Review: Lightweight Brother ImageCenter ADS-1500W Offers On-the-Go Scanning

Going Three Rounds with the Brother ImageCenter ADS-1500W Scanner

One of the most surprising features of the Brother ImageCenter ADS-1500W scanner is its lack of Ethernet connectivity. Granted, setting up the unit wirelessly is seamless, but removing that Ethernet safety blanket is a bit of a bold move on Brother’s part.

As such, measuring performance closely is a good idea, even if it is just to see if the ADS-1500W can keep up with typical office loads, given its wireless-only status.

For testing, we used a 20-page text document with a few graphics interspersed throughout and a few double-sided pages thrown in for good measure. (Twenty is the maximum number of pages the scanner’s auto-feeder can handle.) All scans were done at 300 dots per inch, though the ADS-1500W can go as high as 600 dpi to capture more detail.

Round 1: Wired

Impressively, the presence of double-sided pages did not slow scan time. In fact, pages with data on both sides went through slightly faster than the single-sided pages — a side effect of the ADS-1500W’s automatic blank-page removal feature.

Scans were fastest when scanning to a USB drive or when connected directly to a computer using a USB cable, coming in at 17.5 pages per minute, close to the 18-pages-per-minute rating. The addition of the graphics in the test file led to the slightly slower time. Sending documents to a USB drive plugged into the scanner yielded identical results.

Round 2: Wireless

Wireless performance speeds were also impressive, just a little slower than when using the USB cable. The strength and type of wireless network did reduce the page-per-minute rate.

Sitting within 20 feet of an 802.11n hub, the speed dropped to 15.5 pages per minute. With an older 802.11b connection, the rate dipped sharply to 10.8 pages per minute.

Round 3: Special Features

Activating the scanner’s special features, such as optical character recognition or blank-page removal, also slows down scan time. But performance never dropped below 8 pages per minute, even with every possible extra option activated and files sent across a wireless connection.

Selecting different destinations, whether FTP servers, email accounts or a cloud service, didn’t affect base time in any significant way. It’s a safe bet that not many lines will form in the ADS-1500W scanning queue. There are few small, wireless and inexpensive scanners that can make such a claim.