Honeywell Voyager 1400g

Honeywell has released a new Voyager, more voyagey than the old Voyager and way more voyagetastic than the original. The Voyager 1400g offers omnidirectional scanning and is a great fit if you’re looking to add 2D scanning to your business without breaking the bank.

The barcode scanner comes in three flavors: a 1D only imager, 1D and PDF scanning, and full 2D imaging. What’s really great about these scanners is that if you know at some point down the road you want 2D imaging, but right now you can’t justify the full cost, you can get the 1D model, then upgrade the scanner itself later on. No need to buy a full scanner each time you want additional functionality.

I’ve gotten to take a Voyager 1400g out for a spin, and it’s a great device. Standard UPC barcodes are read pretty easily from up to a foot away and at all angles, cutting out almost all of the hassles you run into with a standard 1D scanner. 2D barcodes are read equally easily, including Data Matrix, QR, and Aztec codes. The Voyager 1400g uses a red LED as an aimer, but a white light to illuminate the barcode, so if you have a way to power it, it can be a great makeshift flashlight.

The Voyager 1400g, by nature of being an imager, can read barcodes on cell phone or LCD screens. This is great for retailers looking to do mobile couponing, ticket checking, or just trying to see if you can read weird barcodes on screens. The scanner is not able to do optical character recognition (OCR) or image capture, but there’s the Xenon 1900 ready and waiting to recognize characters and take pictures, so no biggie.

We did run into some issues scanning outside on a sunny day. Our test sheet of barcodes is pretty glossy, and I think we managed to find the one angle where glare from the sun actually made it impossible to get a good read. As soon as a little shade covered the barcode, the Voyager 1400g would pick up the barcode. But really, it’s such a specific instance that it’s not too big a deal.

All in all, the Voyager 1400g is a fantastic and affordable addition to any business. The fact that you can easily upgrade the firmware to transition from 1D scanning to 1D and 2D scanning makes it great, in my mind, for retailers who want to scan 2D barcodes eventually, but don’t want to have to buy multiple scanners, or can’t justify the cost for a full 2D scanner quite yet.

Honeywell’s Ending Some Products’ Lives

After Honeywell bought HHP and Metrologic, they ended up with a few products that overlapped. And nobody wants overlapping products, it causes split ends. So they’ve been slowly whittling away the excess products, getting their catalog into lean, mean, fighting machine status. The current round of end of life products are from the Metrologic side, and their replacements more than make up for this loss. There’s a handy dandy table at the bottom of the post if you’re really looking for more info.

VoyagerHD & VoyagerPDF: While these scanners provided pretty solid features for Metrologic (4 mil barcode scanning capability and a laser scanner capable of reading PDF417 barcodes, respectively), the HHP products and even newer Metrologic products did the same and for about the same price. VoyagerHD can be replaced by the high density VoyagerGS, which is a better all around laser scanner. For the VoyagerPDF, they recommend getting the 3800g PDF scanner. For its price, nothing beats the 3800g lineup.

MS1890 Industrial Focus: I felt bad for this product. It came out right before the merger, and half of HHP’s lineup does the same with greater cachet. The 4800i industrial 2D scanner should replace the industrial focus and then some.

MS7320 InVista: Pretty glad this is getting replaced by the Solaris, since we have a solid video showing off how amazing it is.

MS2320 StratosE: For a while I’m pretty sure there were about 8 different Stratoses (Stratii?) Thankfully, they’re whittling it down to the best and the brightest. The MS2420 Stratos is the new replacement and that thing is a beast.

IS1650 Focus: We never really listed this scanner, mostly because it’s designed for automation and we’re big into point of sale. It’s like a Focus with the handle knocked off, but they make better products and now it’s done for. The MS4980 VuQuest is replacing it, and that scanner’s pretty fast so good on them.

And here’s the handy chart!

If You Had:	You Will Want:
VoyagerHD	VoyagerGS HD
VoyagerPDF	3800G PDF
MS1890 Industrial Focus	4800i
MS7320 InVista	MS7280 Solaris
MS2022 StratosE	MS2420 Stratos
IS1650 Focus	MS4980 VuQuest