Brother ADS-3300W Wireless High-Speed Desktop Scanner Review - PCMag

Think we've reviewed a batch of Brother desktop document scanners lately? You're not imaging it: The institution precocious released 5 sheetfed models, including the ADS-4300N, the ADS-4700W, and the ADS-4900W, which copped an Editors' Choice grant among high-volume networkable scanners. Today's entry, the ADS-3300W Wireless High-Speed Desktop Scanner ($369.99), costs $20 much than the ADS-4300N and has somewhat little capableness but features a touch-screen alternatively of bare-buttons power panel. It's an fantabulous papers scanner, but the ADS-3300W falls abbreviated of replacing the Epson RapidReceipt RR-600W and Fujitsu ScanSnap iX1600, our favourite entry-level-to-midrange sheetfed desktop scanners for home-office oregon small-office and workgroup papers management.

Just Another First-Class Desktop Document Scanner

As I said, the ADS-3300W is 4th successful the pecking bid of Brother's caller scanners, positioned beneath the 3 ADS-4000 bid models already reviewed and supra the ADS-3100 waiting successful the wings. At 7.5 by 11.7 by 8.5 inches (HWD) with its trays closed and weighing 6.3 pounds, it's astir the aforesaid size arsenic different papers scanners successful this class, and similar them extends to arsenic overmuch arsenic 3 times its desk-space footprint with its input and output trays unfastened for business.

In summation to the abovementioned Fujitsu and Epson, different competitors of akin stature see the HP ScanJet Pro N4000 snw1 and the Raven Original Document Scanner. The past is simply a fewer pounds heavier owed to its 8-inch, tablet-like power panel.

A 2.8-inch interaction surface lets you configure and execute scans from the beforehand of the device. (Credit: Brother)

The Brother's power sheet combines 3 buttons—Back, Home, and Cancel—with a 2.8-inch colour interaction screen. From here, you tin prime from a database of preconfigured workflow profiles. (You negociate profiles with the ScanEssentials bundle included successful the downloadable bundle; much astir it successful a minute.) Only the Brother ADS-3100 and ADS-4300W deficiency interaction screens; the RapidReceipt and ScanSnap person 4.3-inch panels versus the Raven's 8-inch whopper.

Using the ADS-3300W's power panel, you tin configure and execute scan jobs connected the alert oregon take among workflow shortcuts that harvester settings specified arsenic one- oregon two-sided (simplex oregon duplex) scanning, destination, output layout, resolution, and more. The scanner's maximum optical solution is 600dpi (1,200dpi interpolated); similar its Brother siblings, it supports papers sizes ranging from 2 inches quadrate to 8.5 inches wide by 16.4 feet long. Color extent is 24-bit and grayscale is 8-bit.

You tin scan to azygous oregon aggregate destinations including unreality sites, email, FTP, section drives, and societal media sites. Access to Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Expensify, Google Drive, OneDrive, OneNote, and SharePoint Online is built in, and adding different sites is simple. Supported output formats see image, searchable, secure, and signed PDF; single- and multipage TIFF; BMP; plain text; and Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Inside the container are a setup usher and assorted flyers, a USB 3.0 cable, and an AC adapter with cord. You download ScanEssentials and different bundle from Brother's enactment site.

A setup guide, USB 3.0 cable, and powerfulness adapter travel with the scanner. (Credit: Brother)

As for handling your originals, the ADS-3300W's automatic papers feeder (ADF) holds 60 sheets, and its maximum regular work rhythm is 6,000 scans. The ADS-4300N and ADS-4700W person the aforesaid work cycles but 80-page ADFs, portion the flagship ADS-4900W holds 100 pages and is rated for 9,000 scans. For comparison's sake, the Fujitsu, Raven, and HP scanners each person 50-sheet feeders and the Epson a 100-sheet ADF. The HP, Epson, and Raven tin bash 4,000 scans a day, portion the Fujitsu tin grip 6,000.

Connecting to and Using the ADS-3300W

The Brother's built-in interfaces see USB 3.0 (USB 2.0 compatible), Ethernet, and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. This exemplary tin besides scan to flash drives and different USB retention devices via a larboard connected the rear of the scanner.

Rear connections see USB and Ethernet (as good arsenic Wi-Fi), positive a larboard for USB thumb drives. (Credit: Brother)

In summation to Wi-Fi, mobile connectivity consists of Apple AirPrint and Brother Mobile Connect, arsenic good arsenic respective unreality and societal media sites. The downloadable bundle bundle consists of Brother iPrint&Scan Desktop for Windows and Mac, Brother ScanEssentials Lite, and Kofax PaperPort SE with OCR for Windows.

Brother's iPrint&Scan is simply a scanner interface and papers archiving program. (Credit: Brother)

The first, utilized with some Brother's stand-alone scanners and its all-in-one printers, does precisely what its sanction says: It acts arsenic a scanner interface for digitizing hard-copy information and converting it to 1 of respective formats. These see representation oregon searchable PDF, oregon Microsoft Word, Excel, oregon PowerPoint.

ScanEssentials Lite is simply a stripped-down mentation of Brother's archetypal ScanEssentials software. (Credit: Brother)

ScanEssentials Lite is, arsenic you tin guess, a pared-down mentation of ScanEssentials, Brother's full-featured scanner interface and papers archiving program. Kofax PaperPort, bundled with scanners from aggregate vendors, provides a operation scanner interface and document-archiving beforehand extremity with a features specified arsenic optical quality designation (OCR), databases of keywords and phrases, and systematic record naming and directory structuring.

Brother besides provides a fistful of third-party drivers including ISIS, Sane, TWAIN, and WIA, that fto you link to immoderate of the galore programs (such arsenic Adobe Acrobat and Photoshop, and the Microsoft Office applications) that enactment scanning into them directly. 

Testing the ADS-3300W: Rated Speeds, Industry-Standard Accuracy

Brother rates the ADS-3300W's scanning velocity astatine 40 one-sided (simplex) pages per infinitesimal (ppm) and 80 two-sided (duplex) images per infinitesimal (ipm, with each leafage broadside counted arsenic an image). All of the different scanners mentioned present stock those ratings, but for the Epson RR-600W astatine 35ppm and 70ipm.

I ran my tests with iPrint&Scan implicit a USB transportation to our Intel Core i5 testbed PC moving Windows 10 Pro. First, I timed the ADS-3300W and its bundle arsenic it scanned some our one- and two-sided 25-page substance documents earlier redeeming them arsenic representation PDF files. At 43.9ppm and 84.3ipm, the ADS-3300W not lone exceeded its ratings but landed connected the precocious broadside of average, with the lower-rated Epson trailing the others.

Next, I clocked the scanner arsenic it converted our two-sided 25-page papers to the much versatile searchable PDF format. It finished the occupation successful 37 seconds, which was 1 of the slowest times successful the group, but by lone 2 oregon 3 seconds successful astir cases. The Brother ADS-4900W was the lone notably quicker entrant, astatine 24 seconds.

Today's computers bash galore things good and with large precision, but that wasn't ever the case—time was, optical quality designation had much than its stock of unsmooth edges. But arsenic I've noted successful different reviews, OCR successful caller years has matured to virtually 100% accuracy arsenic agelong arsenic the documents you scan are reasonably legible and successful decent shape. Like astir of the papers scanners we've sampled lately, the Brother ADS-3300W work our Arial (sans-serif) and Times New Roman (serif) pages error-free successful sizes down to 6 points. A fewer of its peers, specified arsenic the Raven Original, managed error-free results down to 5 points with 1 oregon the different font, but a quality of 1 constituent is negligible. So are your chances of encountering stacks of documents with substance smaller than 9 oregon 10 points successful the existent world.

I besides scanned a fewer stacks of concern cards into Presto BizCard and a clump of receipts and invoices into BR-Receipts, with predictably good results. As usual, BizCard does a large occupation of populating the close database fields with interaction data, arsenic agelong arsenic you springiness it cards without a batch of fills, shadows, and exotic fonts. BR-Receipts besides worked good erstwhile fixed comparatively cleanable originals with legible substance and figures; you whitethorn person to bash a small configuring to conscionable your needs, but the program's learning curve is reasonably shallow.

Want an Entry oregon Midrange Document Scanner? Throw a Dart astatine a List

If you request a high-volume workhorse scanner, you mightiness privation to see the Editors' Choice award-winning Brother ADS-4900W oregon the somewhat little robust ADS-4700W. But if your needs don't transcend mean volume, you person galore choices, astir of them great. The ADS-3300W is simply a first-rate papers absorption platform; it doesn't rather lucifer the 4.5-star ratings of the Epson RR-600W and Fujitsu iX1600, but it surely deserves information arsenic a worthy alternative.