A question that comes up a lot: do you actually need a $300–500 handheld scanner to count and receive inventory, or can your phone do it? For a Shopify store at normal volume the phone is fine, and the real question is what the scan connects to on the other end.
Two ways people do phone scanning, and they are not the same. The keyboard-wedge trick turns your phone into a wireless keyboard that "types" the barcode number into whatever field is focused. Cheap and clever, but it does nothing with that number beyond typing it, your spreadsheet or app still has to know what the SKU is, whether it is on a PO, and what to update. You have automated the fastest part and left the rest manual.
Scanning straight into your inventory app ties the scan to an actual operation: scan during a stocktake and the count updates; scan while receiving a PO and the item is checked off against what you ordered, with Shopify stock updated. Same phone camera, but the number lands somewhere that already knows what to do with it. That is what actually saves time, because receiving and counting are where the minutes go, not the scanning itself.
The honest answer: for Shopify volume the phone is plenty. Spend the $500 on inventory you can actually sell. How are the rest of you scanning, phone or a dedicated gun, and what does it feed into on the other side?
Phone, straight into the count.
Bought the gun first. Used it a month. Hardware was never the problem, the scan just typed a number I still had to reconcile.
Once it updated the stocktake directly, the gun went in a drawer.
Gun only wins at really high receiving volume when phone battery dies.