Brother ADS-1700W Scanner: In-Depth Review and User Opinions

The Brother ADS-1700W is an excellent desktop scanner designed for small businesses, home offices, and professionals who need to quickly digitize documents and photos. With its compact size, wireless connectivity, and fast duplex scanning, this scanner makes it easy to go paperless and organize important files.

Some of the key highlights of the Brother ADS-1700W include its ability to scan both sides of a page at once, scan directly to popular cloud services, create searchable PDFs, and a highly portable design. Weighing just over 2 pounds, this lightweight scanner can be easily moved between locations as needed.

Overall, the ADS-1700W offers a versatile scanning solution in a compact package. It balances useful productivity features like 20ppm scan speeds with the convenience of wireless networking. For anyone looking to cut down on clutter and seamlessly manage paper documents, the Brother ADS-1700W is an ideal choice.

Design

The Brother ADS-1700W has a compact and lightweight design that makes it easy to use in a home office or small business setting. It measures 11.7 x 3.7 x 3.7 inches and weighs just 5.5 pounds, so it doesn't take up much desk space.

The scanner has a simple, black plastic exterior that looks professional without being flashy. It comes in either black or white color options to match your existing office decor. The flatbed lid features a subtle woven texture that adds some visual interest.

Overall, the clean lines and matte black or white finish give the Brother ADS-1700W an understated look. It's designed to blend in seamlessly on your desk rather than stand out. The compact footprint means it can sit conveniently near your workspace without occupying too much real estate.

Setup

The ADS-1700W is very easy to set up, with both USB and wireless connectivity options. For USB, you simply plug the scanner into your computer using the included USB cable. For wireless, you connect to the scanner's built-in WiFi network and install the Brother software on your computer.

The software installation is straightforward - you download the latest drivers and software from Brother's website and follow the onscreen instructions. The bundled software includes Brother's Control Center software which lets you configure scan settings and initiate scans from your computer. There's also Nuance PaperPort SE for document management and ABBYY FineReader Sprint for OCR.

The wizard-based setup walks you through connecting the scanner, installing software, and testing out a sample scan. Overall the setup process is smooth and trouble-free. The ADS-1700W works right out of the box with both USB and wireless connections.

Scanning Features

The Brother ADS-1700W scanner comes equipped with a variety of useful scanning features.

• Scan Speed: The ADS-1700W has fast scan speeds, capable of scanning up to 35 pages per minute in both color and monochrome. This makes it easy to digitize large volumes of documents quickly.

• File Formats: The scanner can save scanned documents directly to JPEG, TIFF, PDF, Secure PDF, Signed PDF, XPS, Searchable PDF, Microsoft Office file formats and more. This level of format flexibility makes it simple to save scans in a file type suitable for your needs.

• Scan Resolution: The optical scan resolution is up to 600 x 600 dpi for crisp, clear scans. Interpolation technology can enhance resolutions up to 1200 x 1200 dpi. You can adjust the resolution as needed depending on whether you need high quality images or just need to digitize documents with legible text.

Image Quality

The Brother ADS-1700W produces scans with excellent image quality overall. The color accuracy is very good, providing vibrant and natural looking colors without any noticeable color casts or shifts.

The scanner captures a high amount of detail and sharpness. Even small text is rendered crisply and clearly in scans. Fine details like patterns, textures, and gradients are maintained nicely.

The contrast level seems well balanced out of the box. The scans avoid looking too dark or washed out. Shadow and highlight details are preserved well without clipping blacks or blowing out whites.

The image enhancements built into the Brother scanning software allow you to tweak the contrast, brightness, and color settings if desired. This gives you added control over the final scan output.

Overall, the image quality from the Brother ADS-1700W will meet the needs of most home and small office users. The scans are very usable for archiving documents and photos or converting paper materials into digital formats.

Paper Handling

The Brother ADS-1700W has an automatic document feeder that can hold up to 20 pages, allowing for easy scanning of multi-page documents. The ADF supports double-sided scanning, so you can scan both sides of a page in one pass. This saves time compared to having to manually turn over each page to scan the second side.

The scanner can handle paper weights between 14-28 lbs and paper sizes up to 8.5 x 34 inches, making it suitable for scanning standard letter and legal sized documents. It also supports longer pages for scanning receipts and other documents. The straight paper path allows pages to feed directly through without bending.

Overall, the ADF capacity, double-sided scanning support, and ability to handle common paper weights and sizes makes the ADS-1700W well-suited for scanning multi-page documents efficiently. The paper handling capabilities are comparable to other desktop document scanners in this price range.

Software

The ADS-1700W comes with a robust software suite to maximize its scanning capabilities. Here are some of the key software features:

• Nuance Power PDF - This powerful PDF editor allows you to create, edit, annotate, and share PDF files. It includes optical character recognition (OCR) to turn scanned documents into searchable and editable PDFs.

• Nuance PaperPort - This document management software lets you organize, edit and share scanned documents. It has built-in OCR to convert scans into editable formats.

• ControlCenter4 - This is Brother's scanner management software. It provides shortcuts to common scanning tasks and allows you to configure scan settings.

• Nuance OmniPage - This OCR software can accurately convert scanned documents into various formats like Word, Excel, and searchable PDF. It supports over 120 languages.

• Receipt Manager - This app allows you to scan, organize and manage receipts. It can extract key receipt data for expenses reporting.

The ADS-1700W's included software provides robust OCR capabilities in multiple languages. The scanning workflow is streamlined through the specialized apps for scanning common document types like receipts and converting them into editable formats.

Connectivity

The Brother ADS-1700W offers versatile connectivity options for accessing and sharing your scans.

Wired: The scanner connects directly to your computer via the included USB cable for scanning right to your desktop. This provides a fast, reliable connection.

Wireless: Built-in WiFi allows you to scan wirelessly to your PC or mobile devices. You can scan to shared folders, emails, apps, and cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote and more. Wireless scanning makes it easy to digitize documents from anywhere in your home or office.

Mobile: Use the Brother iPrint&Scan app to wirelessly scan directly from your iPhone, iPad, Android phone or tablet. This gives you scanning on the go for ultimate convenience. You can also print from your mobile device using the app.

The ADS-1700W gives you the flexibility to scan over a wired or wireless network as well as directly from your mobile devices. This comprehensive connectivity suite enables seamless integration into your existing workflow.

Pros and Cons

The Brother ADS-1700W scanner has several noteworthy pros and cons that are important to consider.

Pros

• Compact and lightweight design makes it easy to transport and place in small spaces
• Fast single pass duplex scanning speeds up to 34 pages per minute
• Can scan directly to cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote and more
• Supports scanning up to legal size documents
• Built-in wireless connectivity for scanning without cables
• Included software provides OCR for converting scans to searchable PDFs
• 50 sheet automatic document feeder capacity

Cons

• Lack of an automatic document feeder means scanning multiple pages requires manually feeding each page
• No onboard LCD or control panel, must be controlled via software
• Limited file format support - JPG, PDF, searchable PDF, TIFF, BMP
• No plastic ID card scanning capability
• Higher price point compared to non-wireless document scanners

Overall, the Brother ADS-1700W offers fast duplex scanning speeds, wireless connectivity and cloud scanning features in a portable package. The main downsides are the lack of an onboard control panel, limited file formats, and higher price compared to non-wireless competitors. For users wanting wireless scanning to the cloud, it provides a capable option, but users wanting more robust scanning software and options may want to look at other alternatives.

Conclusion

The Brother ADS-1700W is an excellent choice for a wireless desktop document scanner for home or small office use. It offers fast duplex scanning speeds, capable software with OCR, and wireless networking to easily send scans to various destinations.

The image quality is very good for a scanner in this price range, producing sharp text and accurate color reproduction. The 50 page auto document feeder can handle mixed stacks of documents reliably. The scanner has a compact footprint that takes up minimal desk space.

Compared to competitors like the Epson ES-500W and Canon imageFORMULA R40, the Brother ADS-1700W matches or exceeds their performance and features at a more affordable price point. It provides a better value proposition if you don't require a large automatic document feeder capacity.

Overall, the Brother ADS-1700W hits the sweet spot of price versus performance and convenience without many compromises. For home office and small business users wanting an easy-to-use wireless scanner, the Brother ADS-1700W is highly recommended.