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Review: Brother’s ImageCenter ADS-2500W Scanner – Hands-On Test Report Available

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“This compact color document scanner boasts thoughtful design and high quality. It’s designed to suit the needs for non-authenticated digital communications and basic archival workflows. In testing, we found that it does so very efficiently and is a big step up from the scanning capabilities provided by a garden-variety MFP or All-in-One.” – Terry Wirth, President, Wirth Consulting.

We recently completed Hands-On testing of Brother’s ImageCenter ADS-2500W digital scanner ($799.99). Key feature include swipe-enabled touch screen; scan to network folders, cloud and social- networking services; single-pass scanning of two-sided originals; and wired and wireless networking.

The ImageCenter ADS-2500W also includes a nice assortment of software, including: Brother ControlCenter4 Scanning Control Center, Nuance PDF Converter Professional 7, Nuance Paper Port 12 SE for Windows and Presto! Page Manager 9 for Mac, Nuance PDF Viewer Plus Professional 7, and Presto BizCard 6/5 for Windows/Mac, the last of which is for importing information scanned from business cards into a contact-management database.

Functions:  Scan
Suggested Daily Scan Volume: 1,500 scans
Estimated Street Price:  $799.99
Availability: Brother Web site, Retail
Introduction Date: September 2012

Brother’s ImageCenter ADS-2500W is a full-color desktop scanner and is Brother’s flagship document scanner. It features wired and wireless connectivity, and scan to email servers, FTP sites, and to cloud-based document storage sites such as Google Docs, as well as to Microsoft SharePoint through the included Nuance PaperPort software.

Following are a few of our findings:

Tested Scan Speed
Test scanned speeds of up to 20.64 images per minute (ipm) in simplex mode and up to 41.29 ipm in duplex mode were somewhat slower than Brother’s rather scan speed of 24/48 ipm.

Original Handling
We observed reliable original handling, with no misfeeding, double-feeding, etc. occurring.

Feature Set
The ADS-2500W has a useful feature set that includes 50-sheet automatic document feeder with single-pass duplex scanning, TWAIN and ISIS scan drivers, and ability to scan ID and business cards, including embossed cards, and fragile originals.

Available scan-to-cloud Web Destinations (Screen 1 of 3)

More Scanning Destinations on the Touch Screen (screen 2 of 3)

More Scanning Destinations on the Touch Screen (screen 3 of 3)

Ease of Use
Overall, software is intuitive to use and self-explanatory, and good help resources are provided. The touch panel and touch screen are among the easiest to use among all touch panels and screens we’ve used and make it particularly easy to use inherently complicated scanning features. The shortcuts feature also provides a huge boost to ease of use.

The ADS-2500W has an attractive, swipeable, and easy-to use touch screen that has same scan interfaces and features found on the latest Brother inkjet All-in-Ones. The touch panel has no hard keys.

Build Quality
We observed sturdy build quality, and the document feeder serves as a cover to protect the paper path and touch panel when the scanner isn’t being used.

The unit is compact. The touch screen can be viewed through a window in the cover/original feed tray.

Maintenance
Minimal maintenance is required—users must only periodically replace the paper-feed rollers and separation pads. Both of these items are easy to replace and are good for scanning up to 50,000 originals each, so they will only need to be replaced very infrequently. A roller and separation counter is also conveniently displayed each time the user clicks on the Status Monitor utility icon in the task bar.

Changing the feed roller.

Changing the separation pad.

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