Business professionals are always on the go, so they don’t always have access to the luxuries of the office. Just because they’re on the road, however, doesn’t mean that they need to leave all of their gadgetry behind. The Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 Portable PDF Scanner is just as powerful as many other scanners that are easily several times its size. It’s not a flatbed scanner, so it won’t be able to handle books and other thicker items, but it will take single sheets of paper without a hitch. Better still, because it has an automatic paper feeder and dual scanning heads, the ScanSnap S300 can perform full duplex scanning in a single pass.

I had the chance to review the ScanSnap S300 for Mobile Magazine and I have to say that I was very impressed. The build quality is absolutely top-notch and the resulting PDF files are great. It also has OCR software, so it’ll be able to recognize any text that it scans. On the downside, the S300 is definitely on the heavier side of things, so you may not want to lug it around with you all day. The heavier weight does speak to the quality and workmanship that went into the product though.

A major advantage that this scanner has over some of its direct competitors — other than being the world’s smallest full duplex ADF scanner — is that the Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 does not require power from a wall outlet. In an act of true portability, the S300 can draw its power from an available USB port on your laptop. It would have been nice to have a battery backup option as well, but this is a great option as well.

The Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 Portable PDF Scanner is available now for $295. Yeah, it’s not exactly cheap, but you do get what you pay for.