Symbol DS6878

Motorola Solutions – they’ve had to take a new name after the split – has a new 2D cordless barcode scanner with an incredibly aggressive scan engine. The Symbol DS6878 is out and looking to join the Honeywell Xenon as the new era of 2D data capture. This is the cordless companion to the DS6708 line of imagers and is the first cordless imager from Motorola not designed for heavy industrial use.

It has the same SE4500 “Blockbuster” scan engine that’s in the DS9808, but tuned a bit for point & shoot scanning as opposed to presentation style scanning. For standard UPC barcode scanning, you can get up to about 11″ away before the imager has trouble getting a read, which isn’t too bad for retail or inventory scanning. There’s also a driver’s license parsing option for the DS6878, so you can format the scanner to send the license data you need in the order your software prefers. For things like customer loyalty programs, this can not only cut the sign up process to a few seconds, but it also eliminates data entry errors.

The build quality on the DS6878 makes it a bit beefier than standard retail scanners, so you could see it at home in Costcos as well as convenience stores. A sturdy design gives it a drop resistance of 6 feet to concrete, so it should be fine unless tossing it around is part of your daily operations. You also get an IP43 seal, so it’s protected from dirt & water splashes.

For hospitals & health care providers, a DS6878-HC model is available. Not only does it come in white with blue accents, which is the official hospital color scheme, but it’s made with an antimicrobial plastic that not only doesn’t grow bacteria, but you can wipe it down with sanitizing agents and it won’t pit the plastic. Pitted Plastic would be a good name for a punk or hardcore band.

We received a demo DS6878 yesterday, so once I run it through the ringer I’ll put up a more in depth review of the scanner, with comparisons to the DS6707.