Gadget Guy review of the Brother ADS-1700W duplex portable scanner

The Brother ADS-1700W is a portable, duplex (double-sided) sheetfed scanner that is rated for high volume up to 1000 scans a day.

Although portable is a misnomer – the Brother ADS-1700W duplex portable scanner is more of a very compact scanner without a battery at 300(W) x 103(D) x 83(H)mm x 1.4kg.
The key to this scanner’s portability is the use of dual CIS (Contact Imaging Sensor) that eliminates the need for bulky optic lenses, mirrors, RGB filters, separate light sources and CCD (Charged Coupled Device) or CMOS sensors.

CCD is the same technology used in high-end cameras. Coupled with the right lenses and light source it gives a superior image/scan including a wider colour gamut (colour space). It can also scan items placed on a platen including items of varying thickness.

CIS is perfect for a sheet-fed scanner where hundreds of LEDs and fibre optic lenses to transfer the original image information. CIS can give a higher optical resolution, no lens distortion and higher reliability at the expense of a wider colour gamut.

And before you say it is not for photos the hugely successful Epson FastFoto, FF-680W uses CIS and scored 4.7 in GadgetGuy’s comprehensive review here. CIS with good software is hard to beat for most sheetfed scanning needs – just keep the scanning windows and rollers clean.

In the box

• The diminutive scanner – the ADF folds over as a cover
• 5V/3A power supply with round pin socket. Power can also come via the Micro-B cable, but scan speeds may be lower depending on the current supplied
• USB-A 3.0 to micro-B cable (as used in some external hard disks for faster data transfer up to 4.8Gbps)
• CD software, otherwise it is a 200MB driver/firmware plus close to 400MB of software inc Paper Port and Brother iPrint and Scan.
• Quick set up guide (online 208-page manual here)

Scan Speed

It rated at 25 A4 pages per minute regardless of colour or mono source originals. So, we put 20 printed A4 sheets (maximum) in the auto document feeder (ADF) and hit the start button. The result was the equivalent of 28 sheets per minute at the default 300 DPI resolution – nice to see conservative figures quoted. Full duplex means the two CIS bars (one each side) scan both sides of the paper at once.

I am not a fan of 300 DPI scans resolution – it is fine for paperwork, and you can swap to 600 x 600 DPI native (or 1200 DPI interpolated). This reduces scan speeds by about 50% and increases file size up to 6MB.

Read the full review on the Gadget Guy website here.