Imagine this: you have a big collection of physical books that’s been in your family for decades. As with anything, however, books start showing their age after years of use. After all, no one wants their precious collection to disappear like that. One great way to preserve them is by digitizing the books instead. This will give you a copy to keep forever. While you can just take a photo of your pages, smartphones aren’t professional book-scanning tools. Photos from a phone can have reflections, and sorting the pages afterward can be a headache. That’s exactly the problem CZUR’s ET Max aims to solve.
It’s a book scanner that takes away the hassle of scanning every page and formatting it correctly. Instead, you just need to flip the pages. This could also be extremely useful in office spaces that manage a lot of paper. Given that promise, when CZUR reached out to me, I had to review the ET Max. It’s been a few weeks since that email, and I’ve used it to scan about five books. Spoiler alert: it impressed me. To find out why, read along.
CZUR ET Max Review
Summary
The CZUR ET Max takes what would normally be a tedious process, scanning hundreds of individual pages, and turns it into something much more manageable. You flip the page, let the scanner do its work, and move on to the next one. I expected some distortion when scanning a hardcover book, but the ET Max produced straight pages without the shadows and warping. Not to forget, the OCR functionality, editing tools, and ability to display book pages on a projector are also useful additions.
Unboxing the CZUR ET Max was a pretty interesting experience. Not only does CZUR give you the scanner itself, but it also includes plenty of accessories. These include a physical button for scanning individual pages, a foot pedal to scan, a power cable with plugs for different countries, a black scanning mat, side lights for better visibility, and a book page holder. Setup is pretty straightforward and is handled through the CZUR app, which is available on both macOS and Windows. You can download the app either by going to the CZUR website or using the included physical disk for installation.
I was able to get everything running quickly by connecting the scanner to my MacBook using the included cable. It was recognized pretty much instantly, and from there it was just a matter of opening the app. Just a quick note: you do need to enter the serial number of your scanner to pair with the app. You’ll find it on the bottom of the device.
On top of the scanner, there’s a preview screen, which, as the name suggests, helps you see what’s being captured. It was super helpful when scanning bigger books, as I needed to know if everything was inside the frame. Beyond that, the app lets you scan books into multiple formats, including JPEG, PDF, and Word. The scanner also uses AI to mark the edges of a book, preserve the colors of the drawings, and correct distortion. You also get OCR functionality, and to prevent distortions in the digital copy, there’s laser technology that measures distortions and helps smooth them out.
The ET Max uses a 38MP CMOS sensor to capture books. And to put that to the test, I started by scanning some research papers. Since there are no curved surfaces on those, the process was easy enough. I placed the paper in the frame, and the ET Max automatically captured it and processed the information into a very tidy digital copy. You don’t even have to center the documents inside the frame, as the scanner automatically detects the area and scans just that. The resolution was more than enough, and I could zoom into individual words without losing any detail. The only small hitch was that sometimes colors in pictures looked washed out, but nothing major.
To kick things up a notch, I also scanned a hardcover book. If you’ve read such books before, you know how difficult it can be to keep these books flat. They are always curved, meaning I had to use “Facing Page” mode. This mode projects lasers onto the book surface to measure the amount of deformation and correct it afterward. But does it work? Absolutely. The resulting scans came out straight without any deformation, weird edges, or shadows. However, if you’re not satisfied with the result, you can also manually correct the dimensions inside the app.
About these controls, the software lets you adjust the contrast and colors of every scanned image, change the edges, use a different crop, and more. I found all these options helpful in giving me the look I had in mind. But that’s not all. You can hide specific sections of a document and remove handwriting from old books. The latter didn’t work that well because it covered the handwritten parts with a white overlay, which looked out of place. What did work quite well was using the ET Max as a document camera. I hooked it up to my home projector and projected the book onto a 100-inch screen, with plenty of detail visible. This could be another helpful feature for teachers and project managers.
Given that most offices scan documents to create digital copies, OCR functionality becomes very important. And if you’re in the market for such a machine, then the ET Max performed well in my testing. The scanner did a good job of recognizing text from different books and research papers and converting them into PDFs. CZUR says it can accurately detect over 180 different languages, but I only tested with English books, so your mileage may vary.
Pros
Cons
At $689 on the official store website, the CZUR ET Max is clearly aimed at professionals. But after scanning several books, I can see why something like this exists. The ET Max takes what would normally be a tedious process, scanning hundreds of individual pages, and turns it into something much more manageable.
You flip the page, let the scanner do its work, and move on to the next one. I expected some distortion when scanning a hardcover book, but the ET Max produced straight pages without the shadows and warping. Not to forget the OCR functionality, editing tools, and ability to display book pages on a projector are also useful additions. Like everything, though, it’s not perfect. Handwriting removal could use some work, and some images inside books lose color. Still, I think the CZUR ET Max is a capable machine worthy of a recommendation.
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