A sheet-feed, network document scanner, the Brother ImageCenter ADS-3600W ($799.99) offers excellent value, with a solid feature set and strong performance. It's not as elegant, nor is its software as network-friendly, as the Editors' Choice Canon imageFormula ScanFront 400. ($1,496.00 at Amazon) The ScanFront 400, however, sells for more than twice as much and is limited to Ethernet connectivity, while the ADS-3600W ($999.97 at Amazon) connects via USB, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct, and NFC in addition to Ethernet. It's an easy pick as Editors' Choice for midrange to heavy-duty network scanning in small and midsize offices and workgroups.
Design and Features
At 10 pounds and 9.8 by 12.1 by 10.2 inches (HWD) with its trays closed, the ADS-3600W is similar in size to the ScanFront 400 (9.1 by 12 by 11.1 inches, 10 pounds). It's somewhat smaller and lighter, though, than several non-networkable competitors, including the HP ScanJet Enterprise Flow 7000 s3 Sheet-Feed Scanner (7.5 by 12.2 by 7.8 inches, 8.4 pounds) and the Canon ImageFormula DR-M160II ($715.00 at Amazon) (9.1 by 11 by 9.8 inches, 7.1 pounds), both Editors' Choice winners. (To be fair, the ScanJet does support Wi-Fi via an add-on.) As with most document scanners, when you extend the automatic document feeder (ADF) tray upward from the rear and the output tray outward from the front, the ADS-3600W's height and depth increase significantly, to about twice as high and triple in length. Even so, it should fit on most desktops comfortably.
Compared with competing models, the ADS-3600W's 50-sheet ADF and 5,000-scan daily duty cycle rating are on the short side. The ScanFront 400's ADF holds 60 sheets and it is rated at 6,000 scans per day, and the Scanjet 7000 has an 80-sheet ADF and a 7,500-scan-per-day duty cycle. As mentioned, the ADS-3600W's connectivity options abound. They include Ethernet, USB 3.0 (cable included), and Wi-Fi, as well as the two popular peer-to-peer protocols, Wi-Fi Direct and NFC, for scanning to mobile devices. You can also scan to most popular cloud sites via a built-in Web Connect feature. You can configure and execute these and several other features, such as scanning to e-mail or a network folder, from a 3.7-inch color touch LCD, that, along with separate Home, Back, Cancel, Power, and NFC buttons, comprises the control panel.
From the LCD, you can access apps for most workflow scenarios, including scanning to e-mail, FTP, SFTP, and Microsoft SharePoint, and you can download others. You can also develop and add your own with Brother's open-source Brother Solutions Interface (BSI). Scanning to flash memory and other USB drives is supported via a port on the right side of the chassis. Security features include authentication from an NFC card reader, network user protocols, corporate e-mail lookup via Active Directory, and Secure Function Lock for restricting access to specific functions (as well as restrict public access). You can configure these and most other features from a secure socket layer (SSL, HTTPS) Web-based interface, as well as the touch LCD.
Similar Products
Canon imageFormula ScanFront 400
HP ScanJet Enterprise Flow 7000 s3 Sheet-Feed Scanner
Canon imageFormula DR-M160II
Epson WorkForce ES-400 Duplex Document Scanner
Epson DS-1630 Flatbed Color Document Scanner
Brother ImageCenter ADS-2000e
Kodak i3500 Scanner
HP ScanJet Enterprise Flow 5000 s4 Sheet-Feed Scanner
Epson DS-530 Color Duplex Document Scanner
Kodak i1190WN Scanner
Setup and Software
Aside from an exceedingly slow driver and software installation (20 to 25 minutes, compared with just a few minutes for most scanners), setup was straightforward and uneventful. The only assembly consisted of affixing the ADF tray to the back of the chassis. In addition to Brother's drivers and utilities, the software bundle contains two third-party programs, Nuance PaperPort SE (document management) and Abbyy FineReader Professional (optical character recognition, or OCR), but they don't come on the included CD; instead, they are downloads offered during the software installation routine.
Brother ImageCenter ADS-3600W
In addition to PaperPort and FineReader, bundled software includes Abbyy PDF Transformer Plus, a program for reading and creating PDFs that is similar to Adobe Acrobat DC (though not as feature-rich), and Brother's own ControlCenter 4 (Windows) or ControlCenter 2 (Mac). ControlCenter is, as it is for most Brother scanners and multifunction printers, the primary scanning utility, though you can also scan directly into both Abbyy programs and PaperPort. The first time you launch ControlCenter, it offers a choice of two interfaces, Home and Advanced. The Home interface is rudimentary, containing only a few basic profiles for the most common scanning workflows, such as scanning text documents to PDF. Advanced mode, on the other hand, comes with a handful of highly configurable profiles, and you can create your own. Both modes are well designed and easy to figure out. In addition, the ADS-3600W is Kofax VRS certified, but the Kofax software itself is not included. (Kofax VRS is a utility that evaluates and enhances poor scans to improve accuracy.)
Performance
Like its $2,000 competitor, the Canon ScanFront 400, the Brother ADS-3600W is rated at 50 pages per minute (ppm) for single-sided (simplex) scans and 100ppm for two-sided (duplex) scans. The ScanJet 7000, on the other hand, is rated at 75ppm simplex and 150ppm duplex. What's important, though, is how fast the scanner and its software creates a usable file (which, in our tests, are image and searchable PDFs), not how fast the pages scroll through the machine. I tested the ADS-3600W (and the other scanners listed here) with our standard Core i5 testbed PC running Windows 10, in this case over USB 3.0. I also ran some tests via Ethernet and got nearly identical scores. The results below are from the USB tests.
Without the lag time (the time between when the last page hits the output tray and the document is subsequently saved to PDF), the ADS-3600W matched its ratings (50ppm simplex, 100ppm duplex) precisely. Unlike most Canon scanners, including the ScanFront 400 and DR-M160II, that process and save scans in the background, while scanning, the Brother scanner's software processes and saves scans after it finishes scanning, which increases the lag time. When saving to image PDF, for instance, it scanned at the rate of 46.2ppm simplex and 96.8ppm duplex, for a lag time of 3ppm to 4ppm, which isn't bad.
Brother ImageCenter ADS-3600W
When scanning to the more useful searchable PDF format, though, the ADS-3600W's lag time between scanning and saving our one-sided 25-page test document was 12 seconds (from 30 seconds to 42). The time between scanning and saving our two-sided 25-sheet (50 pages) document was 18 seconds (from 30 seconds to 48 seconds). The ScanFront 400 scanned and saved the same 50-page document to searchable PDF in 34 seconds (with very little lag time), and the ScanJet 7000, despite its significantly higher speed rating, took 44 seconds. While the ADS-3600W did bog down some when saving to searchable PDF, it held its own against these pricier competitors.
OCR Testing
At least as important as speed is accurate conversion from scanned text to editable text. The ADS-3600W's accuracy on our tests was about average. At the default resolution of 200dpi, it converted our Arial font test page without errors down to 6 points, and the Times New Roman font page at 8 points. Increasing the resolution to 300dpi brought the Times New Roman errorless results down to 6 points, while the Arial score didn't change. When scanning the same test pages at its default setting, the ScanFront 400 produced the same results, and the ScanJet 7000 managed 6 points for both fonts. The Canon DR-M160II, on the other hand, scanned both fonts at 5 points without errors, which was the best results we've seen in some time.
Conclusion
With an $800 list price, the Brother ImageCenter ADS-3600W delivers a more robust set of connectivity and other features than its more-expensive competitors, primarily the pricier ScanFront 400 and the ScanJet 7000. (The ScanJet lists for $150 more than the Brother model and you have to buy a $50 adapter to get Wi-Fi-only networking.) The only drawback I see with the ADS-3600W is that it doesn't come with business card management software, which the ScanJet 7000 does. (The Canon ScanFront 400 and DR-M160II do not). Given the Brother model's low price, though, even if you buy the business card software separately, the ADS-3600W is a terrific value. With its low price, generous feature set, and its reliability and strong performance in testing, the Brother ADS-3600W earns our Editors' Choice nod for medium- to heavy-duty network scanning in small and medium-size offices and workgroups.
Need networked document scanning at a reasonable price? Brother's relatively fast and accurate ImageCenter ADS-3600W comes with Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and numerous mobile and cloud options.
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