. And the expandable lid makes it easy to accommodate thicker books for scanning.

With a resolution of 4800 x 4800 DPI, it will preserve the quality and detail of your old family photographs — and apply a little bit of software magic to sharpen those pictures have faded with age.

Additionally, you can save your scans to the cloud and easily share them with others at the touch of a button.

For most scanning uses, you can't go wrong with the LiDE220. However, there is one area where it falls short: it can't scan negatives or slides.

Conclusion

If your scanning needs are simple, your cheapest option is to use your smartphone with a scanning app; however, if you want to scan photos, negatives, or slides, or you regularly scan multi-page documents, a scanner will serve you best.

Updated on February 1, 2018: We gave this guide a pass to make sure it still offers only the best advice for buying an affordable scanner.

Rich Edmonds
Senior Editor, PC Build

Rich Edmonds was formerly a Senior Editor of PC hardware at Windows Central, covering everything related to PC components and NAS. He's been involved in technology for more than a decade and knows a thing or two about the magic inside a PC chassis. You can follow him on Twitter at @RichEdmonds.