Brother ADS-4700W Scanner: In-Depth Review and User Opinions

The Brother ADS-4700W is an advanced desktop document scanner aimed at small and home offices. This scanner offers fast two-sided scanning up to 60 pages per minute in both color and black and white. It can scan documents up to 8.5" x 120" in size through the ADF or 11" x 17" using the flatbed scanner.

With wireless connectivity and support for popular cloud storage services, the ADS-4700W allows you to quickly scan documents and save them directly to the cloud or your mobile devices. It also includes powerful scanning and image processing features, such as the ability to scan to searchable PDF, remove blank pages, or correct skewed documents.

Overall, the Brother ADS-4700W combines high-speed scanning, wireless versatility, and advanced image processing in a compact desktop package designed for document management and organization in a small office or home office environment. This review will examine the key features and performance of this scanner model.

Design

The Brother ADS-4700W has a sleek, compact design perfect for home offices or small businesses. It measures 11.7 x 7.1 x 7.1 inches and weighs only 6.17 lbs, so it doesn't take up much space on your desk.

Despite its small footprint, the ADS-4700W still has a robust automatic document feeder that can hold up to 50 sheets. The ADF has aDaily Duty Cycle of up to 5,000 sheets and can scan documents at speeds up to 40ppm (pages per minute) in fast mode.

The entire scanner is made out of durable plastic with a matte black finish that looks professional. There are easy to reach buttons on the front for power, start, and simple mode. Overall, the ADS-4700W combines fast scanning speeds, a large ADF capacity, and a space-saving design in one affordable package.

Setup

Setting up the Brother ADS-4700W desktop scanner is straightforward. Unpacking the box, you'll find the scanner itself, power cord, USB cable, calibration sheet, and installation CD.

Installing the software is easy - just pop in the included CD or download the latest version from Brother's website. It will install drivers as well as Brother's Control Center software, which allows you to configure scan settings and initiate scans from your computer.

The scanner connects via USB 2.0 or built-in wireless 802.11b/g/n. If using USB, simply plug in the cable. For wireless, press the WiFi button on the scanner to set up a direct connection to your WiFi network. The scanner supports WEP 64/128, WPA-PSK (TKIP/AES), and WPA2-PSK (AES) security.

Overall, setting up the ADS-4700W is quick and painless. The installation CD or web download handles the driver installation, while the scanner itself automatically connects wirelessly or via USB. You'll be ready to start scanning documents in no time.

Scanning Features

The Brother ADS-4700W scanner has impressive scanning capabilities to meet the needs of most home office and small business users.

Scan Speed

This scanner can scan up to 40 pages per minute in both color and monochrome. The 50-page automatic document feeder allows you to quickly scan multi-page documents without having to manually feed each page.

File Formats

The ADS-4700W supports common file formats including JPEG, TIFF, PDF, Secure PDF, Signed PDF, PNG, BMP and more. You have the flexibility to choose the optimal format for your needs.

Resolution Options

Optical scan resolutions up to 600 x 600 dpi ensure sharp, detailed scans. Interpolated scan resolutions up to 1200 x 1200 dpi are also available for even finer image quality. The scanner can handle intricate documents with small text and fine details.

Connectivity

The Brother ADS-4700W offers several connectivity options for scanning and accessing your documents from multiple devices.

Wired

The scanner has a USB 3.0 port that allows you to connect directly to your computer for scanning documents into programs like Photoshop, your DMS, or OCR software. The USB 3.0 interface provides fast transfer speeds when sending scanned files to your computer.

Wireless

One of the key features of this scanner is the built-in wireless connectivity. You can connect the ADS-4700W to your WiFi network, allowing you to scan documents wirelessly to your computer from anywhere in your home or office. It's compatible with both 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi bands for a reliable wireless connection.

Mobile Device Connectivity

In addition to USB and WiFi, you can use the Brother iPrint&Scan app to connect your smartphone or tablet directly to the scanner. This allows you to scan documents and photos directly to your mobile device, great for when you're on the go. The app also lets you print from your mobile device to a compatible Brother printer connected to the same network.

Image Quality

The Brother ADS-4700W offers excellent image quality for both color and black and white scans. It can scan documents at up to 600 dpi optical resolution, ensuring sharp image capture and legibility of fine text.

The scanner employs a dual CIS scanning element that reliably captures details and produces scans free from distortion. Image enhancement features like automatic de-skew, background smoothing, and blank page removal allow you to improve scans without editing afterwards.

Optical character recognition (OCR) is another strong point of this scanner. It can accurately recognize text in over 60 languages and extract it into editable document formats. The included OCR software has built-in spell check to catch any errors. This makes it easy to turn paper documents into searchable and editable digital files.

Overall, the image quality and OCR capabilities of the ADS-4700W make it well-suited for digitizing documents and archiving them for search and retrieval. The scans it produces are comparable to professional-grade scanners costing much more.

Ease of Use

The Brother ADS-4700W has an intuitive and user-friendly design. The 7-inch color touchscreen interface makes it easy to navigate the various scanning options and customize settings. There are also physical buttons below the screen for common tasks like starting a scan or copying.

The control panel uses icons and clear labeling which allows users to readily understand the different functions. Options can be selected on the touchscreen by tapping or using swipe gestures. The interface is responsive and designed in a straightforward layout.

Scanning shortcuts can be setup to streamline routine jobs like saving to a specific folder or email destination. These shortcuts save time compared to manually configuring the settings each time.

Overall, the ADS-4700W offers effortless control for both basic and advanced scanning needs. The combination of the touchscreen and physical buttons cater to user preferences. Novices will find the scanner simple to operate while power users can take advantage of the more advanced capabilities.

ADF Capacity

The Brother ADS-4700W scanner has an automatic document feeder (ADF) that can hold up to 50 sheets of paper at a time. This is a decent capacity and on par with other document scanners in this price range.

The ADF can reliably scan one-sided or two-sided documents. It has a daily duty cycle of up to 5,000 pages per day. This makes the ADS-4700W suitable for medium to high volume scanning needs in a small office setting. If you expect to scan more than 5,000 pages per day frequently, you may want to consider a more industrial-level scanner.

For most small businesses and home office users, the 50 page ADF capacity and 5,000 page daily duty cycle should suffice. You can scan multi-page documents efficiently without having to stand by the scanner constantly loading one sheet at a time. This scanner can take stacks of documents and digitize them reliably.

Overall, the ADF capacity is sufficient for the target users of this desktop wireless scanner. It has the right balance of volume handling without driving up the cost too much.

Software

The Brother ADS-4700W comes bundled with a suite of software to enhance your scanning experience.

• Nuance PaperPort SE 14 - This is a document management and editing program that allows you to organize, edit, annotate, and share scanned documents. It has OCR capabilities to make scanned documents searchable and editable.

• Nuance OmniPage SE 18 - An OCR software that accurately converts scanned documents into editable formats like Word, Excel, PDF and more. It can handle complex layouts and fonts.

• Nuance PowerPDF - A PDF editor that lets you create, edit, convert, annotate, assemble, fill forms in PDF documents.

• Brother Control Center 4 - Offers centralized access to the scanner settings and functions. It also includes a configurable scan button for initiating scans.

The scanner also integrates seamlessly with various third-party apps and cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote, OneNote allowing you to directly scan to these services. The bundled software enhances the versatility and capabilities of the scanner.

Pros and Cons

The Brother ADS-4700W offers many benefits but also has some downsides to consider. Here is a summary of the main pros and cons:

Pros

• Fast duplex scanning up to 40ppm/80ipm in color and monochrome
• Large automatic document feeder holds up to 50 pages
• Creates searchable and editable PDFs
• Easy to set up and use color touchscreen
• Built-in wireless connectivity for scanning to multiple devices
• Supports popular cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote
• Comes with Document Capture Pro 3.0 scanning and organization software

Cons

• Lacks an automatic document feeder for scanning single sheets
• No built-in OCR for converting scans to editable formats
• Cannot scan directly to email
• Higher cost than some competitor models
• Large footprint may take up significant desk space

The fast duplex scanning speeds, large ADF capacity, wireless connectivity, and included software make this a versatile choice. But the lack of a flatbed scanner, OCR capabilities, and email scanning may be drawbacks for some users. Overall it offers robust scanning and connectivity for digitizing documents, though the higher price and large size are worth factoring in.