We test the accuracy and density of mobile lidar-based scanners and compare them with the performance of a static scanner. This is achieved by systematically scanning a rectangular target at a growing distance, collating the statistics of the scans and comparing them. This study shows that the accuracy of the scans outputted by the static scanner is about 20 times better at 5 meters than those produced by the mobile devices and this gap further increases along with the distance. The density, measured in points per second, drops along with the distance for all the tested devices, with mobile scanners outperforming their static counterparts.