Hello and welcome back. Fair warning, this is an unabashedly a sponsored video from CZUR. They did
not pay me for it, nor asked anything particular for the video, but they sent me the device for
free. It all accidentally started when I made a non-sponsored review of their first device,
because I liked it very much. CZUR took notice, and they have been sending me
new and improved ones since then. To our greatest joy of course, since we use them
constantly to scan and archive our rare vintage documentation. This new one is a little different,
as it is a much more budget friendly device than the high-end ones I have reviewed so far.
Hello, the people from CZUR, Cee-ZUR, whatever it is, have sent me their next invention, a new
model. And I have a quick scanning job to do, so I thought why not use that one. Because it's much
lighter, much simpler to set up, also much less costly, than the one I would reach for usually.
Which is the big CZUR Pro model, which I use for the big jobs. So let's give it a whirl.
So this is the new, I don't know what it's called, a Fancy something, I'll put a link.
And it's a much more affordable version of their scanner, but it supposedly can also do
what the big brother does. And, it's also supposed to be usable as a webcam.
Which actually is quite interesting to me, which is why I wanted it.
So you can tell, wow, it's super light, super small. Where is the camera end? Oh, it still has
illumination. I thought it didn't. But you can see the difference here. This is the small guy,
compared to its big brother. That's the 24 Pro. So much smaller. I guess you just plug it in?
Okay, we have it set up, and right away I see a problem: that it has real trouble separating
the document from the background. Of course my background is fairly light. I removed the white
that I had, but that wasn't enough. So I am going to grab the mat that comes with the other CZUR,
which is very dark. So that will work right away, I suppose. Yes, it does. But they don't
include it in the default, and I suppose you would like to have something like that. Anyhow,
this is how it sees it.So now it's much better.
So, off we go, scan one...
Scan the other page...
And now we have the interesting HP schematics. Will it be big enough?
It just fits! Perfect. All right, so I won't even put a glass
piece on it, since it's for a quick job. So, hop, here we go.
So there is no zoom, but there is zoom on this device. So what you do, is that you get it lower,
way way way lower. And then you can see the little details. There you go.
Focus, there you go. It has a little focus button on top.
And here we go, so this is what they call their macro mode, if you want some details or scan
smaller things. But I want to scan really large things, so I do this.
Got it.
Got it. All right, quick and dirty HP manual done.
Searchable PDF, because I want OCR. In English.
Image processing mode, here you want to be careful: you want to do “keep the original image”.
Medium quality should be more than enough. There is low, medium, and high. High takes a
lot more memory space, and I didn't see a big difference in the output, so I keep medium.
I confirm it. And it's going to put it in Documents, I want it on the Desktop. Save.
Let's see what it did. Confirm, I'm gone. It put it right here. And voila.
Hold on. Boy, do I hate Adobe Reader. And now, I should be able to select the text. Here we go,
it's all been OCR'ed and recognized. You can see it has ample resolution,
it's going to be far better than most manuals out there. Far far far better, there is just no problem.
I'm being lazy and filming from the screen, but I'll put the scan online,
as (I do with) all my scans. And you see, this is for the cesium clock.
So it says cesium beam tube. And it has absolutely no problem with the resolution.
Okay, one last thing I need to try, it supposedly can flatten the book pages, which is something
that the higher end model does with a laser. This one has no laser, so it must be all
camera recognition. And first of all, my book hardly fits on this one. Curved book, okay.
It's supposed to... Oh, okay.
Let's see, it doesn't look quite correct. Yeah, see? So, it does it only with optical
recognition. So it completely missed that one. That's where the page center is. So
usually you can fix that, there you go. So what I have to do, is move that guy back to
where it belongs. So, it's not going to be as reliable as the laser thing.
Okay, much better. That's what it did with, and that is the original down there.
Let's try it with something a little bit more forgiving, my TTL Data Book.
Let's see what it does with it.
Scan. Done.
And this time I think it got it.
Yeah, kind of similar. Not quite, it did its best here, but it didn't quite get the
middle of the page as - the laser thing it, it will get it all the time, perfect. This one
is a little bit more limited. There we go, we'll fix you. Save...
All right, fixed, done. So, although the Fancy might not be as powerful as its big brother,
I tell you when I really like it. Like today, right, I'm busy with something. I don't have
much space. I want to scan a manual quickly. And then, all I have to do: dap, tang, blonk, tonk.
And off you go, you are scanning!
So here you can compare side by side,
my 10 minute scan with the scan of - I couldn't find it, this manual is not online actually,
but there is one that covers the same power supply. And that's the official Agilent one.
That's the official Agilent from the omnipotent former HP.
And theirs, I can't select the text. Mine, no problem I can select the text. Fully text
searchable. You see the sort of quality that it has, compared to the quality of the CZUR scan.
It's just night and day.
So, another thing it can do, that I was really interested in, is that apparently, it's a
streaming webcam. Imagine I'm working on a gizmo, and I want to show it on a live stream. And, this
is in OBS, so it shows up like a normal camera. And, I can switch to... there you go! There it is.
So, that's the view being streamed from here.
Although it worked fine, I immediately noticed some image delay and a swimming
effect when objects were moving too fast. I attributed that to
the limitations of the USB2 link when working at 4k resolution.
Sure enough, all the problems disappeared when I switched to 1080p resolution, which is what
I film and stream at anyhow. So, a competent streaming camera, provided you use it at 1080p.
So, if you don't have OBS - if you're not set up like I am - they have their own version of it.
Oh well, there you go.
This one at least has the correct aspect ratio, it has zoom on it. Oh, that's pretty neat.
All right, what can it do? I guess you can doodle? Doo-dle. You can erase your doodle.
There is a laser pointer.
Here is the beautiful face of the thing. Here's your bomb spotting. Vertical keystone.
Oh, I need a lot of that. Oh! That's pretty cool. Look at that! I guess if they do that
for their documents, right, it's pretty easy for them to do it for a live camera.
Yeah, it has pretty amazing resolution. So that's no comparison to a regular camera.
So, some parting thoughts on this device. This is definitely a budget offering, and I am a bit
spoiled because I have their high-end Pro 24. The Pro has the laser page flattening, which is more
precise than the camera one offered on the Fancy, and its lighting is far superior. But as you saw,
the Fancy is a competent and very high resolution scanner, even if it took a little bit of tweaking
to get the page separation perfectly right. The included OCR is just as good as the one
on the Pro, and it really is an excellent and incredible value at that price point.
The camera streaming is convenient, but it’s only usable at 1080p, at least in my OBS setup,
which is not a big drawback. I will probably use it as an accessory camera in my livestreams,
because the mount is so easily adjustable, and it takes so little space on the bench.
Which is its main draw for me. It’s now permanently on my bench,
and I find myself reaching for it for a quick scan job, because it’s so easy to grab and setup.
So here you have it, a new budget offering from CZUR,
maybe not as powerful as their top end scanner monster, but at a fraction of the price,
it’s something you can easily justify for an occasional scanning job or a streaming tool.