Brother DS-940DW Scanner: In-Depth Review and User Opinions

Overview of the Brother DS-940DW Scanner

The Brother DS-940DW is a compact and fast duplex desktop document scanner. It's designed for home and small office use to digitize documents, photos, business cards, receipts and more.

Some key features of this scanner include:

• Compact size with minimal footprint, suitable for tight desks
• Fast duplex (two-sided) scanning at speeds up to 40 pages per minute
• 50-page automatic document feeder
• Built-in USB and wireless connectivity
• Scans directly to the cloud, email, applications and more
• Ability to scan ID cards and long documents up to 8.5" x 118"
• Bundled software for document management and OCR

With its speed, wireless connectivity, and suite of scanning capabilities, the DS-940DW aims to be an easy-to-use and versatile scanner for home office and small business needs. This review will dive into its design, image quality, performance and other features.

Design

The Brother DS-940DW is designed to be compact, portable, and easy to move around your home or office.

Weighing just 5.7 pounds, the scanner has a small footprint that takes up minimal desk space. The dimensions are 11.4 x 3.7 x 3.7 inches, so it can easily fit into tight spaces. Despite the small size, the scanner still has an 8.5 inch scan bed that can handle documents up to 8.5 x 118 inches in length.

The lightweight build makes the DS-940DW very portable. You can comfortably carry it between rooms or pack it up if you need to transport it. The compact design doesn't sacrifice durability either. The scanner has a sturdy plastic case that can withstand regular use.

Overall, the streamlined design focuses on portability without limiting functionality. The small, light DS-940DW delivers scanning power while remaining easy to set up anywhere you need it.

Image Quality

The Brother DS-940DW scanner can scan documents at up to 600 dpi optical resolution. This allows you to capture fine details and text in your scans clearly and legibly.

At the default 300 dpi setting, the scanner produces scans comparable to typical office document quality. But the higher 600 dpi resolution lets you digitize documents, photos, and graphics with extra sharpness and clarity. This is useful for archiving old photos or scanning detailed drawings and blueprints where you want to preserve fine details.

600 dpi is more than sufficient for accurately capturing most documents, books, magazines, receipts, and other paper materials. Unless you need to magnify tiny elements, 600 dpi will provide clean and crisp scans for both everyday office use and archiving precious memories and documents.

Overall, the DS-940DW produces high-quality scans with its 600 dpi maximum optical resolution. This allows you to digitize materials at a level of detail that captures even small text and intricate graphics accurately.

Speed

The Brother DS-940DW offers fast scanning speeds of up to 30 pages per minute (ppm) in both color and black and white. This makes it easy to quickly digitize large amounts of documents. 30 ppm is very respectable for a compact desktop scanner in this price range.

In testing, the scanner is able to reliably hit its rated scanning speed. Documents are grabbed from the feeder and scanned quickly. Using the included software, you can scan directly to searchable PDF format without any noticeable slowdown.

The fast speed means you won't be waiting long to digitize stacks of documents. For reference, the average office worker types 40-60 words per minute, so you'd likely have time to start reviewing scanned pages before the scanner has finished a large job. Overall, the speed is sufficient for most home office and small business needs.

Connectivity

The Brother DS-940DW offers excellent connectivity options. It has built-in wireless 802.11b/g/n and a wireless direct feature that allows you to connect directly to the scanner without going through a network. You can also connect using the Hi-Speed USB 2.0 interface.

For scanning on the go, the Brother DS-940DW has support for both Brother iPrint&Scan mobile app and Apple AirPrint. The iPrint&Scan app allows you to use your iOS or Android device to scan directly to your phone or tablet. AirPrint allows you to print from your iOS device.

The wireless and mobile connectivity features make the DS-940DW flexible for home office use. You can easily scan from multiple computers without having to plug and unplug the USB cable. The mobile support also gives you scanning capabilities even when away from your main computer.

Document Feeding

The Brother DS-940DW comes with a built-in 50-sheet auto document feeder (ADF) that allows you to quickly scan multiple pages in one batch without having to place each page individually on the flatbed. The ADF can handle paper sizes from 2.76 x 5.82 inches up to 8.5 x 38.6 inches.

It's a reliable and sturdy auto feeder that works well for both single sided and double sided documents. Even thin papers around 16lb can go through the ADF without problems. The auto document feeder has a daily duty cycle of up to 3,000 sheets, which is more than sufficient for most small and home offices.

Overall the ADF saves you considerable time when scanning or copying multi-page documents compared to a scanner with just a flatbed. It's a useful feature to have for organizing receipts, digitizing files, archiving records and other day-to-day document management needs.

Scanning Features

The Brother DS-940DW comes with a robust set of scanning capabilities designed to make digitizing documents fast and efficient.

One of the standout features is the ability to scan directly to searchable PDF format. The onboard OCR software can recognize text in scanned documents and make the PDF text searchable and selectable. This makes it easy to scan a document and quickly search for keywords or select and copy text from the PDF.

Another useful scan-to feature is the ability to convert scanned documents into Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other popular formats. The bundled Nuance PaperPort software or integrated OCR can take a scanned document and convert it into a fully editable file. For example, you can scan a printed report and convert it into a .docx Word document that you can then edit or reformat. This saves a tremendous amount of time versus having to manually retype documents.

The scanner also supports single and double-sided scanning up to 50 pages at a time through the auto document feeder. Resolution can be set up to 1200 dpi for crisp text and image quality. Pages can be scanned to a variety of destinations including email, applications, network folders, FTP sites, image formats like JPG and more.

Overall, the scanning capabilities allow both simple digitization of documents as well as powerful OCR conversion features to help maximize productivity.

Software

The Brother DS-940DW scanner comes with Nuance Power PDF software for editing scanned documents. This allows you to edit PDFs created from scanned pages, including adding or deleting text and images, creating bookmarks, inserting links, and more.

Power PDF makes it easy to convert your scans into searchable and editable PDFs through optical character recognition (OCR). It can recognize text in over 100 languages to enable editing and repurposing of scanned documents. You can also use the built-in Nuance OCR tool to convert your scans into a variety of file formats like DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, HTML and more.

In addition, Power PDF includes collaboration features like the ability to share files by email, add comments and annotations, enable digital signatures, and more. It provides a full suite of PDF creation and editing tools, allowing you to get the most out of your scans without needing additional software.

Overall, the inclusion of Nuance Power PDF adds significant value, giving you powerful capabilities for working with and enhancing scanned documents.

Pros

Compact Size

The Brother DS-940DW is incredibly compact for a document scanner. Measuring just 11.7 x 3.7 x 3.2 inches and weighing 2.2 lbs, it has a tiny footprint and is easy to tuck away or bring with you between home and office. The scanner's small size makes it a great choice if you're tight on desk space.

Fast Scanning Speed

Speed is one of the DS-940DW's biggest strengths. It can scan up to 40 pages per minute in both color and monochrome. This makes it much faster than your average flatbed scanner. The fast scan speeds save you time when digitizing large stacks of documents.

Wireless Connectivity

A standout feature of this scanner is the built-in wireless connectivity. You can scan directly to a PC, Mac, iOS or Android device wirelessly over Wi-Fi, no cables required. The wireless functionality makes it easy to scan from multiple devices and allows for more flexible scanner placement.

Cons

The Brother DS-940DW has a few drawbacks to consider:

• No built-in OCR - This scanner lacks optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities. You'll need to use third-party OCR software to convert scanned documents into editable text. This adds an extra step to your workflow.

• Limited ADF capacity - The auto document feeder only holds 20 sheets at a time. This is quite low compared to competing scanners with 50+ sheet ADF capacity. You'll need to refill the ADF more frequently when scanning multi-page documents.

• No USB 3.0 - With a USB 2.0 interface, transfer speeds are limited. Scanning over WiFi can help offset this, but a USB 3.0 port would have been better for wired transfers.

• Lacks duplex scanning - You can only scan one side of the page at a time. To scan both sides, you'll have to run each sheet through the ADF twice. This doubles the time needed for double sided originals.

• No built-in rechargeable battery - Since this is not battery powered, you must keep the scanner plugged into an outlet to use it. This limits the portability.