Brother Wireless Document Scanner, ADS-1700W, Fast Scan Speeds, Easy-to-Use, Ideal for Home, Home Office or On-the-Go Professionals (ADS1700W), white

Device itself is small and compact, which is AWESOME since I love having desk real estate. Clutter is not my friend, hence the reason for a document scanner that has a feeder.Setup: Extremely easy: plug in, turn on, set date/time, connect to WiFi (I went wireless)Software Install: Install all drives and firmware updatesThe instructions provided: Horrible. Tells you how to plug it in and where the date/time settings are. The rest is up to you!Scanning documents: So this took a little to get used to on the process. Be patient because it's really worth it in the end. Today is day 0, so I haven't setup the process to click an option on the scanner and it sends to to the network or my computer. I went with the trigger from computer.Kind - this allows you to scan Text, Black & White or ColorDPI is up to 600Size - paper size, this has some different settings, but most of my stuff is standard 8.5x11 (letter)Orientation (this is a cool feature)Duplex - I had NO clue what this was, but after testing it scans back and front in one shot.You can pick where to scan it toYou can name your file before you start the scanFormat: Pick from various options; I'm a PDF kind of guy.You can combine the scans to a single documentImage Correction - haven't used, but I have it set on None.Scanning steps (that works for me):Open the app on the computerPlace your documents front facing the feed trayPick your settings on the appClick ScanTo scan new documents CLOSE THE APP!! I made this mistake and it was appending it to the previously scanned document.Which brings to light a COOL feature, say you have 500 documents; clearly you can't fit them all on the feed tray so you break it into batches of 25 (20 batches) but it should be all in one document. Scan your 25 documents, put your new 25 documents in the feed tray and scan. This will APPEND to the file.I originally gave it a 4 star ease of use because it took me some time to really figure out how to use it since the instructions are purely out of the box setup. After my trial and error period, if I could give it 30 stars, I really would. This is the best $200 spent on a portable and compact scanner.Happy Scanning!

This is a slick little scanner that works quickly and very well. If you're planning to connect it to your computer via USB you'll need a micro B cable, as it does not include one. Initially I was bummed about this because though I planned to use the scanner with Wifi, when I went to setup the scan-to-network share feature, the scanner's menu informed me I had to set that up from my computer. So I assumed I would have to plug it in and went searching for a cable and for the right software on Brother's web site.Thankfully, you don't actually have to plug it into a computer to set it up and you don't need to download any Brother software either, depending on your use case. You can setup wifi directly from the scanner's touchscreen, then use any web browser from a computer on the same network to access the scanner over Wifi to complete setup of more advanced features without a USB connection. I had to Google the default password for the scanner's web interface (turns out it's printed on a label on the bottom of each scanner), but once I had that I was able to login and configure the various options.Now all I have to do is drop a sheet of paper (or up to 20) directly into the automatic document feeder on the scanner and it automatically performs a duplex scan, skips blank pages, converts it to a PDF and drops it on a network share without pressing a single button.Once it's all setup it is super fast and very easy to use. I highly recommend this. It's worth the extra money to get a true Wifi scanner if you want wireless scanning to network storage.

I bought this to speed up digitizing my office documents. I went with this one because I already own a Brother MFC-L2700DW all-in-one print/scan/copy/fax and I trust their quality. However, the problem with the all-in-one is that the fast feed scanner only works for scanning one-sided documents. For two-sided docs, you have to use the copier scan bed, which is agonizingly slow. Scan one side .... Continue? Yes. ... Scan next side. ... Continue? Yes. ... etc. Each page takes 5-10 seconds. Maybe that's okay for a few pages, but I literally have thousands of pages to scan.But I already had a scanner, so was it really worth $250 for a dedicated one? YES. My God, yes.If you have a huge scanning project or do a lot of scanning in general, get a dedicated scanner. This thing can scan 2-sided docs faster than my all-in-one can scan 1-sided docs with the feed scanner. I can do more in an hour than I could in an entire afternoon before.It's not perfect, you have to split apart docs more than 20 pages long, but it will churn through a 2-sided, 20-page chunk in less than a minute. (most of my docs are just text so full color images may take longer). It can also handle somewhat crumply paper (like the paper got wet and then dried) and oddly shaped paper, as well as longer legal-size pages.The scan quality isn't quite as good as the all-in-one, (text is clear, but the black is more faded), but like I said I'm mostly scanning text so the speed boost is more than worth it for me. You can save docs as a PDF as well as multiple image formats (jpg, gif, png, etc.)I have the dedicated scanner running over wi-fi, but I did have to connect it directly to my computer via usb for the initial software setup and it doesn't comes with a usb or ethernet cable, so be aware of that. Once that was done done though, there were no issues getting the other computers to connect to it.My only real criticism is that the business-card sized scan slot is just about useless. It keeps getting the orientation wrong and either scanning it the wrong direction or cutting off half of the card. It was easier just to put the cards into the main scan slot.One odd thing to note is that, even though my all-in-one is also from Brother, they use completely different drivers and software. Both sets work fine being installed side-by-side so it's not a problem, just surprising they don't even share the same app to run them.The scan app is also a little clunky in that it's designed around scanning long documents. You'll setup the paper size, color, 1- or 2-sided scanning, etc, and then got into a second screen to start scanning. Once you finish, you can save, but then have to go all the way back to the config screen again for the next document or it will think you are trying to append to the current document. It's not a big deal, but it bogs down an otherwise smooth process if you have a lot of 2-5 page docs to scan. Don't get me wrong, it's still leagues faster than the all-in-one, but if they could add a shortcut to start a new doc with the same settings without going back to the config screen it'd be that much better.Like I said, it's not perfect, but if you're facing down a large scan project and your current scanner can't handle it, then get this little guy. The time you save will be well worth the cost. Plus you can take it on the road too, I guess, if you like that kind of thing.